Dear Hope
by LooseHeadRugger
Summary: After an unexpected event threatens to shatter their developing family, Sam must fight to continue to prove her resilience while Brooke is forced to take on a new reality; struggling with the responsibility of caring for a sick child.
1. It's Not the End of the World

Chapter 1: It's Not the End of the World

**Thursday, October 27****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I stifled yet another strong, audible sigh of utmost frustration - one which had originated straight from the marrow buried deep within my very bones - as the echo of a very loud, very ominous crash reverberated off of the thin walls of my store emphasized by the likelihood that something very precious, and very expensive, was probably shattering into a million pieces across my floor as we spoke.

With carefully concerted movements, I forced my eyes to close as I began to collect an excess of oxygen into my lungs through a series of deep breaths that guided me through the motions of the fading crash as it transitioned into complete, absolute silence – silence that told me one thing and one thing only –

Somebody was trying to hide their guilt from my vengeful senses, and I had the slightest feeling that I knew exactly who that person was.

With a deep sigh, I released the white-knuckled death grip I currently had against my innocent sketching pencil, I relaxed my muscles as flaccid as they would possibly go, and I began to count.

"One,"

This little counting trick was one which I had managed to actually teach myself through the course of the struggle of raising a rebellious teenager… I had picked it up from an advice column in some parenting self-help book that I'd found myself mortifyingly forced to buy at a local bookshop that I could now never show my face in ever again.

"Two,"

But it worked well enough, really it did, and it kept my job relatively simple, which was the selling point, really… You see, the only thing I really had to do was count slowly enough to allow my mind to sink into such a lucid state that I actually began to believe my conscious when it repeated four simple words to me over and over again –

"It's not worth it."

"Three,"

Ninety nine times out of a hundred, it worked well enough so that although I still wanted to scream my head off to the point that the veins popped out of my neck and my blood pressure rose to a level that threatened an aneurysm, I didn't.

"Four,"

Five seconds until relaxing bliss, imagine that…

"Five,"

Five seconds to make it so that I wouldn't storm into the back room and rip a certain somebody's freaking face off.

"SAMANTHA!" I collected my best profession of a pissed-off tone into the back of my throat and released the monster within, begging myself not to get too carried away although unfortunately for me – no, unfortunately for Sam – the terrible day that I had already had, and was continuing to have, was gaining speed on me faster than I could run away from it.

I guess next time I'll have to try counting to ten.

From beyond the veil of protection, fashioned out of some thin dry wall and a few planks of wood, I heard a quick scurry followed by the emergence of a miniscule blonde haired boy with what appeared to be magic marker smeared like plotted highways along U.S. maps straight across his face.

He jogged briskly towards me, standing at attention front and center with his eyes pointed forwards, his hands in his pockets, and the best "I didn't do it" look that he could possibly muster plastered in his coached expression.

It wasn't working.

Behind him, Sam was dragging her sneakered feet slowly behind him, scuffing up the wooden floors so that the expression she wore, very similar to Jamie's in the moment, was working even less than his was.

Of course, Sam also had the disadvantage of being unable to pull off that six year old charm that always tugged at my heart strings and practically forced me to side with my godson.

"Sam, how many times do we have to have this conversation? Clothes over Bro's is a boutique, a very upscale, very prestigious boutique, not your own personal playground."

"Sorry," She grumbled miserably in her response, her body already turning strategically in an about face; her attempt to avoid anything more than a quick scolding. But I had caught her red-handed, and for that, I planned on emphasizing to her the fact that me, and the first drafts of my winter line due into corporate headquarters tomorrow by nine a.m. were not in the mood to be messed with right now.

"Come on, can't you see that I'm busy? Why don't you go and take Jamie out to the River Court or something?" There was a sense of a plea behind my voice, a factor that I was certain Sam had picked up on judging by the way she hesitated and shuffled her feet slightly before answering me.

"It's raining."

I rotated my head slowly sideways so that Sam and my eyes locked only briefly before she pulled away her stare. My eyes narrowed softly down towards her, the muscles surrounding my jaw twitching ominously in preparation to yell, to start a fight strictly for arguments sake, to unfairly release all of my pent up anger and exhaustion out on my foster daughter, but just before I was able to begin, I became distracted…

There was just something about her appearance, the way that her face set underneath the deep florescent glow of the numerous lighting panels adorning the ceiling that forced me to hold my gaze for just a little while longer.

It was a flash that lasted a mere second, and then, just as quickly as it appeared, that shining sheathe of pale skin and the glaze that clouded over her eyes faded…

It was a mere second later that I had finally managed to convince myself that I had simply just made the whole thing up.

"What?" She spoke harshly, apparently noticing my obvious staring before contorting her face in a manner that told me that she was waiting for my retort… a retort that never came. And now that I had actually allowed myself to let my guard down, even if it was just for that split second, I knew that I'd lost my opportunity.

I tried desperately to merely shake off the distractions, but they were flying right at me from every which direction, pelting me with curve balls that left me struggling to properly assess when exactly it was that I was supposed to swing…

I closed my eyes tightly, a desperate final attempt to gain control of the mounting frustration pounding a thin layer of aching across the entirety of the surface of my brain.

I began mentally combating this sudden and particularly vicious headache while simultaneously scrambling to figure out what it was that I was going to do with Jamie and the problem child… But of course, the thought alone was enough to make my head throb harder in a pain that originated at my temples and pulsated through to the back of my head, where it was left to radiate and osmose down the length of my spine.

"Nothing," I finally replied to her initial statement after what seemed like hours. "Just go… I don't know, do something else." And with an eye roll that made my head spin, Sam made the motion to turn away; her rush instantly reminding me of the fact that I had almost forgotten the most important rule – "An indoor activity, if you don't mind."

Hopefully she would get the hint that I was hinting towards a nice game of Candy Land rather than another round of Floor Hockey.

She shot me a glare, and trust me, by this point I was more than used to her characteristic expressions that have the words "fuck you" written all over them, except this time… well this time, something was different; off, even.

I mean sure, there was your average component to her look, the one that silently expressed to me something along the lines of – "Hey Brooke, I'm gonna go ahead and ignore everything that you just said and continue wreaking havoc on your store" but beyond that there was more…

I don't know, maybe this had something to do with that cold that she'd been developing these past couple of days now… that was my best guess anyway, I mean I couldn't help but notice the fact that she's been a little congested lately…

I swear to God if that kid gets me sick right now I will put her right back out on the streets…

Okay, maybe that was a little bit harsh… I'd probably just make her sleep in the trunk of my car.

"Fine, come on Jamie." She breathed through an exaggerated sigh, gripping the smaller child by the shoulder so that she could steer him away from me where they travelled back behind the counter, disappearing into the back room so that they could go off together and do God only knows what…

Whatever, as long as I couldn't see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, or… whatever it, they could do whatever the hell they wanted to.

Together, the dynamic duo fell out of sight and into an ominous silence that made me nervous although I'd decided to take full advantage of it while I could because let's be honest, with a rowdy six year old and an even rowdier teenager in my midst, silence was something that was difficult to come by, and you need to trust me when I told you that I did not take it with a grain of salt.

I sauntered back over towards the desk, slowly sinking myself back down into the chair attached to my cluttered work space, immediately pondering what it was that I should do next as I picked up my pencil, sticking the eraser into my mouth in an effort to aid my thought process and stared down at the sketch that I'd been working on for hours now although I still wasn't even halfway finished with it yet…

Of course, it should have been done days ago now, but that was beside the point.

Allowing the lead to slowly touch down on the paper, the contact sent a sudden jolt of electricity straight up my arm and into my brain as an ingenious idea sprang up into my mind…

I could alter the length of the sleeves, then poof them up a bit and crop the neck line to adjust… It was perfect I didn't know how I hadn't thought of it before…

In fact, I was just prepared to finally draw the entire thing out when I was rather abruptly thrown off course… again.

This time, the crash was even louder than that which had graced my eardrums before…

"SAM!"

Okay, to be fair here, I wasn't exactly one hundred percent certain that Sam was to blame here, but I was about ninety nine percent, and to me, that was enough.

I pushed myself away from my table with such force that my papers and sketching tools and other documents that were most likely extremely important, all toppled to the floor like a waterfall scattering loudly in its assurance of the fact that it had made as much as a mess as humanly possible.

Stomping as loudly as my body weight and my shoeless feet would allow me to, I broadened my stance and set my face sternly in an effort to make myself look as intimidating as I could be as I rounded the corner into the back room, only to find my anger instantly taper off, fading away into a feeling of utmost concern…

Pressed up against the wall, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand and trying to catch the small pool of blood filtering out of it with the other was Sam.

"What the hell happened in here?" I'd asked the question, but as the words were coming out of my mouth, I found myself tripping over a stationary basketball in the middle of the floor; the offending object, I was guessing, responsible for the blatant damage to Sam's face.

"Seriously Sam did you honestly think that when I told you to partake in an indoor activity, I meant basketball?"

I jumped up directly in Sam's face, but the second I got close enough, I noticed the geyser of blood filtering through the cracks between her fingers and I instantly felt bad for yelling at all while all she wanted to do was stop bleeding…

"Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry… here." I tried to rectify myself, extending to her a wad of tissues that I'd pulled from my pocket; a gift that she accepted gratefully.

The softest of sniffles forced me to turn my head away from Sam, my eyes instantly locking on Jamie, who was huddled as tightly as he could possibly fit in the corner, looking very much so like he was trying to absolutely disappear into the plaster…

Oh how I remembered that age all too well… It came hand-in-hand with that "oh shit" feeling you get when you just know you're about to get in trouble… I only knew that because I still felt that way, every single day of my damn life.

"Hey buddy, what happened here?" I crouched at the knees in an effort to match his height but he averted his gaze as if the blank white wall was more interesting than my beautiful face…

As if.

I studied his features carefully for clues, watching as a single tear slipped slowly down his cheek so that I could feel my heart breaking instantly… Thank God that I didn't have any toddlers to look after, I gave into them way too easily…

My kids were going to be little terrors one day.

"I didn't mean to Aunt Brooke, I just wanted to pass it but Sam… she missed it."

"Hey Jamster, you know that I'm nowhere near the basketball star that you are… but maybe one day, right?" Sam smiled over towards Jamie through her bloody, tear-stained face in an effort to make him feel better, an effort, I am relieved to say, worked.

"Sorry Sam," He apologized feebly, trotting the handful of steps over towards Sam so that he could wrap his little arms around her waist and pull her into what was probably the cutest hug I have ever seen in my entire life.

"It's cool bud," She responded, hesitating only briefly before returning his embrace with the hand that wasn't attempting to stem the relentlessly bloody fountain still sprouting from each nostril.

He showed proudly, his bright, toothless smile to the both of us before releasing Sam, turning back towards me.

"Aunt Brooke, I'm hungry." His little attention span wandered off quickly now that it had been enforced that he wasn't about to get in trouble.

With a quick laugh, I found myself subconsciously glancing up at the clock on the wall through the corner of my eye, surprised to find that it was already 8:00 at night, and I hadn't even noticed… I guess I'd lost track of the time…

I'd forgotten to feed the children… Great, just add that to my resume and submit it to the mom of the year awards.

"Okay Jamie, how about you run out to the front real quick and grab my jacket for me… How does pizza sound?" I bribed him with pizza; silently communicating the bargain that I wouldn't tell his mother that he'd broken my foster daughter's nose if he didn't tell her that I'd forgotten to feed him.

"Yeah!" His voice rang excited in the enthusiasm sprung on by the promise of pizza, the single reply ringing in the distance as he bustled out towards the front of the store as fast as his little legs could take him, leaving me to take advantage of this imminently brief Jamie-free opportunity to turn my attention onto Sam.

"Are you okay?" I asked through a grimace, watching as she nodded, still clutching the ball of tissues up under her nose.

"Yeah, if you count having absolutely no hand-eye coordination okay," She made the attempt to laugh at her own joke, but considering the fact that she'd done it with a wince as she softly peeled the bloody tissue out from under her, it wasn't as affective as she probably would have liked…

"How does it look?" She asked skeptically, providing me with an indirect invitation to advance forwards towards her. I slowly maneuvered the three or four steps forward, squinting to adjust my far-sighted eyes as I brushed a few strands of hair out of the way only to reveal an already forming bruise making its darkened home directly underneath Sam's swollen right eye.

"You've got a pretty nice shiner already." I spoke through my teeth, trying to sound as sensitive as humanly possible about my prognosis, choosing to leave out the part where her eye would most likely be swollen shut and black and blue by the time she woke up in the morning.

"How about I take you and Jamie out to eat somewhere that might have a nice raw steak that you can slap on that thing…" Yes, that was my attempt at raw humor – no pun intended – I have after all, been told that I was a funny person once or twice in my life.

"You're hilarious."

See?

Okay, so it had been a sarcastic reply, but I counted those too.

"Do you think it's broken?" She changed the course of the conversation quickly, leaning away from my touch so that she could wipe her hair back into her face in a failing effort to cover up the offending bruise.

"No," I shook my head confidently. "It'll be fine; you're just going to be a little bruised up for a while."

"Great," She sighed, shooting me a look that told me that I might as well have just told her that her entire face was broken.

"Hey, it could be worse… Did I ever tell you about the time that I had a black eye on my prom night?"

"Really?" She perked up slightly, humored by my humiliation as if it had been the funniest thing that she'd heard in a while… Of course, I hadn't thought it too funny when it was happening…

"Oh yeah, it was a real nice one too…" I fell into vagueness, choosing not to mention how it was exactly that that black eye came to be about…

"What did you get punched in the face or something?" O-kay, now I'm definitely regretting bringing that topic of conversation up to begin with… I think that right about now would be a perfect time for a nice, reliable subject change.

"Hey are you hungry? I'm starving." She raised her eyebrow up at me, clearly taking my last of an answer as a blatant yes to her previous question, but choosing to follow my lead anyway because I had at least raised her with some values.

"Not really." She shrugged half-assed, and I immediately stared down at her with concern… I couldn't help but notice that she had been responding very similarly to that question for a while now, and considering the fact that I was quite certain that she hadn't eaten all day, well frankly I was concerned.

"Okay…" I retreated from starting something because I knew as well as she did that right now was not the time or the place, "Well do you still wanna come with us… just to hang out?"

"Um… I'm kind of tired actually," She responded awkwardly, pointing her eyes firmly onto the ground as she rubbed a hand back and forth over the top of her head, tangling her hair between her fingers, "I was thinking that maybe I could just… you know, go back home… If that's okay, I mean?"

"Got any homework to do?" I pushed her for an explanation, but nodded my head and shrugged a positive response to her question anyway.

"Nah," She replied as I knew she would, "I'm kind of tired, I was thinking about just going to bed actually."

I gave her another weak nod, pausing in my attempts to figure out whether or not I was merely making it up when I saw that she was apparently looking even sicker than she had looked before…

I don't know, maybe it just had something to do with the blood all over her face…

"Just make sure that you get some ice on that eye right away okay," I subliminally submitted to her request to be dropped off at home, "Actually now that I think about it I think that I might have a steak in the freezer… that might work better than ice."

"I will," She nodded her head albeit looking slightly disgusted towards the idea of icing her face with a slab of raw meat, pushing past me without another word in an effort to escape the cramped back closet of my store for the freedom of the outside world.

I hesitated to follow her lead but it was only brief. I forced myself to light a fire under my heels relatively quickly, stepping into the display floor where Jamie was apparently long ready, standing at the front door with my purse already draped across one arm and my jacket the other, extending the items to me in his apparent impatience.

"Are you ready to go Jamie?" I asked as a formality but I knew the answer before he'd even opened his mouth.

"Yeah, pizza!" His face brightened in a heartbeat, I just wished that I could mirror his excitement… I just couldn't seem to muscle past that growing worry for Sam.

"Alright, come on." I lead both him and Sam out of the door, locking it up in my wake.

Jamie climbed himself up and into my car parked directly outside, struggling to buckle himself securely into his booster seat before I was forced to intervene and take control as Sam made herself comfortable in the front passenger's seat…

"Seatbelt Sam," I scolded her briefly as I hoped into the driver's seat, barely even registering the slight glare she shot me before ultimately pulling the strap across her chest, my eyes glued to her motions as I finally turned the keys within the ignition and flexed against the gas pedal, directing my car towards the one place where Sam wanted to be right now;

Home.

* * *

**SAM**

I sunk down back inside of my otherwise empty house so quickly and quietly that I might as well have been robbing it or something…

Sliding the door shut softly behind me, I chose not to advance inwards immediately, instead pausing to relax against the wooden frame of the front door, cooled by the relatively fair weather that we had been experiencing here in Tree Hill, North Carolina for the past couple of weeks now.

Closing my eyes around the comfort provided by the slight dip in temperature, I allowed my knees to buckle around me, sliding into the most comfortable position that I could possibly muster considering the fact that I was currently resting against a solid slab of wood.

Exhausted, I released an audible exhale, rubbing my hands roughly over my face before being forced to an abrupt stop, an involuntary hiss of pain escaping from my lips as a sharp twinge shot its way through the every nerve of my face straight down my elongated spine…

Apparently I'd been stupid enough to actually forget for a second or two there that tonight I had become the lucky recipient of a brand new, incredibly stylish, and slightly sore black eye.

Great.

Crap that reminded me, Brooke had warned me back at the store to ice it the second that I got back home… or steak it or whatever…

Of course, usually, I preferred generally ignoring Brooke's personal advice column towards me just to be a pain in the ass and see how much I could mess with her before she really got pissed, but considering that this time around, doing just that would result in nothing more than an even more swollen, puffy faced mess decorating itself across my face, I figured I would listen…

So I followed Brooke's warnings, and I subconsciously found myself wandering over into the kitchen where I headed straight for the freezer and grabbed an ice pack before freezing briefly in my motions as a Ziplock-bagged slab of meat glistened in its taunting glow up towards me.

This was disgusting.

With a deep, slightly dramatic sigh, I gave my best eye roll to the dead cow in front of me before grabbing the offensive cutlet and slapping it over my face.

The pressure of the object against my rapidly expanding injury caused a quick stab of pain, and the chips of ice frozen to the unused food product hurt my head like a sudden brain-freeze moment, but I guess in retrospect, my head was already pounding to begin with so I couldn't complain too much…

I glided swiftly out of the kitchen towards the living room, throwing myself down onto the leather couch as hard as I possibly could while simultaneously grabbing for the remote control in the midst of my free fall.

The second that the TV turned on, freaking Brooke's VH1 top twenty music videos began blaring a hole through my ears so that the noise made my head spin…

Pissed at my own body for reacting in a manner that I definitely didn't approve of, I jabbed the power button of the remote control viciously, turning off the television once again.

Fuck this season. Fuck this cold.

I sank backwards down onto the couch, allowing my body to fall through the comfortable cracks and the cushions to mold perfectly into my body type… Easily the best part about living with Brooke was her ability to pick out some serious grade A furniture.

I allowed my eyes to slide closed slowly, fully prepared to fall asleep right here on the spot, but apparently, my body had other plans…

In the midst of a deep breath, the air flew down softly into my airway until it got stuck somewhere within the very depths of my trachea; stalling before it could ever effectively reach my lungs so that I literally began choking on it…

Flying upwards into a seated position in a desperate effort to clear my air passages, I coughed violently, feeling the phlegm that had seemed to originate from the very pit of my chest cavity itself slide upwards and out of my mouth.

If you were to ask, I probably would have exaggerated and told you that the fit lasted hours even though it couldn't have been any more than a minute that the coughing subsided into oblivion and I was forced up and onto my feet even though all I wanted to do right now was go to sleep…

I dragged my feet slowly past the clock dangling from the wall en route to the bathroom; it was 8:36 on a Thursday night and here I was getting ready to go to bed…

Nice, I always knew that I was a cool kid and all, but this might just be a new record.

Sulking into the tiny bathroom, I finally worked up enough courage to actually inspect the damage that Jamie had left on my face, figuring that now was as good a time as any considering I would have to face the facts eventually…

I was nervous to see what it would be staring back at me thorough my reflection, and when I finally gathered the guts to turn my face upwards and actually look in the mirror, I realized that I had had good reason to do so.

It was worse than I thought…

To use the word 'black' to describe the color around my eye would be a complete understatement. A purplish hue was slowly beginning to settle around the socket, navy undertones filling in for the blank spaces…

It carried across the majority of my face, only fading into a pinkish sort of contrast around the curve of my cheekbone.

Seriously though, what does it say about me that I'd allowed a six year old boy and a toy basketball to swell up my eye to the point that I couldn't even open it anymore?

Throwing the steak viciously down on the bathroom counter, I groaned audibly, not even caring if Brooke's dinner for tomorrow night went bad anymore… It was probably full of my eye fungus or whatever other nasty shit was floating around in there anyway.

I rolled my remaining eye towards the image of my own reflection in front of me… See? I was a fair person, I was even sarcastic to myself sometimes.

Forcing myself to rip my gaze out of the mirror, I turned away from the bathroom and back over towards my own bedroom, my motivation being the fact that laying in my own bed sounded so nice right now.

I was just… tired… so freaking tired… In fact, I was always tired lately, a fact that I was definitely sick of.

Throwing my jeans off of my aching body, I didn't even bother to change into a fresh shirt. Instead, I threw on a giant pair of sweat pants, flung my body down against the mattress, and found myself fast asleep before my head so much as hit the pillow below me.


	2. The Storm Is Coming

Chapter 2: The Storm Is Coming

**Friday, October 28****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I woke up in my typical Friday morning fashion just about the same as I did on every weekday morning; early, just the way I absolutely did not like it.

So here I was, bright and early on this glorious morn, sitting at the counter with my untouched coffee cradled gently in my hands, zoning in absentmindedly on the microwave as the oatmeal, which I was currently in the process of making Sam for breakfast, revolved in slow circles –

Around, and around, and around, and around.

The dull beeping indicative of the completed meal pulled me quickly out of the haze that I had somehow managed to fall into, and in a conditioned response, my neck tilted upwards automatically towards the flash of neon green light shining off of its digital clock just as the time switched from 6:59 to 7:00 on the dot.

My mouth tilted open on its own accord, my lungs filling with air in preparation to yell out to Sam to get her lazy ass up and out of bed…

"SAM!" I reluctantly slid onto my feet, sauntering over towards the girl's bedroom door where I knocked and opened it a crack without even waiting for a reply…

There, just as I had expected to, I found Sam; her blankets pulled up high over her head in a makeshift cocoon that moved rhythmically up and down in time with the even tone of her sleep-controlled breathing pattern.

"Sam breakfast is ready come on." I approached the bed heavily, trying to establish a sense of dominance early on in order to carry me through the rest of the day. Raising my foot, I gently nudged the sleeping girl in the small of her back with the appendage, immediately receiving the exact response that I had previously anticipated on…

She released a guttural, overly dramatic groan that lingered on her tongue as she rolled onto her stomach, thrusting her arms out to press her pillows over her head, a polyester helmet protecting her from my efforts to rouse her.

"Seriously Sam, we do this every single morning. You know one day I really am expecting you to be able to… oh, I don't know, wake up on your own accord for a change." She didn't respond to my tactic of accusing her of immaturity, leaving me to the vices of my next-best battle plan; threatening her.

"If you're not dressed and in that kitchen in ten minutes Sam, you'll really have something to moan about, come on now, up!"

Oh my God, did I just sound like a mother or did I just sound like a mother?

But still, when she didn't respond to my best attempt at parental verbal berating, I turned physical, gripping the edges of her bedding firmly between clenched fists so that I could literally tear her comforter off her, exposing her to a bare, blanketless existence.

Alas, even my most well-placed efforts resulted in my receiving nothing more than the loudest groan I've heard yet stemming from Sam's mouth, followed by the girl curling up into as tight a ball as she could possibly manage in her instinctual attempt to keep warm.

"Can't go to school… sick." She spoke in fragments, squeezing herself tighter and tighter until she roughly resembled an oddly shaped pretzel.

"Yeah well if you don't have a fever you're out of this door in fifteen minutes." I jutted my palm out harshly from its previous position nestled underneath my crossed arms and placed it flat down on her forehead where a miniscule amount of warmth radiated back up in my direction, but nothing that couldn't have just been rendered from having just slept face down on a pillow for the past twelve hours or so.

"Sorry Sam, you've got nothing now let's go, get up. And I'm not saying it again!"

"I'm sick Brooke, leave me alone." She left me prepared to literally pick her up by the scruff of her t-shirt and drag her out of bed if I had to, but as she shifted once again in her bed, I caught a quick glimpse, the tiniest of flashes, the rapid mesh of color, and suddenly, I remembered something…

"Does you not wanting to go to school today have anything to do with that black eye of yours?"

"Ugh no, I'm up, I'm up."

Note to self; reminding Sam of something that she didn't particularly want to be reminded of was the best way to get her out of bed.

I was going to have to remember that one for Monday.

Rolling over towards the opposite side of the bed from that which I was standing at, I stood my ground as she snuck around me as quickly as she could possibly move, trying desperately to avoid my line of vision as she made a bee line straight towards the bathroom.

With a steep sigh, I through the collection of blankets that I still had between my arms down onto the floor before slinking softly back into the kitchen where the microwave was continuing to blare angrily at me in its announcement that Sam's oatmeal had been finished for about five minutes now and was probably now cold thanks to our lack of an appropriate response.

I put the lukewarm meal on for another quick half a minute, just to warm it up a little bit before picking up the kitchen sponge, wiping down the already spotless counter merely for the sake of having something to do with my hands to pass the silence until Sam finally came bounding back into the kitchen in a fresh t-shirt and her pajama pants still on, looking nearly in tears.

"Brooke can you please help me do something about this?" She pleaded desperately with me, jabbing her index finger up towards her offending eye which already had a thin layer of poorly placed foundation over it in an obvious failed attempt of a cover up.

"Yeah, come on," I motioned for her to sit at the counter, choosing to be helpful in an effort to rectify the fact that I had awoken her so rudely, "Here, how about you put some ice on it first… there won't be much we can do until the swelling goes down a little bit more."

I moved quickly, multi-tasking as I bagged a Ziploc freezer bag full of ice and handed it to her while simultaneously grabbing the now boiling hot and slightly burnt bowl of oatmeal out of the microwave, flinging it down the length of the counter where it came to an impressive stop directly in front of Sam.

"I'm not really that hungry." She eyed the oatmeal distastefully.

"You know Sam; I've noticed that you haven't been hungry for the past couple of days now." I tried not to sound accusatory, but I really was just trying to figure out what the hell has been going on inside of that head of hers lately.

"I told you, I'm sick."

"You'll be sick enough to miss school when you're confined to a bed and stuck in a vegetative state," My words sounded harsh, but with kids like Sam, if you're not firm, they'll walk all over you; trust me, been there done that.

Besides, she wasn't that sick.

"So come on," I clapped my hands together, the universal symbol for – now hurry up and get a fucking move on – "Let's see you eat and get dressed, then I'll help you with… that."

I nodded grimly over towards her eye, watching as she rolled the one that wasn't trapped behind an ice pack up towards me before taking to bites of her breakfast and jumping up and away from the counter, heading immediately back towards her bathroom…

Five minutes later, she was beckoning again.

"Are you gonna help me or not?" I heard her voice echo from beyond the veil of the bathroom.

"Yeah, I'm coming!" I made my attendance status known, spending a couple of extra seconds in the kitchen with my coffee despite the fact that I had been the one emphasizing our time limit to Sam, before I exited the safety of the kitchen island, and entered the war torn bathroom.

"Alright, sit down." I pointed her over towards the closed toilet bowl, pleased when she obliged gratefully, allowing me to grab at the steadily melting bag of ice, pulling it off of her eye so that my face automatically skewering into a look of disgust that I couldn't control well enough to keep it from being obvious.

"Oh come on Brooke, don' make this any worse!" Sam pleaded with me as I desperately tried to shake the look off of my face, realigning my expression back to a normal one, pretending that I couldn't find anything wrong here to begin with.

"Sorry, sorry… Here, dry it off first." I extended to her my peace offering in the form of a hand towel, allowing her to complete her assigned task as I dug into the inner depths of my makeup bag, pulling out anything that I recognized as potentially useful that could help me out with this one.

"It looks like the swelling at least went down a little bit." I filled the silence with a comment I could only hope would make her feel better as I softly began patting a bottom layer of foundation around her eye… But still, I couldn't help but notice that I was creating a makeup trail that extended from the arch of her eyebrow, down to the swell of her cheekbone.

"How hard did he hit you anyway?" This thing was truly a monster; so much so that I was currently finding it hard to believe that a mere child with a basketball could have possibly inflicted so much damage.

"He didn't even hit me that hard. I have no idea why my face is being so retarded." She sighed at her own ill fortune, watching through the corner of her eye as I switched over to the green and yellow liquid concealer that I specifically kept for situations such as this one; I bet you would never think of it, but I swear it works the best.

"I don't think that I can do very much for your actual eye, Sam… I'm afraid to get too close to it." I dabbled around as close to the orb as I dared to go for a few moments, seeing how far I could extend my touch before she retreated in pain, "I could only cover up the outside bruise… Can you open it after the ice at least?"

She shook her head miserable at me.

"That's fine, thanks Brooke." She shrugged in her half-assed response, allowing me to know that it was anything but fine although she recognized the fact that there was nothing that I could do about it, "Maybe I can just wear my sunglasses all day or something."

"Okay Bono, but whatever you do, do it fast because Haley will be here in like two seconds to come out and get you…"

As if on a perfectly orchestrated cue, a loud horn blared from outside, indicating that Sam in fact, had less than two seconds before Haley would be here.

"There she is." I stated the obvious in an effort to nudge Sam a bit faster as she sat occupied with her face stuck in the mirror, staring at the miniscule effect I had placed on her eye.

"Alright, I'll see you later then." She darted for the door, her ked-adorned feet stomping loudly against the wooden floors as she rushed down the hallway and towards the front door until, in a last-minute rash decision, I decided to stop her.

"Hey Sam," She made an abrupt about face, turning back from the doorway, "If you need anything call me okay?"

She looked a little bit confused towards the randomness of my statement but nodded her head despite herself, her eyes lingering briefly on my own before she turned back around and walked straight out the front door.

For a minute or two, I just sat there, standing in the middle of my hallway all by myself, losing myself in my own thought processes before I managed to finally shake my head out of this daze, walking back towards the kitchen where I through Sam's barely-touched breakfast bowl into the sink alongside a sigh towards the waste of perfectly good food.

I wasn't sure what has been going on with Sam these past couple of days, but to be completely honest here, I was starting to worry about her...

I think that it had a lot to do with the fact that Sam and I had never been in this sort of predicament before, whatever it was exactly that this predicament was, and I was more of an experience-based learner so that if I had no experience, well then I had no solution either.

But for now I would just wait; I would sit here in my naivety with my mind racing and my fingers crossed, just hoping that one of these days, I will learn how to take charge of a solution –

For once in my life.

* * *

**SAM**

I freaking hated gym class.

And quite possibly the single only thing that could ever possibly make gym class worse than it already was, was when it landed bright and early on the first period of the day.

Whoop-de-fucking-do

What a picture-perfect way to start my mornings; getting nice sweaty, and exhausted… especially considering the fact that I already felt like complete shit.

As if I'd needed anymore of a reason to hate my life right now.

"Sam you're late!" I hobbled out of the locker room last mainly because I had gotten there last; a desperate, last minute tactic employed in an effort to avoid seeing anybody until I absolute had to.

"Sorry," I grumbled an empty apology before taking my regular spot in the very back of the attendance line… Lucky for me, having a last name like Walker generally meant a guaranteed spot in the back.

Yup, I was born destined to be last.

So here I was, sitting at the end of my class's elaborate alphabetical line, enjoying the quiet alone time while everybody else was going on in their merry way, just soaking up all of the awkwardness until Coach Lane, who was my favorite teacher in the entire world (and that was sarcasm by the way, just in case you didn't catch on) interrupted our little class party with his announcement.

"Okay guys, your favorite day of the year is here. We're starting dodgeball today."

My mouth dropped open in horror before I so much as had the opportunity to control the reflex. Across the length of the gymnasium, a collective cheer could be heard emitting from all of the guys' mouths, blocking out the collective groan originating from the girls, myself included.

This was just awesome. I got my ass kicked playing flag football every day, how the hell was I supposed to survive dodgeball, especially considering I couldn't even see out of one of my eyes?

I was starting to get the notion that the common denominator of my day today was destined to be humiliation.

"Okay, you guys know what your assigned teams are so separate into them. Matt's team is on the left, Charlie's on the right."

Naturally, Coach Lane had picked the two biggest stars of Tree Hill High School's varsity football team to be the permanent captains of our gym teams at the beginning of the year so that every time I was forced to drag my feet over towards "Charlie's" side of the court, I was forced to be reminded of how much I hated him.

Charlie, in case you haven't picked up on my animosity, was a douche bag. I loved being on his team, oh yes I did.

"What happened, Walker are you getting into fights again?"

On my first day in attendance at Tree Hill High, I punched Charlie's girlfriend at the time – for the sake of argument we'll call her "Pompous Bitch" – right in the face and broke two of her teeth. Charlie's been holding a grudge every since, even though him and Betsy Big Jugs broke up months ago.

"Yeah, your dad was getting a little rough around the edges last night."Okay, so it wasn't the most mature comeback I could have come up with, but fight stupidity with stupidity is what I always say.

He mumbled a side comment that I didn't pick up on, but I'm sure it was just great considering he followed up by turning towards his group of hot-headed jock straps so that he could laugh audibly with them.

Of course I didn't give much of a shit. After all, I was still too busy fucking my life for the inevitably poor dodgeball experience that was about to come my way.

Stepping out onto the established court, I took my usual position in the very back of the lineup where I wasn't expected to do much of anything, just the way I liked it.

The shrill ring of Coach Lane blowing his whistle to initiate the start of this riveting round of dodgeball made my head spin, the immediate after math of a bunch of testosterone ridden goons charging at the center of the court so that they could chuck hard rubber balls at each other made it spin even harder, but I think that had more to do with the retard tingles the scene gave me than the fact that I'd been feeling sick.

"Sam! Some participation would do wonders for your gym grade, you know!" I heard Coach Dick-wad yelling in my direction, a blatant response to my choosing to merely sit in the background with my arms folded across each other, my eyes barely skimming the playing field to analyze all of the action.

I rolled my eyes dramatically up towards him just as one of the balls rolled to a complete stop directly at my feet, allowing me to pick it up and chuck it forward, demonstrating my best wimpy girl throw merely to spite the teacher in front of me.

The ball sailed through the air only briefly before curving down around its trajectory and nailing one of the girls in the front row… on my own team.

"Maybe dodgeball just isn't your thing Sam." He appropriately retracted his desire for me to be more participatory as he turned away, officially deeming me as the lost cause that I already knew myself to be, "Or soccer, or football, or Frisbee…"

I heard him mumble off the incomprehensibly long list of my athletic flaws the entire time he was shuffling over to the other side of the gymnasium…

Thank you Captain Obvious. I guess I just lack the grace and poise necessary to be decent at sports, hence the giant black eye plastered across my face.

"Maybe I should just sit out then!" I called after him, and really, in my defense, I felt like shit. I was starting to get dizzy from merely standing in an upright position for too long, and I was exhausted to the point that I felt as if I'd just run a marathon rather than sat in the back of a gym class watching everybody else commit to their exercise.

"I don't think so Sam. You can't get out that easily!" I formulated an appropriate scowl across my face, three seconds away from shouting an exploitative directly at him when a ball sailed across the length of the gym and nailed me directly in the knee… Perfect timing, if I do say so myself. I don't think I've ever been so happy to be hit before.

"Oh darn, it looks like I'm out." I placed the best expression of sarcastic disappointment behind my words before shuffling my way over towards the bleachers so that I could take my seat amongst the rest of the losers.

"Don't get too comfortable down there Sam; we still have another round coming up."

"Can't wait," I spoke with mock enthusiasm, choosing to ignore his comment as I threw my hands up behind my head, leaned back against the surprisingly comfortable wooden bleachers, and in fact made myself very, very comfortable…

Unfortunately, and as much as I hated to admit this, Coach Lane had been right. The luxury didn't last nearly as long as I had wanted it too…

I guess standing in the back of the game had both its pros as well as its cons… The pros… well you already knew the pros. The cons were that even when I did manage to actually get out, it was usually at the end of the game so that it ensured the fact that I would be spending minimal time over in the losers den.

"Round two, everybody back in the game." I hesitated briefly before lifting myself up and off the bleachers with a heavy sigh, once again, going straight for my usual position in the back.

"Hey Charlie, how about you make some room for Sam over here in the front."

You've got to be kidding me.

"Coach, you've got to be kidding me!"

Wow, were me and Charlie really on the same page here? This was a first, and I've gotta say, I don't think I liked it very much…

"It's okay, I'm good right here." I added my two cents into the mix, interfering between the argument currently breaking out between Charlie and Coach Lane.

Oh look, two boys fighting over me… how cute.

"Nope, Sam come on, there's a nice big open spot right here in the front with your name written all over it."I flashed him a death glare, one that truly emphasized my exact feelings for him at the moment, but I dragged my feet forwards despite myself, taking my assigned place right next to my boyfriend Charlie.

"Don't screw this one up Walker, we're 1 and 0."

"Seriously Charlie, it's gym class relax." I shot him back a snarky reply to his snarky comment, turning away from his stupidity so that I wouldn't have to deal with anymore of it as I prepared myself for the inevitable beating that I was with no doubt about to receive.

I was practically forced to watch in painful slow motion as Coach Lane began lining the various balls along the center of the court just as the two teams made their way over to their respective sides of the gym, prepared to dart forward in an effort to be the first to collect them.

I heard the obnoxious whistle and hesitated naturally before I was able to truly process what it meant. Immediately, all of the guys surrounding me, trying to look all tough and athletic no doubt, began freaking sprinting forwards.

Okay no, not gonna do that.

I jogged… okay, I power walked, and in that power walk, I obviously ended up right back in the position that I'd started out in, directly in the back right where I belonged.

The second I stopped moving, I could feel my chest burn, resulting in my coughing like a banshee in an effort to clear it of whatever it was that was floating around inside of their restricting my breathing passages.

Clearly I was exhausted from "running" about twenty feet… nice Sam, real nice, way to make a fool of yourself… again.

"Sam! Front of the line, now!" Okay dick, Jesus. I was still trying to recover from the freaking death march I'd just been forced to endure, give me a minute or two over here…

I struggled to get my bearings straight. The room was spinning in every which direction just enough to leave me unable to decipher which way was straight.

It took me a little while, but I finally managed to actually get myself situated at least enough to be able to maneuver my body over towards the front lines… But of course, as soon as I did that, I felt almost immediately, the wind get knocked straight out of my still aching lungs as a heavily thrown dodgeball soared towards my general direction and nailed me right in the ribs.

But seriously people, don't think that I'm as much as a wimp as I'm coming off to be right now because whoever threw that stupid ball, well they threw it hard.

"Get off the court Walker, you're out!" I sulked away, more than eager to follow the advice Charlie had so generously offered me as I moseyed back on over towards the bleachers and took the exact same seat as I had found myself in before.

Well, what do you know here I was in exactly the same position that I had been in no more than five minutes ago.

But seriously, why the hell had I even bothered standing up?

I allowed myself to emphasize a large, overly dramatic yawn. I was totally ready to go back to bed and I hadn't even reached second period yet… Great, this day was looking as if it would turn out better and better with each passing second.

Oh well, at least I had Haley's class next and not some stupid gym class with some stupid hot-headed teacher and a bunch of annoying guys running around chucking balls at me.

You see? Even I can be an optimist and things are starting to look better already.

I sat on the bleachers for a good fifteen minutes, a gift from God himself, as I would describe it considering our second round of dodgeball lasted much longer than any of us previously anticipated due to a brutal throw down in the end between some kid Steve and a skinny nerd whose name I didn't even know, who avoided a hit not because he was particularly good at dodgeball but mainly because he did anything in his power to avoid getting pelted with a ball by the strongest kid in our class.

Good for him, sticking it to the man…

The best part of all of that however, was the fact that by the time the game was actually over, and Steve broke the poor kids glasses with a well-aimed throw right to the face, there were only ten minutes left in class, indicative of that heavenly grace period where we said goodbye to gym for the day and retreated back into the locker rooms in order to change out of our gym clothes… as stylish as they may have been.

"Okay guys, go ahead and get changed."

Those words were music if I'd ever heard it… And, following my usual reputation, I found myself becoming the last person out of the locker room this morning, and the first person back into it now.

The best part of gym was how good I was at leaving it.

I sulked over towards my corner locker; my own personal effort to get as far away from everybody as I possibly could, digging through its contents for my change of clothes as I pulled my sweaty t-shirt up and over my head, where I was halted by a sharp pain accompanying the motion of me throwing my hands up over my head that forced me to wince and emit a soft hiss of pain.

Distracted, I looked down towards the bare skin; outlining my ribs was a dull red outline, already bluing in a definite bruise formation that was mysteriously shaped like none other than a dodgeball…

Jesus Christ, first my eyes and now my ribs? I was going to look like an abuse victim before this day was over.

With a heavy sigh, I threw a clean shirt over my head, careful to be just a little bit gentler than I had been before hand before I leaned forward in an effort to inspect the rest of the damage… I had my suspicions and… yup, I was right; a nearly identical bruise was already prominent against my knee where I'd received my first battle wound of the day.

Maybe I should head over to the main office or something and show the principal my battle wounds. The best case scenario of this situation was that Coach Lane gets fired for endangering student welfare. The worst case is that we never have to play dodgeball ever again.

Either way, the whole thing seemed like a win-win to me.

When the bell finally rang, the invite to leave couldn't have come soon enough…

I meandered slowly through the hallways, desperately trying to block out the ringing calamity bouncing like a Spalding ball around the inside of my skull thanks to the constant chatter of my fellow students, and the lockers slamming, and the announcements overhead, and God only knew what else.

I swear, the entirety of my surroundings might as well had been connected to an amplifier today or something, because every last one of them literally went right through my head.

I snuck into Haley's classroom literally two seconds before the late bell rang, sliding into my chair just as the ringing faded into silence.

At the front of the classroom, Haley was facing the chalkboard, back turned and writing the day's course objectives down… Maybe if I was lucky, she wouldn't notice that I was almost late.

I mean, of course almost late isn't exactly late, but when your mom is your teacher's best friend she hears every little thing, and to Brooke Davis, almost late was the equivalent of skipping class altogether.

I could practically hear the scolding in my head already.

"Alright guys, first things first, we're going to start a new book today." I released a steady sigh of relief, simultaneously celebrating Haley not noticing my tardiness alongside the fact that we were finally starting a new book today which was probably the best news I've heard all day.

We'd spent the first long, grueling eight weeks of school picking apart Siddhartha, and don't get me wrong, Siddhartha was an awesome guy and all, and Buddhism is pretty chill, but no… not for me.

"Okay, come up to the front and grab a copy. And don't forget to sign in your book number with me!"Haley tried her hardest to yell over the noise as the class hustled and jostled their way to the front of the room, but Haley never had been much of a yeller…

Me on the other hand, I decided to stay put right in my seat, choosing to stand only after the crowd had sufficiently dissipated enough that I didn't have to fight my way to the front of the classroom.

I grabbed the very last book available, of course the one that had no cover left on it and a stain that I'm going to say looked like coffee glistening across the table of contents…

Great.

"Hey Sam, are you okay?" Haley whispered quietly to me just as I leaned forward to sign my name and assigned book number into an empty slot in along the signup sheet.

I tilted my eyes upwards to match hers, trying to look convincing as I put on my very best expression of health, a difficult feat considering the fact that I currently wasn't feeling okay… I wasn't feeling okay at all.

"Yeah," I kept my response short and sweet. I loved Haley to death, really I did I just hated it when she got more like Aunt Haley and less like Mrs. Scott when we were in class together.

Outside of school, yeah fine, but during… well let's just say that kids around here were prone to gossip, and teacher's pet wasn't exactly a nickname that I took too kindly to.

I plopped down back into my desk in the far corner of the classroom, taking my opportunity to further inspect the book that I would be spending the next two months or so pounding over, just hoping that it was at least a good one.

_Beowulf_… yeah, didn't sound very good to me.

"Okay, so for those of you who don't already know, _Beowulf_ is arguably one of the most important pieces of literature to come out of the Anglo-Saxon era. It is believed to have been written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries and revolves around the hero, Beowulf and three of his epic battles…"

Alright yeah, so Haley did keep rambling on about Beowulf after that, but that was about the point that I stopped listening… no offence Haley…

Ultimately, she'd decided to waste absolutely no time, choosing to dive straight into the reading process, and I had to give myself credit here, as much as I just wanted to fall face down on my desk and fall asleep, I at least opened the book to make it look as if I actually cared about anything that was going on because even if it was true that I didn't give two shits about Beowulf, or his epic battles, I at least cared enough about Haley to respect her in her own classroom… or something all philosophical and noble like that.

"Jeremy, how about you start reading for us." Oh thank God she didn't call on me, it meant that my efforts to not pay attention were going to be much easier than I'd originally planned on.

I put my head down slowly into my hands, my forehead resting across the open book so that when I lifted myself up again with Beowulf imprinted all over my face, it would be clear what I was supposed to be doing instead of falling asleep while I was in class today.

Up in the front of the classroom, Jeremy began his assigned reading task, and I'm gonna be honest with you here, I actually listened for a little while as the sound of his voice practically sung me right to sleep…

Who knew this kid had such a melodic reading voice? I sure as hell didn't until right this moment.

"Lo! We have learned of the glory of the Kings who ruled the Spear-Danes in the olden time, how those princes wrought mighty deeds."

He sounded like that guy who read for all of the audio books… I'm not sure what his name is but I've always liked to call him Sexy Narrator Man for a reason.

Jeremy was currently getting up t par with Sexy Narrator man; his Old English just flowed off the tongue as if we had been flashed straight back into the eighth century… or whenever it was that this book came from… You see, I had been paying attention!

For a little while anyway.

"Off did Scyld of the Sheaf wrest the mead-benches from bands of warriors, from many a tribe."

His words were spacing themselves further and further apart with each passing one, sliding into the pitfalls of my brain where I knew that they would be lost forever.

I guess I'd just have to read this for homework later… if I could ever stay awake long enough to do that.

"The hero terrified them from the time when first he was found helpless and outcast; for this he met with comfort, waxed great beneath the sky and throve in honors, until all the neighboring tribes beyond the ocean-paths were brought to serve him and pay him tribute!"

I allowed my eyes to gradually slide shut; well, okay my eye… the other one had already been completely out for the count long before this.

Maybe that would be enough to be able to throw off Haley. Maybe she wouldn't notice that I was currently sitting in the back of her classroom falling rapidly asleep.

Maybe… maybe…

* * *

**HALEY**

I sat stiffly within the confines of my desk, one eye on the book in my hands, the other firmly affixed on the sea of students in front of me as they took turns guiding us slowly but surely through the contents of Beowulf.

These were my favorite class periods easily. After all, spending the entire period reading meant absolutely no work for me. Hell, I didn't even have to stand up.

I had devised a simple enough system so that even a group of bored sixteen year olds couldn't screw it up. It was easy really, just move down the line; each student reads a paragraph and then passes the burden onto the next sorry sap in line.

Of course, there was always that one person available to screw it up, and when one of my students finished reading her assigned paragraph, and the next one didn't pick up where she left off immediately, I glanced up from my book, my eyes scanning for the perpetrator…

Slowly but surely, as the silence built into the air thick as mud, heads began to turn one by one towards the direction of the student who had just messed up what was quite possibly the easiest task in the world…

Sam.

The girl was folded up within a tangle of her own arms; eyes closed, face down on the desk, fast asleep.

Great, I hated it when kids fell asleep in my classroom, especially when that kid was Sam.

Standing up, I glided slowly over towards her, ready to deal with this situation and make an embarrassing scene out of her in front of her entire class, but just before I'd had my opportunity, she was saved by the shrill ring of the bell indicating the end of the period.

"Okay guys, for homework just make sure you finish part one by Monday, and be prepared to talk about it in class!" I shouted over the ops of all of their heads, doubting very much that any of them managed to make out a word that I'd just said as they shuffled rapidly out of the room, eager to get as far away from both me and Beowulf as they possibly could.

It was only a matter of time before the only people that were left in the otherwise empty classroom were me and Sam, who had somehow or another actually managed to sleep through a very loud, very obnoxious bell, not to mention the clatter of her classmates in their post-Beowulf excitement.

"Sam," I reached out and shook the girl's shoulder firmly. She turned slightly in her sleep, but other than that, wasn't anywhere even close to being roused.

"Sam!" I raised my voice slightly, shaking her a little bit harder, but still I got nothing.

Was this seriously what Brooke had to deal with every morning? I mean, I had listened to the woman complain more than once about Sam being absolutely impossible in the morning, but I always thought that she was just over exaggerating or something…

I guess not.

"SAM!"

The third time's the charm I guess. Sam shot up in her seat so quickly that our heads almost collided, looking thoroughly confused, still half asleep.

I gave her a minute to collect herself, which she took gratefully, regaining her bearings gradually before realization settled deep within the very pit of her face.

"Haley, oh my God did I fall asleep?" She sounded positively mortified as her eyes swiveled up towards the clock hanging over the doorway of the empty classroom, "Crap I'm gonna be late for my next class."

With a burst of action so abrupt that it gave me a bit of a shock, she jumped up from her seat, throwing items half-hazard into her backpack before quickly trying to shoulder past me.

Instinctually, I grabbed her before she could get very far, my hand cupping perfectly, the ball of her shoulder joint, allowing me to push her back down into her seat… I could be very forceful when I wanted to be, even if it was against the school's code of conduct.

"Sit, relax," I shrugged down towards her, "I'll write you a pass to your next class."

With a defeated sigh, she made herself comfortable, knowing full well that she wasn't going to get herself out of this one.

"What's up?" I asked her vaguely in a kickoff of our conversation, but she merely averted her gaze, subconsciously answering my question for me in her silence, letting me know that something was in fact up, something pretty serious judging by the fact that she just didn't seem to want to tell me about it.

"Nothing,"

Do you see what I mean?

"Are you sure Sam because it's not like you to fall asleep in class? What, did you have a long night out or something? Sneaking out of windows again?" I tried pushing my luck towards cracking a joke at her but either I wasn't funny, or Sam just wasn't in the mood.

It was probably a combination of both now that I thought about it.

"No," She sighed, clearly not taking to this conversation as well as I would have liked her to.

"I think that maybe you should go to the nurse." I cut straight to the point, deciding to play hardball because if that was what Sam wanted, well that was exactly what I was gonna give her.

"I'm fine Haley, I just…"

"I think," I cut her off, pausing slightly merely for the sake of dramatic effect, emphasizing my words so that she knew that I meant what I said, "That you should go to the nurse."

We had a brief stare down, but I wasn't going to back down and I think that she knew that.

It was almost ironic now that I actually thought about it. Tree Hill High School's employee handbook, the one that I received at our annual teacher's review meeting right before the beginning of the school year clearly stated that any student who falls asleep in class should be sent to the school nurse immediately.

Of course, the only reason that this policy was ever implemented to begin with was because this school, and probably every other school in the country, wanted every and any excuse in the world to pin these kids as drug addicts.

Yes, the fact that a student fell asleep in class had absolutely everything do with the fact that they were shooting up every morning before going to math class and nothing to do with the fact that they were simply a little bit tired.

"Kids falling asleep in class are subject to immediate, supervised drug tests…" however illegal that might be.

Of course, I didn't think anything like that about Sam, not even close; after all, Sam wasn't a stupid girl… Plus, I knew that she would never do anything like that to Brooke, not after all of the things the two of them had been through together in the past year.

Yes, for me, sending Sam to the school nurse was mainly based off of the fact that the girl looked, well… sick.

"Fine," She grumbled endlessly, pushing herself into an upright position just a little bit more aggressively than was probably necessary before she threw her bag up around her shoulder, darting straight for the door.

Much to my dismay, I followed her.

"What are you doing?" She asked me over her shoulder when my intentions became obvious.

"I'm making sure that you actually go." I knew Sam, which is why I also knew had I chosen not to accompany her, she probably would have just gone straight to study hall or something, defying my orders completely.

"I don't need a babysitter."

"Yeah, but you do need somebody who can vouch for you unless you want that nurse in there to make you pee in a cup on the spot." She raised her eyebrow up at me, looking both confused, as well as completely disgusted.

Sometimes I forgot that people couldn't read my thoughts and I said things out loud without first explaining them, resulting in massive confusion for all parties involved.

"Think of it as an escort."

"Whatever," She sighed at my correction, walking a considerable distance ahead of me in an effort to keep her space as the late bell began to ring and the crowd in the hall slowly dissipated into nothingness.

I followed her at a rapid power walk, watching as she took a sharp right straight into the opening nurse's office where I followed her lead, careful to stay swiftly at her heels.

"Ms. Walker, pleasure seeing you here." The older woman had sarcasm written all of her voice and of course, I couldn't blame her too much. Sam had after all, had had more than her fair share of visits to this very office, mostly her faking sick in a desperate attempt to be sent home from school early; a tactic that I can safely say, rarely worked for her.

And that is exactly where I came in. I was the deciding factor, the voice of honesty in an otherwise trustworthy situation.

"I sent Sam here Mrs. Davidson." I spoke, but I might as well not have, because she didn't say anything back, just stared at me blankly; a throw off, I must say, consider the fact that I hadn't had a speech written or anything like that.

"Um… I guess that I thought she just looked a little bit off today…" Remember me telling you about all of those people who thought that every single high school student was consistently loaded up on drugs? Yeah, Catherine Davidson was one of those people; I had to choose my words carefully.

"And you brought her here?" She was also a complete bitch, but that was something that I would never say out loud.

"Um… yeah," How the hell else was I supposed to respond to that?

"Okay Sam, why don't you take a seat?" She directed her towards the blanketed bench where Sam complied less than obligingly, making sure her misery was obvious as she dropped herself as firmly as humanly possible into the vacant seat.

I stood my ground, not really sure exactly what it was that I should be doing as I watched the nurse grab for one of those little disposable thermometers where she deposited it firmly underneath Sam's tongue.

"Leave that there," She demanded bluntly, turning away from her charge without so much as another word, sitting at her desk in a blatant effort to avoid the actual task of nursing.

It was a very tense, very silent sixty seconds later that the stupid thing finally beeped, and with a sigh, the older woman stood silently and glided towards Sam, plucking the thermometer out from underneath her tongue, deciphering the numbers displayed on the screen amidst a budding silence.

"101.3. Okay Sam, I'm going to send you home."

101.3, was that high or was it just me? I looked over towards Sam, and for the briefest of seconds, we locked eyes and maybe I was making it up, I don't know, but I could have sworn that I saw a hint of gratitude buried inside of Sam's face… beyond all of the misery, that is.

"What's your mom's phone number Sam?" The girl shrugged gently before reaching into her pocket, digging out her cell phone where she quickly relayed the digits over towards the nurse who dialed immediately…

Aren't these things that Sam should know by now? Judging by the look on the woman's face as she stared down at Sam, she thought so too.

"Hi, this is Catherine Davidson; I'm the nurse at Tree Hill High School." My thoughts were cut off abruptly by the suddenness of her voice, which was followed immediately by a muffled noise on the other side of the phone that I knew belonged to Brooke.

"I'm just calling to tell you that we have your daughter Samantha in here and she has a little bit of a fever so I'm going to send her home."

There was a brief pause that was followed immediately by a couple more "yup's" and "yaha's" and "sure's" before I heard her final statement in the form of an "Okay, I'll see you in a little while," and she hung up the phone and turned back to Sam with a face of assurance towards the fact that Brooke was on her way.

Of course, Sam didn't say anything back, and I had absolutely no tangible contribution to make so that I didn't say anything, and Mrs. Nurse of the Year over here, well she hadn't said a damn thing to begin with, leaving us all to sit awkwardly, twiddling our thumbs in our respective corners, just hoping to God that Brooke would get her ass over here and do it soon.

* * *

**BROOKE**

This was weird.

As I shuffled through the hallways of Tree Hill High School following my being called in by the school nurse to pick up my sick daughter, that was really the only thought that I could truly comprehend right now.

This was really, really weird.

I think that had a lot to do with the fact that it didn't seem all that long ago that I was sitting in that stupid little nurse's office myself trying to convince that bitch of a nurse that I myself was sick and needed to go home.

Of course 99% of the time I was totally faking it, but that's beside the point.

Rounding the corner into the small office, I found myself instantly and damn-near violently almost crashing head long into Haley, who was standing in the middle of the room besides Sam, who indeed was looking more miserable than she usually was.

"Ah, Ms. Davis, to what do we owe this fine pleasure?" Catherine Davidson stood from behind her desk, looking just as bitchy as ever before as I raised my eyebrow in confusion towards her statement.

Was she serious? Did she not just call me ten minutes ago to come pick up Sam?

"Um… I'm just here to pick up Sam… You called me saying that she was sick?" I asked it as more of a question, sounding skeptical as her eyes narrowed towards my general direction as most people's did when I told them that Sam was my daughter without thoroughly explaining the situation first.

I guess it was a good boost of confidence to be constantly reminded that I didn't look that old.

"How many years ago did you graduate again?" She asked me just as Sam stood up and threw her backpack across her shoulder in an effort to make this process go a little bit faster and spare me of the embarrassment that I was currently facing.

"Um… ten year reunion was last year." I made the lie up on the fly, hoping very much so that I sounded just as bitchy as I was trying to. "Come on Sam."

I ignored the deep look of disappointment displayed across the nurse's face towards me – teenage pregnancy, what a tragedy – and ushered Sam quickly out of the room and back into the hallway where Haley followed me gratefully, almost as eager to get the hell out of there as I was.

"Thanks for looking after her Hales." I expressed my gratitude, pulling Haley in a quick hug while meanwhile, Sam didn't so much as stop walking so that by the time I finally pulled away from Haley, she was already half way down the hall.

"No problem, listen if you or Sam need anything…"

"Actually," I took her up on her offer instantly. While I was in the car driving here, a bit of a dilemma had come across my mind, and now that I thought about it, Haley was the perfect person to help me out. "Do you think you can send me the number of the pediatrician that you send Jamie to? I don't know, I've never really thought about this or anything, but I think that I should probably take Sam to see a doctor."

"Yeah, no problem I've got it in my phone I'll text it to you, alright?" I nodded my head appreciatively, flashing her a smile that never reached my eyes although I hoped it got the message across all the same.

"Thanks again Haley." I reemphasized my initial outpouring of gratitude before turning back towards the length of hallway that Sam had since disappeared down… I swear to God if that girl was sitting outside waiting for me in the cold and simultaneously getting her even more sick than she already was, I was going to be pissed.

"I guess I should go get Sam home."

After I find her, I thought afterwards, trying not to sound rude or anything, leaving Haley so abruptly after everything that she'd just done for Sam and I.

"Yeah go, get out of here." She urged me on. I guess she could understand the position from which I was coming from. "Sam needs you now."

The car ride home was spent in a virtual sea of silence if you didn't count the blaring radio commercials or the weird noises that my car always had a tendency to make on its off days.

Sam simply just wasn't in the mood to talk, as she pressed her forehead up against the cool glass of the passenger's seat window with her eyes closed, and I wasn't about to push her to say anything.

Truth be told, I was worried about her.

I mean sure, there was a part of me yelling at myself that I was just experience some sort of intense wave of over-bearing new mother syndrome, but seriously could you blame me?

We've never been through anything like this before so was it fair for me to say that I didn't think that I was ready to be the caregiver of a sick kid?

I mean, with Angie things were different. With Angie, I was prepared, I was expecting it, and I know that it's not fair of me to compare an infant's open heart surgery with a teenager's mild case of the flu, or whatever the hell was going on with Sam, but Sam and I had formulated such a different type of bond than me and Angie so that I just couldn't help but to over react.

"When we get home I want you to go straight to bed okay?" I spoke to break the silence, emitting the one tangible thing that I could think of to make this any better. "I'll make you some soup or something, how does that sound?"

"I'm not really that hungry." I don't know why I even bothered asking in the first place; Sam was never hungry anymore.

"Yeah well I talked to Haley, she's sending me the phone number of a doctor's office in a little while and you're going, I don't wanna hear any fuss about that."

"Whatever," What was that? No fighting? No argument? Okay, now I was worried.

"O – okay…" It was the only thing that I could think to say because in the back of my mind, I had already formulated a full-fledged argument to dish out for when Sam tried to fight me on the issue so that when that never actually happened, I was instead left speechless.

In fact, I found myself rendered completely silent for the remainder of the car ride, but luckily for both me and Sam, my house wasn't all that far away, leaving us to linger in the quiet for as minimal amount of time as humanly possible before I pulled up into the driveway.

"Alright… remember what I said, I want you to go straight to your room." I relayed my original orders back to her as I pulled my car into park. "Do you need anything?"

She shook her head slowly, offering no more than that simple motion before she slid out of the car and dragged her feet up towards the house.

The good news, I must say was that she actually listened to my directions for once, rushing straight towards her bedroom, which I was pretty sure was the only place she truly wanted to be right now given her situation, even if I hadn't positively demanded it.

I followed at her heels as she rounded into the kitchen, stopping at the counter as she went straight into her bedroom, flinging the door closed and throwing herself down on the bed so hard that I could literally hear the thump of her body hitting the mattress from inside of the kitchen.

With a sigh, I threw my bag down against the chair, instantly beginning to dig through it until I successfully located my cell phone where the promised text from Haley was already waiting for me.

"Thanks Haley," I whispered under my breath to nobody in particular as I quickly dialed the number displayed on my screen on the house phone, spending the first couple of seconds tapping my feet and impatiently listening to the ringing until finally, a voice answered at the other end.

"Hi this is Dr. Copley's office, how may I help you?"

"Um… yes, I was just wondering if I could make an appointment for my daughter?" I wasn't really sure what to say, but the words that rolled off of my tongue sounded strange. "My foster daughter." I made the correction quickly.

"Sure, what's the nature of the appointment?" Everything sounded so official in this real-life world… It was a bit intimidating to be perfectly honest with you.

"Uh… I guess that she's been sick for the past couple of days, and she just got sent home from school with a fever so I just wanted to get her checked out."

"Sure, no problem; what's her name?"

"Samantha Walker."

"Okay Mrs. Walker, we have an opening at 10:30, is that alright for you?" I didn't bother to correct her error, instead, I swiveled my head around my shoulder, making eye contact with the microwave clock telling me that I had about a half an hour now to get Sam back up and out of the door, and considering I had absolutely no idea where the hell this place was, I needed to factor in some getting lost time.

"Yeah, 10:30 is fine."

"Alright, we'll see you then."

"Can't wait," I'd spoken my sarcastic response without actually meaning to but got no response from the other side of the line. Maybe she'd hung up on me before she'd had the opportunity to hear my rudeness and mistakenly label me as a bitch… Of course, with my luck, that probably wasn't the case, she was probably just too polite to actually say anything about it.

Blinking up at the clock, I quickly assessed just how much time I had left to mentally prepare myself for this excursion.

Damn, was it really only 10:03 in the morning? I have only been awake for about four hours now, but it was quickly starting to feel as if I hadn't slept in four years.

I could only hope that this miserable feeling didn't become a habit.

But unfortunately for me, something in the back of my mind was whispering at me, taunting me even to be prepared to strap myself in and hold on tight because I am going to have to get used to this… And suddenly, my head was pounding at the mere thought; a metronome of time counting off the idling seconds one by one by one by one.


	3. I Can Hardly See What's In Front of Me

Chapter 3: I Can Hardly See What's In Front of Me, These Days…

**Saturday, October 29****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I like Saturdays.

I think it's pretty safe to say that everybody likes Saturdays, and like everybody, my reasons for liking them so much generally includes features such as no rush, no pressure, no nagging phone calls, and of course, that ever-so-promising notion of sleeping in… at least, usually sleeping in.

Okay, so I guess I'm not being entirely truthful here, after all, in order to be denied that pleasurable extra hour or two in bed, one would have to actually go to sleep to begin with.

Needless to say, it would be an understatement for me to say that I didn't get that much sleep last night, because seriously though, I got absolutely _no_ sleep last night.

I guess that that was mainly because I was just worried, but even still, to say that I was worried about Sam would be just as much of an understatement as that aforementioned sleep comment.

We'd gotten home yesterday from that completely worthless doctor's appointment at around noon after waiting in the lobby for about an hour and spending a total of eight – yes, I actually counted – minutes with the actual doctor himself.

The guy had barely looked at us and hadn't even bothered to even sit down, but still he'd somehow managed to magically poof up a diagnosis that went a little something like this – "She probably just has a viral infection that we unfortunately won't be able to do anything about. We just have to wait until it clears her system on its own."

Quote by quote. God only knows how many years of medical school it took for him to come up with that one.

I could have come up with that one. Hell, at barely six months old, I think that little baby Sawyer could have made a better diagnosis than that.

At least I bet that Sawyer wouldn't have kicked our asses straight to the curb yelling for us to come back in a week if she wasn't feeling any better by then. I bet that Sawyer would have done a better job of convincing me that Sam would be just fine.

I think that it was safe to say that by the time we got back home, Sam was pretty pissed off at me. Of course, I didn't take it too personally considering I was pretty sure that she was more pissed off at her situation than she actually was at me.

It at least made me feel better to say that anyway.

But either way, whether she was pissed off at me, pissed off at the situation, or pissed off at the entire damn world, the result was all the same; your typical teenage angst where she shut herself up in her bedroom instantaneously following our return home and I've barely seen her since.

As a direct result of this new development, me and Sam's contact, and by default, my incessant nagging of her, has been limited, but I can tell you this much, I'd found her in the bathroom last night at around midnight, sporting a brand new development to her "probable viral infection that should take about two weeks to heal."

It had started as a deep, ragged cough that sounded as if it positively originated at the very base of her lungs, and after about an hour sitting in the bathroom choking up wads of phlegm into the toilet it eventually brought her straight down to her knees.

Did that gross you out enough? Yeah, watching it wasn't a particular picnic either.

I sipped at my coffee greedily, staring out into space for a few more minutes until the shrill ring of my cell phone startled me out of the inner depths of my mind so much so that I jumped and doused my entire front with half of the steaming hot contents of my mug.

Frazzled, I struggled to multi-task; wiping the coffee off of my shirt while simultaneously digging through my bag for my cell phone, staring down at the screen in an effort to decipher who it was and whether or not I wanted to answer it.

Haley.

"Hey Hales, what's up?" I picked up the phone, trying desperately to sound as normal as humanly possible although I had literally been staring into space mere seconds ago and my brain still partially felt as if it was stuck in a black hole.

"Not much," She responded casually so that as far as I could tell, my efforts worked, "I'm just calling to check in and see how Sam's feeling."

"Um… I'm not sure she's still asleep. The doctor says she probably caught something viral."

"Oh well, at least that's not too bad, right?"

"Right…" I responded, my voice fading into a low whisper in the hopes that this subject would quickly change.

"Listen," She spoke sharply with a tone that told me that she was obliging to my silent wishes, "Nathan and I are having a little barbeque thing at our place today. I was thinking that maybe if you and Sam are up for it you could swing by.

I wanted to go; truly you have no idea how badly I wanted to… If only I had the time, or the energy for things like that.

"Yeah," I answered despite myself, "Yeah let me see how Sam's feeling first and maybe we'll take a ride up a little bit later." Of course, there was about a 2% chance that I would ever actually do that, but I didn't say that.

"Okay, well everybody's stopping by around noon-ish if you guys are up to it."

"Alright, thanks Haley I'll see you later." I didn't even wait for a response towards my comment before I hung up. It was a rude habit, I know, but unfortunately that was a byproduct of being in the fashion industry; rudeness was the only way that you could ever make it, and some habits just lingered more than others did.

"Who was that?" I was more surprised that I hadn't heard Sam wake up than I was that she was standing outside of her bedroom talking to me. Before Haley's phone call had subconsciously struck my guard down, my ears had been poised like a dog's listening out for the slightest indication of movement from within the depths of Sam's room.

Instinctively, my head shot up, my body tensing as if I was preparing to go into battle as my gaze landed upon Sam, standing in all of her bed-headed glory in the doorway, looking thoroughly pale, and even more thoroughly miserable.

Scratch that, she always looked pale and miserable in the morning, what I meant to say was this; she was looking even more pale and even more miserable than usual.

"Hey," I ignored her question and greeted her awkwardly, pausing to give her a minute or two to regain bearings of her surroundings, i.e. sunlight.

"Hey?" She raised her eyebrow up towards me, clearly confused by my less than normal greeting of her but I barely noticed, I was too busy focusing on her voice, which was now so low and raspy that it rivaled even my own when I got sick, which was honestly saying a lot.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, my eyes narrowing in on her as she shrugged slightly and coughed into her open palm.

"I don't know… I'm losing my voice."

Oh really.

"Yeah, I can hear that." I commented, sure that my words were making her feel a hell of a lot better right now.

"Who was on the phone?" She asked again.

"Um… It was Haley."

"What did she want?"

"She said something about having a little get together today but I don't think…"

"Can I come?" She cut me off quickly before I could complete relinquishing on my projections of it not being a good idea, and I couldn't pretend that I wasn't shocked that she'd want to do something other than lay in bed all day.

"Are you sure?" I questioned, skeptical about her intentions although she took a couple of vigorous nods of her head.

"I can't just sit in bed all day again Brooke, I'm going freaking insane over here!"

"Language Sam," I scolded her quickly without even thinking about it.

"Sorry," She mumbled.

"Hey you know we have a few hours before we head over to Haley's if you wanna go get some more sleep or something, I don't know…" I would be lying if I told you that I was comfortable with taking Sam out to Haley's barbeque, but still, I was a sucker.

"I've been sleeping for the past two days Brooke," She shook me off quickly, "I'm just gonna go take a shower." Wandering back into her bedroom, she picked a couple stray pieces of clothing up off of her filthy bedroom floor before she headed off into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her, leaving me, once again, alone in the kitchen.

It was only after I'd heard the assuring sound of running water that I decided that I was in the clear, and I ventured over into Sam's bedroom aimlessly with a vague objective in mind.

Her living space was stuffy and congested; a classic representation of a sick person. Opening the window, I attempted to get some fresh air into the environment as I started to toss some of her dirty laundry into a spare basket before strategically making her bed.

No wonder she was so sick, she was living in a freaking pig sty.

I was busy trying to fit about three loads of laundry into one when Sam came out of the shower looking confused towards my intentions as I attempted to pack the small washing machine full.

My first order of business in life is to buy a bigger washing machine. Seriously though, am I rich or what?

"Two loads is an option, you know." Her voice sounded a little bit clearer, a combination of getting that fresh out of sleep mucous feeling out of her system alongside the steam of the hot shower. And I guess that now that I looked at her, there was a bit more color flooded into her cheeks…

She was still a lot paler than I would have liked, but still, just a little bit less so.

I just gave her a glare in response to her comment, my brain way too exhausted right now to actually think about it and come up with a witty remark that a comment such as that one deserved.

We had a brief stare down that lasted only a couple of seconds before Sam broke, snorting out with a little hint of laughter that unfortunately got caught up in the back of her throat, initiating a raw coughing fit.

So much for that theory that Sam was feeling better… I knew that I'd spoken too soon.

I could practically feel the expression on my face sliding down into one of instant concern.

"Relax Brooke, I'm fine, it was just… wrong pipe." She came up with a swift explanation and I refrained from pointing out the fact that she hadn't been drinking anything to begin with in order to call for a "wrong pipe" kind of experience but she was lucky because I wasn't in the mood to start anything with her right now.

"Whatever, just go get dressed." I waved her off, practically begging her considering the fact that she was standing in the middle of the hallway soaking wet and wearing nothing but a towel and I had the strangest feeling that the cold air being drafted through her windows couldn't be good for whatever sickness it was that was running rampant through her body.

"I would but you have all of my clothes." She smirked, always the smart ass.

"Well then find something Sam, come on, can you just humor me over here?" I asked, my voice raising slightly considering the fact that I was already a nervous wreck over here and didn't need anything else pushing me over the edge.

She must have sensed this, because she obliged to my request more than willingly.

"Well maybe if somebody didn't open up all of my windows on me trying to freeze me to death than we wouldn't have this problem." She spoke from the doorway as she slinked inside and slid the door closed behind her.

"Yeah well maybe if somebody didn't germinate my house all over the place with her disease than I wouldn't have to!" We rolled into casual conversation simply. In fact, it was good enough to almost make me forget all together that I still had a lot of worrying to do… almost being the key word in that sentence.

"Germinate isn't a word!" I heard her voice echo from behind the closed door, barely above a whisper but still, I heard it.

"Yeah it is, look it up." I shot back, stuffing the last of her clothes into my washing machine and turning it on. Sam didn't say anything back to me, or if she did, I didn't hear her thanks to the added noise of the washer blocking out what little amount of a voice that she actually still had left.

Either way, I took it as a victory for me in our mock little argument.

"To begin to grow or develop," I looked up; Sam was standing in the doorway, completely dressed with a towel wrapped strategically over her head, looking smug with her arms folded gently across her chest.

"What?"

"You told me to look up germinate. It means to grow or develop meaning you used it in the totally wrong context."

I was just impressed that she had a dictionary in her room… and that she knew how to use it.

"Well at least I knew that it was a word. Remember that one, SATs." She shot me a smirk that I returned quickly, allowing it to linger before it was erased in its entirety by the complete blanching of Sam's face as she turned about three more shades of white in a split second before she staggered backwards slightly as if she were drunk.

I straightened my back instinctively, but she stopped me before I even had time to say it.

"I'm fine."

"Maybe you should sit down, Sam."

"I'm fine." She repeated much more firmly this time. Clearly, she wanted to play hardball, but I knew that I could play harder.

"Maybe you should sit down." It wasn't a question, and I made sure that she knew that.

For a while there, she stood her ground, refusing to move, and I straightened my posture, ready to start an argument with her if need be, but the necessity never came. Instead, she finally pushed forwards, brushing past me in her journey towards the couch, which she stomped dramatically towards before flinging herself on top of it.

But still, despite a brief and slight argument, I couldn't help but marvel at just how far she had come. I mean, a few months ago, if I'd ordered her around like that, she probably would have just stormed straight out of the house or something, but now… well now she was actually listening to me… kind of.

"Listen, I'm gonna go jump in the shower and when I get back Sam, I swear to God you better be in that exact same spot." Her back was turned to me so that I couldn't really see her, but I was almost positive that she did something like roll her eyes at me, or else sigh over-dramatically, or maybe even a combination of both, who knew, but I let it go for now.

"I'm serious!" I added my final sense of enforcement, just to emphasize the fact that I wasn't messing around here but I got no response. Of course, I honestly hadn't really been expecting one anyway, so instead, I turned my back on both the living room and Sam, and practically ran straight for my bathroom, more than eager for that impending hot shower that both me, as well as my aching muscles so desperately needed right now.

* * *

**PEYTON**

"Hey Hales, sorry we're late." I apologized as Haley swung her front door open for us in response to my ringing of her doorbell while meanwhile Lucas was stuck frazzled behind me trying, with very limited success might I add, to juggle bother Sawyer, and Sawyer's diaper bag between his hands.

I guess I could have helped him… in theory.

Several hours ago, Haley had given me a call with an invitation accompanied by a very clearly established noon report time for a pretty happening little shin dig that she'd planned on throwing in her backyard. I honestly think she was just looking for an excuse to have everybody get together again, because Lord only knows that we didn't do that nearly as much as we should have.

I'd said yes almost instantly, desperate for a little human interaction that didn't come from either my husband, or my newborn who couldn't even talk yet, yet alone carry out a social conversation, but of course, I'd almost ruined the whole thing by delaying our arrival time, finally clocking in at a time that was closer to two o'clock than it was twelve.

"No, no, don't worry about it." Haley waved off my apology as she ushered us into her home, guiding us through the familiar hallways straight out towards the back patio, "Brooke and Sam only got here about fifteen minutes ago, so you really didn't miss much, I swear."

I stepped out through the sliding glass doors onto the deck, where Haley had already so nicely complimented this unusually warm October weather with a set up that could have fooled me into believing that it was July again… Burgers and dogs, a couple cases of beer, and of course, my favorite people in the entire world congregating into a nice little pow-wow that I was more than eager to get in on.

"Peyton!" I heard Brooke's voice shout up at me before I actually saw her bounding over from her spot at the table next to Mouth.

"Hey Brooke," I made the motion to hug her in my greeting, but apparently Brooke had more elaborate plans, choosing instead to grab me around the waist in a true embrace that practically lifted me off of my feet.

"How's my favorite girl?" She asked me, pulling herself upwards, not even waiting for me to respond to her question before she turned over towards Lucas, or more accurately, towards our daughter bouncing up and down inside of his arms, "And how's my favorite little god-daughter? Hey Luke,"

She cooed over the baby, throwing a casual greeting up towards Lucas to be polite as she scooped Sawyer out of his arms and nestled her between her elbows where she seemed to fit perfectly.

"Aw, she's getting so big P. Mom." Brooke gushed as I smiled down at the interaction between my child and her godmother, in all of her glory, rocking my little nugget back and forth in her arms.

"Yeah she is, I can't even keep up with her anymore." See, there is something that you all truly need to know about Brooke Davis. The reason that I love her so much, well, at least one of the reasons that I love her so much, is that every time I saw her, she greeted me as if we haven't seen each other in years, and being constantly reminded that there was somewhere in your life where you truly belonged never got old, ever.

Of course, I couldn't be completely certain that this was the normal Brooke Davis standing out on this deck with me or the Brooke Davis after a couple glasses of wine, but either way, I just wanted to let it be known that I absolutely love this woman.

"Hey, where's Jamie and Sam… B. Mom?" Her comment, combined with her motherly instinct coming out full force on Sawyer reminded me of the fact that it was strangely quiet in this house for it supposedly holding a rambunctious six year old and an equally as, if not more so rambunctious teenager.

"I don't know," She shrugged, catching onto the little side comment I'd made towards her and smirking in response, "She's been sick so I told her to stay on the couch, but then I budged when Jamie asked if he could take her upstairs to see his rabbit and you know Sam; you give her an inch and she'll take the whole freaking mile. Jamie's probably wearing her down somewhere around here."

She swiveled her head back and forth along the axis of her neck, looking around the length of the backyard for any signs of Sam or Jamie so that I couldn't help but notice the fact that she had a strange look in her eyes that not even her half empty bottle of Pinot could account for.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I lowered my voice half a notch so as to not raise anybody's suspicions that something was in fact wrong, subsequently placing Brooke in the center of a very awkward situation… Not there was any situation to be had or anything, I just knew Brooke Davis, better than I knew myself it seemed, and I knew that look; she was worried about something.

She shook her head, desperately trying to contort her face into the best nonchalant look that she could muster now that she was on the spot, but I wasn't buying it one bit.

"Sam's just been sick for the past couple of days, that's all. I think it's starting to mess with my head." I could have laughed at her comment if it wouldn't be so rude of me to do so. The thing was, I just knew exactly where she was coming from in her fears; every new mother experiences it, that unnerving, yet totally irrational fear that a mere cold will somehow magically transform into a life threatening disease…

"It's okay, last week Sawyer had a cough and I thought I was going to have a panic attack." I tried to make her feel better with a bought of personal experience, but all the same, I chose to conveniently leave out the part where I spent hours on the internet reading up on all of the horror stories until I was convinced that Sawyer had come down with Tay Sachs or epilepsy or something. "Her doctor just told me that she had a cold."

That story still embarrassed me, and I had a feeling that it probably would, right to the grave.

"It's new-mom syndrome B. Davis, don't worry about it." With a sigh, I watched her as she rubbed her hands along the length of her face.

"New mom syndrome," She spoke exasperated, as if this revelation was the most frustrating thing she had ever heard, "We've been living together for almost a year now… I mean, if you don't count the summer she spent with… you know. When the hell does this feeling go away?" She emitted a very forced, very fake laugh at the end of her speech, probably just to ease her own mind, but I wasn't buying it.

"I'll let you know the answer to that question when I figure it out." I smirked, reaching up to rub her tense shoulders, trying to get her to loosen up by massaging the knots out of her muscles, "Don't worry about it Brooke. You know kids, they bounce back fast."

"I guess…" She still didn't look quite convinced, but at the same time, she didn't look like she really wanted to talk about it anymore either, and just as I was struggling to come up with a topic that I could change the subject onto, my husband came up in between us and spared me the need.

You know Lucas, he's always saving me.

"Hey Brooke," He made up for their quick, incomplete greeting from before, enveloping her into a firm but gentle hug so that our child was squeezed up between the two of them.

"How are you doing Luke?" She asked, and I couldn't help but notice the fact that she was leaning into his body for just a smidgeon longer than what was probably necessary, clinging to any and every thread of support she could.

"I'm alright," He responded as Brooke passed Sawyer back into his arms where she let out an adorable little yawn before snuggling up into the familiarity of his toned limbs.

"How's fatherhood treating you?" She asked, looking down admiringly at father and daughter.

"It's amazing," He beamed, "How's motherhood?" I watched Brooke carefully for a response, noticing as she staggered slightly, only a half a beat, but a half a beat that I have course notice, even if Lucas did remain blissfully oblivious.

"It's great." The smile that accompanied her words wasn't exactly fake but at the same time, I wouldn't call it completely genuine either. If anything, the best word that I could think to describe it would be tired.

"Sam, come on!" The noise made all three of our heads turn, instantly distracted, eyes darting for the source so that it didn't remain that much of a mystery for very long.

Two seconds following his initial shout, Jamie came bounding playfully through our small little huddle, racing like a jack rabbit with a basketball glued in between his hands.

Behind him, Sam dragged her feet steadily along, looking like a ninety year old woman trying to keep up to her tireless grandson. Wow, Brooke wasn't kidding around when she said that Sam was sick, she meant it. The kid really did look like shit.

"Yeah, yeah I'm coming Jamie!" She called after the boy but her words didn't represent her actions as Jamie, much too quick for her, took advantage of his lack of a defense as he ran up to his miniature, Fischer Price basketball hoop and dunked the ball straight down into the net.

Scanning between the two kids, I watched as my husband's eyes narrowed into a look that told me that he planned on interfering with the fun before Jamie positively killed poor Sam.

"Hey Jimmy Jam, how about you give Sam a little bit of a break over here and try and beat me, huh?" Lucas acted on his intentions, passing Sawyer back over into Brooke's arms before he sauntered with a fake cockiness over towards the basketball hoop, which he was taller than by at least a foot, by the way, easily grabbing the ball straight out of Jamie's little hands, dunking it aggressively through the hoop just to bust the kid's chops.

"Hey Uncle Lucas, that's not fair!" He quickly abandoned the game that he had previously been playing with Sam and moved on without a second glance, always eager for an opportunity to spend a little quality one on one time playing basketball with his Uncle Lucas.

"Hey Sam, come over here!" I called for the girl, indicating her to come over towards Brooke and I, watching as she obliged obediently, meandering on over towards the two of us.

"How're you doing kid?" I asked, trying to be as cool and casual as possible so that she wouldn't get too suspicious of me behind suspicious of her.

That seemed fair, right?

"I'm fine." Of course, that would have been much more believable if she hadn't said it alongside the hint of a sniffle.

"Hey, why don't you come catch up with me? It's been a while since the two of us had a heart to heart." I watched as Sam raised her eyebrow skeptically up towards my intentions, but I didn't take offence.

"Alright," She mumbled after only a moment's hesitation.

"Come on, let's go inside, I promised Haley that I would toss the salad." Okay, so in reality, I had actually made Haley no such promise, but really, I just wanted to spend a little time alone with the kid that I could easily call my niece at this point, just to catch up, so I pushed her by the shoulder, easily leading her inside of the house.

"I've got her, alright?" I swiveled my head around and practically mouthed my words towards Brooke in my effort for Sam not to hear me, watching as she nodded through her reluctance and stood her ground while Sam followed me straight into the kitchen.

She walked swiftly through the double doors, heading straight for the refrigerator so that my best guess told me that she was looking for the fictional salad that she'd been hearing so much about.

"Sam, sit, relax." I waved her back over to the counter, watching as she straightened herself up from the vegetable drawer at the bottom of Haley's fridge and paused in her confusion before merely shrugging her shoulders and dropping herself down into one of the adjacent counter seats.

"So, how's life at Brooke's going?" I cut straight to the point and used the easiest opening that I could think of simply to break the tenseness lingering in our silence.

"Um…" I could tell by the look on her face that she knew that I was up to something, but she fielded my question politely anyway merely because politeness was something that Brooke taught her to always do, "Things are fine."

"Are you sure?" This time when our eyes met, I saw that her face was contorted with a look of genuine confusion, not just the uncomfortable type that I'd seen displayed there only seconds ago.

"Yeah… why?"

"I don't know, you're just looking a little bit… well, off lately, that's all."

"Did Brooke put you up to this?" She raised her eyebrow and I sighed deeply. I was afraid that she would think this way about a decision that was all my own; the idea that this was merely a cleverly arranged ruse developed by Brooke to have me act like a spy towards the kid.

"Hey, I can worry about you too you know." She considered this statement as an actual truth for a moment, but pushed past the obvious to instead answer my original question.

"I've just had this cold for the past few days, that's all." She confirmed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as to reinforce the idea that she'd just told me as the truth.

"I guess that I just haven't really gotten the chance to talk to you since you moved back from… you know, living with Rebecca. I feel kind of bad that I've been all M.I.A. these past two months." I dished out my form of an apology, watching as Sam slowly allowed the words to sink through her blood stream where she held onto them for an extra moment or two before simply shrugging them off all together.

"It just didn't work out between us, I guess. She wasn't…" She paused, thinking carefully about the words she would use next. "I guess that she just wasn't the person that I thought she was. Or at least, she wasn't the person that Brooke could be."

She finished her statement, following it up with a sudden interest in her hands, watching them to avoid making eye contact with me as she analyzed the complex puzzle of her interwoven fingers… Of course, through the shadows, I could see the hint of a smile in her features, one that I couldn't help but return in response.

Of course, I knew exactly what she meant. Brooke Davis was the ultimate charmer.

"So you're happy at least? With Brooke, I mean."

"Yeah," I nodded my head firmly because in the long run, that idea was all that truly mattered to me.

"Well that's good," I told her, clapping my hands together for affect because now that all of the necessary, formal parent patrolling was out of the way, I thought that it was about time that we put all seriousness aside, "Because I know how much of a hard ass that Brooke can be. It's honestly like living in Communist Russia sometimes, trust me, I've been there."

"Seriously, how did you put up with her for like… your whole life?" She offered me the comment out of appreciation for my sense of humor, almost as glad as I was to have the mood lightened again.

"Hey, did she ever tell you that while we were in high school, she commandeered my house and we had to share a bedroom… No, we had to share a bed even. And I know that you didn't know Brooke back when she was in high school, but oh man I'll tell you, she was a doozy."

"Yeah," She laughed at my comment, "Yeah I saw all the yearbooks." She spoke quickly, her sentence tapering off into more of a choke than anything as the expression on my face immediately slid downwards into much more of a concerned mother look than I'm sure Sam would have liked.

"It's not that big of a deal." Sam waved me off completely, instantly noticing the look on my face which I guess was more obvious than even I had anticipated, "I told you, I've had this stupid cold that just won't go away."

"Yeah well, you're losing your voice too." I had refrained from pointing out the obvious to her beforehand because I hadn't called her back here to ramble on about the state of her health, I'm sure Brooke was pestering her with that topic enough, but now that it was out in the open, staring me directly in the eyes, I couldn't help myself.

"You know, laryngitis is going around all of the schools. I just got a letter in the mail from Sawyer's daycare; you should probably go see a doctor."

"Been there, done that. The stupid quack was totally worthless." I could have laughed at the state of her comment, but there was something in the tone of her voice that gave it more of a serious undertone that I picked up on instantly.

"You know Sam, you're way too young to be this pessimistic… But then again, I guess I was too when I was your age."

"I'm not pessimistic, I'm just… realistic." This girl was way too wise for her years, let me tell you, but then again, I had always said the exact same thing about Brooke…

"You're just like her."

"Who?" I'd spoken my thoughts aloud without even realizing it.

"Brooke," I completed my initial statement, watching as she tried to conceal the satisfied grin displaying itself with a subconscious prominence all across her face because I knew that even if she was embarrassed to show it in public, that was really all she ever wanted to hear all along.

I think that before met Sam, I mean, before I truly met her, if you asked me who she was most like, I would have told you that I, without a doubt, had much more in common with Sam than Brooke did.

But then I actually got to know her, and as I did, it got harder and harder for me to believe that I wasn't in fact watching a sixteen year old Brooke Davis right in front of me.

I could care less about the details, about whom they were or the extenuating circumstances that followed them, Brooke and Sam were family, and shit, they were one of the closest families that I'd ever seen, and these days, that was hard to come by.

As it turned out, Sam had absolutely no idea how to appropriately respond to that sort of compliment, which was inconvenient because I had absolutely no idea how to follow up on it, so I taxied down the runway while I was still on a roll over here, and simply chose to change the subject.

"Hey listen, you should take care of yourself too you know, we don't want you getting any worse than you already are. Are you hungry? You should eat, which is perfect considering I heard this rumor that Haley just made a batch of her famous chicken soup."

I kept talking without pause because I didn't want to give her any sort of an opportunity to deny herself of the much needed nourishment. So yeah, she made a face at me, and yes, I ignored it as I continued to rummage around the kitchen looking for something, anything really that I could find to get some meat on that girl's bones and stop her from rivaling even the likes of my scrawny ass.

Of course, the only thing that I actually managed to find was an old can of Cambell's chicken and stars; not quite Haley's homemade soup, but still fine for my intents and purposes.

I attempted desperately to cook this simplest of meals without messing it up, a dangerous task for anybody who's ever watched me cook before, but honestly, I wasn't really expecting her to eat that much of it anyway.

But it was worth a try, right?

I guess that I was just grateful for that bit of extra time that I had to dig Sam for the latest dirt on Brooke.

"Hey P. Scott, what the hell are you doing to my kid?" Brooke asked a couple of minutes later, strolling into the kitchen at just the wrong moment considering Sam was just about to lay down all of the dirty details of Brooke and Julian's latest date…

"You know, not much, just feeding her B. Davis, something that you're obviously not doing." I turned away from Sam in an effort to face Brooke, while meanwhile Sam simply kept her face down in her bowl, picking continuously out of her soup.

Of course, contraire to what I'd just told Brooke, Sam hadn't exactly been eating per se. In fact, a more accurate description would be more like swirling her food around in circles with her spoon…

"Damn, you blew it. I was punishing her for being rotten."

"Where've you been, Brooke? With me kid, might I add."

"I've been hanging out outside with all of the cool kids while you losers were stuck shacked up inside. Don't worry though, Luke has Sawyer, the two of us were just catching up… you know, kind of like what you're doing with Sam over here."

"I'm thinking about moving in with Peyton actually, Brooke," Sam threw in her two cents, making her contribution to my little game of trying to see how long we could actually mess with Brooke, "She actually cooks for me."

She contorted her face downwards, displaying the very best Tiny Tim lookalike face that she could muster, complete with the features of looking all poor, crippled, and hungry.

I was so proud.

"Yeah well have fun with that. Oh, and by the way, I hear that Peyton has a crabs infestation in her house, at least I'm clean. Hey, how are you feeling by the way?" Brooke sealed the mood breaker with a comment towards the stage of Sam's health, and I couldn't say that I wasn't surprised when Sam merely shrugged her shoulders and actually replied honestly to Brooke's question.

"I've got a bit of a headache, actually."

"Do you want to lie down?" Once again, she responded with a meager shrug. You would think that after spending so much time with me, Brooke, and all of our loudmouthed tendencies, the girl would be better at speaking her mind.

"I was thinking that maybe… Do you think you can just take me home actually?" Well, I guess that you can add master deceiver onto Sam's growing list of talents, because if she was feeling sick enough to actually ask Brooke to take her home, well I didn't notice.

"Yeah of course, let me just say goodbye to everybody, why don't you go ahead and wait in the car okay?" Sam nodded curtly, maybe because that was the steepest of motions that her reported headache could actually muster, or maybe because she was embarrassed by the entire situation… who knew.

"Thanks for hanging out with me today, Peyton."

"No problem kiddo, do me a favor though and feel better quick, alright?"

"Alright, and tell Haley I said thanks for the invite." She nodded, turning slowly in the barstool that she was sitting in before dismounting it, heading instantly over towards the front door.

I watched as Brooke's eyes followed the path by which Sam had just taken even long after she disappeared completely from view and until she heard the front door open and close with a satisfying click.

"Hey, are you okay Brooke?" I understood that she was concerned and all, but the problem was that when my best friend was concerned, well then naturally, so was I.

"Yeah, I'm just worried I guess. Stupid mom stuff, you know?"

"Yeah I know. Hey, go take care of Sam, maybe we can do lunch or something tomorrow. You can take a load off and we'll catch up on some of that stupid mom stuff." Without another word, she pulled me into a firm goodbye hug, lingering so that I could feel her head nodding gently against my shoulder.

"That sounds great."

"It's a date then?"

"Yeah, it's a date." She pulled away from me. "I'm just gonna go say goodbye to Haley and Nathan real quick, I'll see you later Peyton."

"Yeah," I mumbled, watching her carefully as she turned her back away from me and slid smoothly out of the sliding glass doors towards the backyard. "I'll see you later Brooke."


	4. And Those Days Too

Chapter 4: …And Those Days Too

**Sunday, October 30****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

"Hey Sam," I rapped gently on her closed bedroom door, waiting briefly for a response that never came before I reached down and grabbed at the handle, pushing the door open slowly in an effort to avoid the squeak of the hinges that all of the doors in my house had a tendency to make.

Yeah sure, I knew that today was a Sunday, and yes, I usually was nice enough to allow Sam to sleep in on the weekends, but today was a little bit different.

You see, it had been ten o'clock last night that I had finally noticed the fact that in the brief amount of hours since our arrival back home from Haley's, Sam had taken a pretty sudden turn for the worse in her already abysmal state of health.

Following our return from Haley and Nathan's house, she'd gone straight into her bedroom, shutting herself in tightly so that I'd barely seen her for the remainder of the day.

It was at about five o'clock that I'd gone in to check on her, only to find her fast asleep, morphed into her blankets so that she was tangled like a spider web.

I'd spent the majority of the remainder of my evening checking periodically in on her at even intervals, achieving very similar results each time until she'd finally submerged from the depths beyond her inner sanctum, just as I was comfortably laying myself out on my couch with a couple of my sketches in front of me as I sipped generously from my fourth glass of Chardonnay, cursing my tolerance alongside the microscopic alcohol content that was doing absolute shit for me right now.

She looked much worse for the wear, even more so than I had noticed earlier in the day, but instead of stopping to let me know how she was feeling, as I would have preferred, she instead walked straight past me, without so much as an acknowledgment let alone a word, rushing into the bathroom faster than I had ever seen the girl move in her entire life.

I'd moved so quickly to follow her, I spilled half of my glass of wine all down my front, the red stain flowering like blood across my chest as I rushed into the bathroom, arriving just in time to see her drop down onto her hands and knees, where she barely so much as made contact with the floor before she was projectile vomiting into the toilet.

She'd insisted that she was fine as much as she could between bouts of vomiting, but anybody with two eyes and half of a working brain could see that it wasn't anywhere even close to the truth.

But of course, being the push over that I was, I stupidly listened to her.

I spent the majority of the night before; straight into this very moment right now laying awake designated the blame for this new development in her illness on myself.

I shouldn't have taken Sam to Haley's house yesterday.

I shouldn't have ever let that stupid doctor tell me that she was fine.

And I sure as hell shouldn't have ever backed down in my responsibilities as a parent, in my responsibilities to protect Sam, even if the danger was directly inside of her.

"Sam…" I called out to her, approaching the sleeping girl with caution.

She didn't respond, but then again, she had been so deeply protected underneath that mound of blankets surrounding her that I was pretty sure that my voice, and by default, my very presence was being blocked out through the layer of polyester.

"Sam honey, can you wake up for me?" I spoke gently, reaching out a soft hand so that I could take a hold of her shoulder and shake it as tenderly as I possibly could with it still being effective. And this time, she responded; a slight groan and a shuffle before her eyes, sticky with sleep, slowly slid open.

"Hey Sam, how are you feeling?"

She rubbed softly at her eyes, opening her mouth in response to my question only to emit a noise that escaped in a series of low pitched gibberish, her capacity of speech now so totally obliterated that her words sounded like the mere echo of a frequency that my ears were not even capable of registering.

She paused briefly, taking a deep breath in order to fuel a heavy cough, screwing her face up in frustration as her second attempt at speech failed just as miserably as the first.

"Hey, don't try to talk okay? Your voice is shot, you've gotta rest it up. How about I make you some tea or something, we'll try to get it cleared up?"

She nodded her head, struggling to get to her elbows in an effort to prop herself upright.

"Thanks," She managed at least that but still, her word sounded more like that spoken by a dying frog than an actual human being.

"Okay, I'll be right back. Hang in there for a few more minutes, alright?" She responded with yet another nod as I turned on my heels and power walked as quickly as I possibly could out of Sam's room, determined to satisfy her needs in as quick of a manner as I possibly could, feeling very lucky that I had at the very least, just made myself a cup of tea mere minutes ago so that there was a pot of already hot water still resting on the stove.

I poured the scalding water into a mug so quickly that I actually over filled it, spilling some of the contents out of the side and subsequently burning my hand in the process but I was so entranced in my efforts to move quicker that my endorphins over powered the second degree burns I'd just received.

I hadn't even felt it.

"Here you go," Walking back into her bedroom, I extended my gift of tea out towards her in an offer that she accepted gratefully, sipping with an automatic caution that I wished I had registered with myself a couple of seconds ago…

"Thanks," She grunted harshly, pushing the blankets off of her body as she swung her legs over around the side of the bed in her attempt to regain some control of her footing.

"Hey, no, stay put okay?" I stopped her in her tracks, watching as she sighed and gave me a look that I ignored in my refusal to budge. "I'm not joking, stay in that bed."

My eyes narrowed in on her, my mere look acting as enough of a force to ensure that Sam knew that I meant business and wasn't going anywhere. But quickly, very quickly actually, I felt my expression slide from one of sternness to one of utmost concern as I found myself truly looking down at Sam and, for the first time, noticing the literal beads of sweat glistening along her forehead, making their way steadily down the side of her face.

I didn't say anything, instead, I acted on instinct, jutting my palm outwards, practically slapping it against Sam's forehead.

In a natural response, she pulled away from my touch out of the habit of reaction, but for what it was worth, that might have been for the better because the heat that was radiating off of her skin was more than enough to physically burn my already burnt hand even more than it already was.

"Sam, you're burning up." My voice expressed my concern, emitting as almost frantic really as she looked away from me, apparently ashamed for some reason or another towards the fact that she was sick, that she needed me to take care of her.

"Stay right here, I wanna get your temperature real quick." It was the second time in a manner of minutes that I'd raced from Sam's room, but this time, my destination wasn't the kitchen but the bathroom. You see, right before I had gotten Angie, in my paranoid, pre-parenthood state, I had gone down to CVS and stocked myself up, practically buying a miniature doctor's office in my expedition, one in which included a cheap little plastic thermometer.

Damn good thing too, I guess.

I finally found the thing after only a couple seconds of frantic searching that resulted in all of the contents of my cabinet being spilled out onto the counter below where it rested on the top shelf, all the way in the back corner, unused, and in fact still covered with the ridiculous amount of plastic wrap that they for some reason insisted on covering these things with, making it nearly impossible to respond rapidly in the event of an emergency, which for me, was right now.

Eventually, I'd simply resorted to using my teeth to open the damn thing up, multi-tasking as I darted down the length of the hallway, rounding so quickly back into Sam's room that I'd almost run head-long right into the wall.

"Okay Sam, open up. And please, just work with me here on this." I added that last bit because I knew Sam, so I knew that she was going to want to fight me tooth and nail on this one.

But either I had been wrong in my assumptions, or my plan to enforce the rules early on worked better than I had initially expected it to, because she opened her mouth for me more than willingly, without so much as a sound, let alone a witty retort.

We remained silent for the entirety of the length of time that it took for the thermometer to beep back at us, and the time felt like it took hours when in reality, it couldn't have been any longer than a minute or two until the beep rang so loudly across the otherwise silent room that it caused the two of us to jump in our surprise, jolted by the suddenness of the noise.

I grabbed the thing out of Sam's mouth so rapidly in my frantic effort to see the results that I was surprised that I didn't choke the poor girl, who was already sick enough as it was without my contribution.

Looking down, I stared at the small digital display at the blunt end of the plastic device, staring carefully, then squinting to adjust my eye sight, which couldn't be right given what I was seeing right in front of me and staring a little bit harder, completely convinced that the numbers being displayed before me were some sort of error or something.

"What's the damage?" Sam croaked feebly when I didn't deliver the news immediately.

"Sam, you have a fever of 103°…" My mind began to race, my numerous thoughts jumbling together inside of my brain as panic slowly began to settle in so that I couldn't comprehend a single tangible contribution that I could make to this situation, which, as it seemed, was much more serious than I had initially anticipated.

Shit, shit, shit! What the hell was I supposed to do now? Sam was sick. Sam was really sick. Hell, she could be dying right now and I wouldn't even know it. Shit!

My head was spinning so quickly I was starting to get nauseous, but that wasn't going to get me anywhere, I knew that that wouldn't get me anywhere… Okay Brooke, relax, take a deep breath, and think here. Sam needs you to think right now, not to make her more nervous than she probably already is.

"Come on Sam, let's go. I have to get you to the ER." Ultimately, that was the decision that I had come up with. I mean, that made sense, right? Was a fever of 103° high enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room, or would I get there only to have all of the doctors laugh in my face and tell me to stop being so paranoid before they turned back towards their real patients having heart attacks or nursing severed arms or whatever the hell else rolled through the ER of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital.

Either way though, I think that that was a risk that I was willing to take.

I quickly began grabbing random articles that I thought Sam to need for our trip up off of her floor, stuffing them ungracefully into her backpack, only pausing long enough to see her looking up at me, shaking her head vigorously as to make her take on the situation heard.

"No," She gathered all of her energy to release that simple and small of a word, trying to use her struggles to emphasize towards me just how much she wanted absolutely nothing to do with any sort of hospital. But this was different; this was Sam's life at stake here. I wasn't just going to give in and ignore the situation.

"Sam this is not normal!" I shouted, rather ungracefully, "You need help."

"What about… what about that doctor; you know, the one from Friday." She spoke slowly, hissing with the pain emitted from her swollen, vibrating vocal chords currently limiting her ability to produce much more noise than the speech she'd just delivered.

"Okay," I paused for a minute, registering the fact that Sam's advice was probably the most logical thing to do right now.

Good to know that my sixteen year old can think better under pressure than I can.

I darted back out of Sam's room, and just in case you lost count that would be the third time I'd done so in such a hectic matter this morning.

But you know what they say; third time's a charm, right?

I skimmed quickly across the guide magnetized to the refrigerator that listed the variety of useful phone numbers in search for the only one that truly mattered at the moment, finding it quickly before lunging in a single bound, clear across the kitchen towards the house phone resting quietly on its dock.

My hands were shaking as I cradled the device between my palms, so bad in fact, that I miss-dialed the telephone number twice before I'd finally managed to get it right.

It rang once… twice… and then finally, on the seventh ring, I was greeted by an automated voice messaging system.

"Hi, you have reached New Brunswick County Pediatrics, Dr. Copley's office. Our office hours are Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We are no longer open for Sunday hours. For emergencies, please contact the nearest…"

I slammed the phone down, probably a little bit more violently than what was actually necessary, and it was only after I'd done so that I realized that I hadn't even listened to what they had to say about what to do in case of emergencies.

Would this be considered an emergency? Probably, right?

I stood within the emptiness of the kitchen for several more minutes, still and silent, desperately trying to regain my bearings, desperately trying to just think up a logical, productive solution to this problem.

God, please can somebody just come down here and tell me what to do for once? I was starting to get desperate.

Finally, I'd managed to solidify the idea that there was no way around me taking Sam to the emergency room anymore, and with that idea firmly in mind, I sprang into action, grabbing my bag, shoving anything and everything I thought to be necessary for spending a day in the ER.

"Sam, your doctor didn't answer the phone, come on we have to go!"

I rounded back into Sam's room, ready to physically carry the girl out to the car if that was what I had to do, but I was halted in surprise, shocked not exactly being the right word to describe the feeling I'd gotten when I found Sam standing up, albeit hanging onto her dresser for dear life, but never-the-less, standing.

"Sam, what the hell are you doing? Come over here, sit back down."

"Brooke, relax. I have a fever, I'm not dying." I wasn't so sure that what she was saying was exactly true, but apparently, Sam was. "You're the one who needs to sit down. The doctor's office will be open tomorrow, I can wait until then."

Our eyes locked, mine narrowing in my most desperate of efforts to positively read my mind; an effort I must say, I failed in despite my absolute best attempt.

I continued to stare at her in our silence for a long time, wracking my brain for answers, only pulling back up to the surface of my inner-most consciousness when my house phone began to ring; my ears perked up instantly.

"Maybe that's the doctor calling back." I'm not sure what exactly it was that made me think that; maybe it was desperation, maybe it was shear need, but whatever it was, I knew deep down that that wouldn't be the case.

Of course, that didn't stop me from racing out of the room and grabbing at the still-ringing phone like a starving man reaching out for food.

"Hello?"

"Hey, what's going on did you just run a marathon or something?" I recognized Peyton's voice instantly, sighing in my disappointment towards the idea that it wasn't anybody that would be qualified to provide Sam with prompt medical attention.

"Woah sorry, I didn't mean to disappoint you." Peyton responded to the sound, which apparently was loud enough to permeate through the phone lines although that wasn't exactly what I had been going for.

Great, now on top of being in a frenzied panic, now I also felt like an asshole.

"No, no I'm sorry Peyton; it's not that, it's just…" I drifted off… What was this exactly? I wasn't so sure now that I thought about it.

"It's just what? Brooke, are you alright?" She went from a tone of joking sarcasm to one of concern so quickly that I'd barely caught the transition. Thank God for Peyton, she always did have this uncanny ability to carry me on her shoulders in my time of need.

"It's nothing… I'm just worried about Sam, that's all."

"Ah, is she still sick?" She spoke with an all-knowing sense behind her voice although I couldn't help but think that she didn't even know the half of it.

"Yeah, you can say that."

"Hey listen, I was just wondering if you wanted to take a little break for an hour or two? I was thinking about taking you up on that offer for a lunch date?" I wanted to, really I did, but right now Sam was my number one priority, I wasn't about to consider leaving her for so much as a minute let alone an hour.

"I'd love to Peyton, really but… Sam just came down with a really high fever. I can't leave her alone right now."

"Hey, are you guys alright over there?" I heard the genuineness behind her inquiry, and I was glad; I was afraid that she'd be pissed for me ditching the lunch date that I had originally promised her.

"Yeah, yeah we'll be fine. I was just trying to make an appointment with her doctor's office but they were closed, so I was considering taking her over to Tree Hill Memorial real fast so…" I didn't even finish the sentence, in fact, I had no idea how to, so I just sort of let it fade away.

"Oh my God, Brooke hang on, I'm coming over."

"No, no Peyton it's fine," I stopped her quickly because I knew that she was probably already half way out the door as we spoke, "I'm just going to give her some Tylenol or something for now and see if it brings her fever down at all. If it does I think we'll be able to wait until tomorrow to take her to the doctor."

Call it peer pressure, or good debating ability on Sam's part, but somehow, in the time between leaving Sam's room and talking to Peyton, I had calmed down enough to convince myself that I was going to listen to Sam in not becoming that mom that raced her kid to the emergency room for a scraped knee.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm just gonna sit with her and make sure she's alright."

"Okay…" She sounded just about as unsure as I felt, "Well if you need anything, or if anything changes you can call me any time, okay?"

"I will," I'd agreed mainly to humor her. In all honesty, I had no intentions on actually calling her, or anybody else for anything. I mean, I knew that I was being stubborn here, but I needed to prove to both myself, and everybody else that I was competent enough to take care of my own child.

"Okay Brooke, I hope that everything turns out okay."

"Thanks Peyton, me too, I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Alright, bye," I hung up the phone upon her motion of ending the conversation, eager to get back to Sam, but she seemed to be doing just fine, because by the time I returned to her room, she was already back in her bed and under the covers so that for a split second, I thought that she had fallen back asleep again.

"Are you okay Sam?" I asked, killing two birds with one stone with my question, trying to find out whether or not Sam was still awake, and to see how she was holding up.

I got a little bit of a mumble in response; a quick 'mhm' that I automatically took as a yes.

"Do you think you'll be able to hold out until tomorrow when the doctor's office reopens?" Again, all I received in response was a muffled grunt that I once again, assumed to be an affirmative.

"Are you hungry or anything?" I think I knew the answer before I'd even been stupid enough to ask the question… I guess I just needed some sort of noise to fill the empty air for the sake of comforting myself.

"Do you need anything?" For a moment, she didn't answer, instead, she shifted slightly under the covers so that she could look up at me, breathing deeply in and out, wheezing as the air attempted to maneuver its way through her clogged air passages.

"Can you stay with me?" My breath caught up inside of my throat instantaneously. It was a strange feeling, a good one despite the fact that Sam was so sick in front of me… Here I was, standing amidst my sick, scared child and she wanted nothing more than somebody that she could trust to take care of her, somebody like me.

"Of course I can honey." She rolled gently over in her bed, creating a space just large enough for me to crawl into as I slipped onto the mattress next to her where I was allowed to slide the girl securely underneath my arms, holding onto her tightly as her breathing slowly softened into the rhythmic pace of a peaceful, unbreakable sleep.

I didn't know too many details about what Sam's life was like before she had come to Tree Hill to live with me. She didn't like to talk about her past, and I didn't want to pry.

I wasn't sure who was there for her before, who took care of her when she got sick, who held her, but now that I sat here and actually thought about it, well… well I guess nobody really did any of those things for her, not ever.

But now as I lay here with my sleeping daughter leaning comfortable in sleep into the warmth I was able to provide her with my mere arms, I realized this; it didn't matter anymore that Sam had had nobody there to protect her before, because she had me now, and now that I was here, well I wasn't going anywhere.

And I was determined to protect her, to save her from whatever it was that I could not see, that was slowly trying to eat her alive from the inside out.


	5. Through Still and Storm Part 1

Chapter 5: Through Still and Storm (Part I)

**Monday, October 31****st****, 2011**

**JULIAN**

So do you know about the notion about how every once in a while, a guy will finally bust out and pull up with all of the right stops; he'll display all of his best moves, he'll perform like the perfect gentlemen that he always knew was buried somewhere deep down inside, and he'll fly home to North Carolina all the way from Los Angeles in order to surprise his girlfriend and rack up a couple of big bonus points that he so desperately needed?

Now, I know that if anybody knew anything about the old Julian Baker, they wouldn't believe me when I said that here I was, actively trying to be _that_ guy, a positively fool proof plan brewing in the inner depths of my mind as we spoke.

Here's how it was going to go down.

I've spent the past couple of weeks now working on this movie; a really great one, don't get me wrong, I mean, the thing was destined to be a hit straight from the get-go, the problem was that it was based out of L.A.

Now, I'm not sure how many of you know your geography, but for those who don't, the distance between Los Angeles, California and tree Hill, North Carolina is just a little bit further than what would be considered convenient for me.

2,588 miles further if you wanted to get specific.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted over here. The point is this; I have been stuck in L.A. ever since last Monday, working tirelessly on this movie with barely any time on my hands to sneak away and talk to Brooke on the phone, let alone find an opportunity to place a visit.

The last time I had talked to her, a few days ago now, I couldn't help but notice the disappointment behind her voice when she heard that it would be at least another week or two before I could even think about coming home, let alone commit to the journey.

And that is exactly where my big surprise came in.

Yes my friends, here I am, right here in the middle of Tree Hill, standing directly on top of Brooke's front door step, freezing my ass off, still getting used to the fact that it wasn't 90° over here like it was in L.A., with two coffees clutched tightly in either hand, waiting to deliver my surprise to my girl.

Of course, it didn't take me very long to run into my first problem… I mean, why should everything run smoothly right? That would have just been too easy.

Said problem occurred immediately, after Brooke decided to take her sweet ass time responding to my beckoning doorbell…

Crap, what if she wasn't home? I hadn't considered that as being an option before.

Ringing the bell again, I found myself bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet, suddenly very, very nervous.

Come on Brooke.

It took a couple of minutes, but eventually, Brooke did come to answer the door; unfortunately, that was where problem number two of my elaborate plan came into play.

The thing was, it would be an understatement to say that Brooke looked less than excited to see me here… The expression on her face, well… let's just say that it wasn't exactly the one that I had been expecting of her.

"Hi!" I greeted her with an awkward enthusiasm because now that things weren't running as smoothly as I had previously expected them to, I was distracted with trying to come up with a backup plan on the spot.

Smooth Julian, real smooth.

Suddenly, I found myself very concerned about my hands, which consequently, I had absolutely no idea what to do with. I was so nervous that I had done something wrong here, so nervous that I looked like an absolute dumbass clutching two coffees tightly against my chest that I just jutted them out in front of me.

How's that for an on the spot back up plan; a peace offering in the form of fresh caffeine.

"Um… I got one for Sam too." That was a given of course, it didn't take me very long to learn that it was best to include Sam in each and every one of Brooke's plans these days because let's face it, where Brooke went, well Sam just went right along with her, and I didn't even care that the girl was probably in school right now, rendering my coffee purchase worthless, if Brooke didn't feel like you were adequately satisfying Sam's needs alongside her own, well then you just weren't going to last very long at all.

And now ladies and gentlemen, if you would turn to your right I would like to show you Exhibit A: Owen Morello.

Okay, so all joking aside, I'm not going to lie to you and say that I wasn't immediately taken aback when Brooke didn't immediately throw her arms around my neck, kiss me for an hour straight right here on the porch, only coming up for air to power the profession of her love to me… Well, you get the picture.

At the very least, I was hoping for even a little bit of enthusiasm.

"You can have it," Brooke waved me off with a tired groan, indicating vaguely towards the coffee that I had gotten for Sam, "She isn't feeling too well."

The wheels in my head began churning instantly as my less than generous greeting slowly began making more and more sense around me as I put two and two together.

Brooke looked tired; Brooke looked worried, Sam was sick…

"You know, I heard on the news on the plane ride over here that the flu was starting to go around. You know, it's that time of the year again." I tried my best to sound assuring, but to be honest, I pulled that fact out of my ass, I'd actually seen no such report.

Never-the-less, she nodded in response, indicating her believing in my before scooching sideways in a silent invitation for me to follow her into the house where she lead us straight into the kitchen, allowing me to place the coffee down on top of the counter, untouched by either intended drinker.

"I don't know… I'm sorry I'm acting all weird; I haven't been getting much sleep lately. I think I'm just being over-concerned."

"No, you're being a good mom." BAM! I knew that I would still be able to sneak in a couple of those bonus points today; an idea that was made instantly obvious when Brooke leaned into me gratefully, pressing the entirety of her body weight into my chest before wrapping me up into that extended, passionate kiss that I had so desperately wanted this entire time.

"Thank you Julian. And for the record, I'm glad you're home."

I didn't say anything back to her in response, instead, made my feelings known by pulling her closer into me so that her head rested within that crevice of my shoulder in a near perfect fit.

I guess a lot of things had changed since I'd been gone, which now was starting to feel more and more as if it had been months ago despite the reality, which has barely been a week.

"Hey, she'll be alright." I whispered to her in my assurance, rubbing soft circles across her back rhythmically to emphasize my word of confidence.

I could have stayed that way for hours, really I could have, but apparently Brooke had other plans considering she pulled back after only a few brief minutes, looking up at me with eyes that were slightly glossy although they produced no tears.

If anything, her face told me that she needed to hear those same words over again.

"She'll be fine Brooke. Did you get her to a doctor yet?" She stepped backwards and completely out of my arms, looking for an opportunity to regain her composure as she straightened herself out again.

She breathed in her preparation to extinguish an answer, reaching over towards the counter where she grabbed onto one of the styrofoam coffee cups, pounding the contents down in one large gulp in her efforts to refuel.

Impressive, if I did say so myself.

"Um… yeah, I called them this morning. I tried to take her over there yesterday but they weren't open so I just decided to give her some Tylenol and her fever went down a little so…" She shot up suddenly, looking very flustered as if her incessant ramblings had just jolted something deep within her memory that she had previously forgotten about.

"Crap, I should probably wake her up. I made a 12:30 appointment."

Ah, apparently it had.

Stepping back in an effort to get out of Brooke's way as she pummeled past me through that sacred door at my back, I twisted in an impressive dance move, watching as Brooke knocked twice cautiously for reasons of mere formality, before calling out into the wooden door panel.

"Sam?" She inquired and, as expected, received no response.

"I'll be right back." She whispered up towards me, opening the door gently, a mere crack just wide enough so that she could manage to slip her thin body inside, disappearing into the darkened room's inner depths, leaving me alone where I instantly found myself getting lost in whatever sick and twisted thoughts that I currently had embedded into the back of my mind of Sam lying withered and wasting away by the minute right where she lay.

I could only pray to God that my thoughts were wrong, but somewhere in the back of my mind, my subconscious was screaming at me that they weren't, that they were in fact, more accurate than what I ever possibly could have known.

* * *

**SAM**

Do you wanna know what I truly love? I mean, love more than anything else in the entire world, love; sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep is good, sleep is nice, sleep is… ugh, sleep is being disturbed.

No, but seriously though, I could feel it; somebody was trying to shake me out of my blissful realm of a painless dream state, the one that I was so desperately trying to succumb to, and as much as I just loved being lifted back into a world where I felt like constant shit all the time, really I would have much rather just stayed in bed.

I groaned loudly amidst my complete crossing of the barrier that separated my sleep state from being wide awake; indicated in full swing by the all too familiar rush of pain that originated deep down through my very bones; my body's protest towards me tearing it from the naturally induced morphine of REM sleep.

"Sam come on, you've gotta wake up?"

Was that Brooke? More importantly, was that Brooke acting all gentle and sympathetic towards waking me up on a school day?

My natural instincts screamed at me to roll away from this disturbance, to close my eyes, my mind away from this disturbance, and away from the blinding sunlight that seemed to have pierced straight through my eyelids and directly into my brain.

But slowly, my mind began to defog, my eyes began to lift from the heavy pressure of deep slumber, first focusing on Brooke, and then on my illuminating alarm clock behind her.

11:45.

Shit, I was so late for school. Shit! How the hell had this even happened?

I shot out of my bed so quickly, that Brooke was forced backwards in her shock, as was, unfortunately for me, my body, so disappointed with my sudden outburst that my head swam, igniting in a series of vibrations that travelled down the length of my spine straight into the pit of my stomach, forcing me right back down onto the bed where I'd started.

"Sam, what the hell are you doing?" My ears were still ringing, but I'd still managed to hear Brooke.

"School," I grumbled softly, my voice better, but still sounding as if I'd somehow managed to switch vocal chords with James Earl Jones or something.

I pushed myself back up to my feet, much slower this time of course, having learned my lesson the first time, immediately attempting to sift through the pile of laundry on my floor in an effort to find anything still clean.

"Sam I called you out of school today, you're still sick, I'm taking you back to the doctor."

Ugh, haven't we already been down this road before? Taking me to an incompetent doctor had been completely worthless the first time, and I was willing to bet that it would be completely worthless the next time.

Sorry Brooke, it looks like I'm going to have to put on my boxing gloves with this one.

"I'm fine," I tried desperately to sound as convincing as possible, but the mere sound of my strangled voice was proof enough that it was all a lie.

Fine, go and abandon your own maker by going off to join Team Brooke. See if I care.

"Sam you are far from fine so don't even bother fighting me on this one, alright? Now come on, let's go we're gonna be late."With a heavy sigh, I re-emerged from the depths of my bedroom floor, coming up with a clean t-shirt clutched between my hands.

"Fine," I mumbled with a sarcastic fury, turning away from her towards the corner of my room in an effort to both preserve my dignity as well as hide the dodgeball shaped bruise still lingering in full swing against my ribcage as I ripped my old t-shirt off of my body in preparation to change.

I could feel an involuntary shudder filter across the length of my body as the cold air collided violently with my sweat-beaded back. Behind me, I could practically feel Brooke burning a hole through the back of my head as I moved slowly in an effort to prevent myself from being overcome by the dizzy spell infiltrating the inner depths of my body.

Of course, it wasn't working.

Allowing my eyes to slide closed; I gripped my hands tightly against my wooden bureau and tried desperately to imagine that I wasn't here, that this wasn't real.

I instantly began taking slow, deep breaths; in through the nose, out through the mouth. But despite my best efforts, I could still feel my head pound even harder, my face flush a little bit hotter.

It was okay. I was fine. I was okay.

"Sam are you alright?" I'd almost forgotten that Brooke was even in the room with me, that's how focused I'd been on trying to bypass this particularly unpleasant spell.

Turning towards Brooke, I gave her a curt little nod, the only thing that I believed myself to be able to manage without positively collapsing on the spot.

I just needed to get out of here, I needed some air.

Brooke was strategically standing in the center of the doorway, it would be difficult, but I knew that all I had to do in order to obtain such freedom was to slip right past her.

Well, it was now or never I guess.

Taking my opportunity, I made my strategic attack, pushing my body forward towards Brooke, watching as she broadened her stance in an effort to stand her ground forcing me to quickly shift to the right in an effort to slide past her.

It was the sudden change of motion, the rapid twisting, the turning that threw off my equilibrium and initiated a deep explosion to rapidly diffuse inside of me.

My vision turned to no more than a solid sheet of white; the brightness seeping through the every crack and crevice of my skull, wrapping around my brain and squeezing so that I couldn't possibly begin to think up a solution to my current dilemma.

The ocean of my vision rippled, faded slightly as the rest of my senses shut themselves off completely.

I only vaguely felt my body drop to my knees as the sheathe of white began fading into duller and duller shades of gray until finally, all I saw was black.

* * *

**BROOKE**

"Oh my God; SAM!"

My involuntary expression of shock managed to escape my mouth before the girl in front of me so much as managed to hit the floor, that was how quickly my adrenaline-induced reflexes ignited, sparking my feet underneath me to dart towards her general direction.

I had been off the second I saw her so much as wobble.

I had reached her just in time to watch her eyes roll backwards until only the whites were showing right before she pitched forward in a dramatic plunge towards the floor.

I'd caught her just in time, my hands lunging securely under her armpits right as her knees came into contact with the hard wood, lowering her gently to the floor as her limp body dropped flaccidly forward, looking for something more stable than my weak arms to support her body weight.

Allowing myself to shuffle in my panic for only a brief handful of seconds, I forced my mind together and I gathered as much of a sense of composure as I could possibly manage, employing the only tactic that I could possibly think of that might be useful.

"JULIAN!" I shouted towards him as loudly as I possibly could, my voice shuddering in a ruthless reminder of the impossibility of me achieving any sort of calm with my daughter lying unconscious at my feet.

"JULIAN!" When he hadn't barged into the bedroom within one millisecond of my initial shout, I yelled again, and this time, I was certain he heard me because within seconds, he had barged through the door so violently that the doorknob actually managed to punch a hole through the thin drywall.

"What is it, what's…" He paused mid-sentence, freezing so suddenly upon his entrance into Sam's bedroom that I was afraid he had just entered a state of unconsciousness himself, a frightening prospect considering I was struggling to handle having one unconscious person on my floor, let alone two.

"What happened?" He finally managed, tears springing against the corners of my eyes as I shook my head desperately in my indication towards how little I actually knew.

"Julian, you have to call 911!" My voice emerged with a high-pitched shout, but instead of turning towards the phone, he instead rushed over towards Sam and I, squatting besides Sam's body, sliding his arms underneath her limp form and lifting her into the air.

"We don't have time to wait for an ambulance, come on I'm driving." I gave a weak moan of protest as he lifted Sam away from me, turning through the door and into the hallway.

Of course, I was hesitant but I understood his theory; Sam needed a hospital and she needed one fast, no matter how she got there in the process.

Submitting willingly to Julian's motions, I followed him in a full sprint straight out of my house without even bothering to close the front door behind me. In fact, the worry towards the possibility of absolutely anybody being able to walk right off of the streets and into my home to steal all of my worldly possessions never so much as even entered my mind.

I caught up to Julian quickly as he hustled up the front path, reaching him easily in his slowed movements thanks to the added effect of Sam's body weight weighing down his own. But still, I only took a staggered lead.

To my left, I briefly caught eye of my next door neighbors; their entire family hoarded out onto the front lawn taking pictures with their brand new, barely five month year old daughter dressed up like a sunflower for her first Halloween.

Wow, I'd actually forgotten that today was even Halloween at all; lately for me all of the days had just started blurring into one.

Very briefly, a rather funny thought entered my mind that literally almost made me laugh despite the circumstances. I just had this vision of these nice family pictures, a budding, brand new family just trying to capture their poor kid's first Halloween ruined by our presence in the background, rushing in a frenzy with an unconscious teenager in our arms.

I guess it would make for an interesting show and tell present for when that kid grew up…

I heard the guy shouting something towards me, but I forced myself to ignore it. I was having a difficult time distinguishing words anyway; after all, the only thing that I could manage to hear at the moment was my own heart pounding away traitorously between my ears, reminding me of each critical second that had already passed since Sam's collapse.

"Here Julian, give her to me!" I instructed, climbing into the back seat of my own car, opening my arms so that Julian was free to place Sam into them.

I placed her back against my chest, squeezing her limp form tightly against me, acting as her own personal seatbelt while trying to enact a sense of comfort, more for me than for Sam although I hoped Sam would still be able to sense my presence within her blissful unconscious.

Julian didn't hesitate, not even for a second, which I was thankful for as he jumped into the driver's seat, simultaneously turning the car on while slamming his foot against the gas pedal so that we peeled out of the driveway with the sound of tires squeaking against pavement and the smell of burning rubber infiltrating our senses.

In order to accurately describe the way that our trip to the hospital went, I would have to use a pretty large amount of different and mainly exploitative adjectives.

I wasn't going to feign my surprise towards the discovery that Julian actually had some pretty erratic driving habits hidden deep inside of him. But thanks to him obeying absolutely zero of the borough's ordinance traffic laws, and yielding to none of the pedestrians that we'd managed to cross paths with, Julian had turned a normally fifteen minute car ride into less than a five minute one, by some sort of Godly miracle managing not to kill anybody, including ourselves, or even so much as get pulled over before he screeched to a halt directly in front of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital in the same spot that was normally reserved for ambulances…

But considering the fact that I had just turned my SUV into a temporarily makeshift ambulance, I think that we deserved the spot just as much as any true ambulance did…

I lurched in my seat as Julian slammed onto his breaks so hard that I swear if I wasn't holding onto her so tightly, Sam would have flown right off my lap. In fact, I was holding onto her so tightly, that when Julian rushed out of his seat and flung open the back door in an effort to make the move to grab her, he struggled to peel her from my arms in my instinctual reluctance to let go.

But as hard as it may have been for me to do, I knew that I had to, and despite it taking a couple of extra seconds, I'd eventually released Sam to Julian, where he made an instant run towards the automatic double doors leading up to the emergency room, me following close behind although he was moving so quickly that it was difficult for me to keep up.

"Help!" My thoughts were obscured by Julian's desperate plea, released from his mouth the second that he was safely through those ER doors.

The words burned like ice through my veins, they made my situation must more true, much more real than what it had felt like mere minutes ago. It was difficult to follow the path of my brain lately; trying desperately to protest against everything that was happening despite the fact that I was seeing it with my very own eyes.

The crowded emergency department was stuffed like an overcrowded can of sardines, a melting pot of people, all of whom were sick and injured, but as selfish as it made me sound, I couldn't concern myself with them, not when _my_ daughter was clearly the most sick and injured of them all, giving her an automatic deserving to move straight ahead to the front of the line.

"Please, help!" I added my own voice of desperation because I was feeling worthless, as if I wasn't capable of contributing anything to the situation and I was sick of it. The only thing that could make me feel even remotely better at the moment was the knowledge that I at least tried to do something to help.

And luckily, my efforts had been worthwhile, because the second the words had faded from my tongue, the outline of a small group of people rushing towards us made relief rush towards me in a manner that made me weak at the knees.

"What happened?" We were asked by a young guy, late twenties oldest so that he couldn't have been very long out of medical school.

I hesitated briefly. Should I be trusting this clearly inexperienced man with one of the things most important to me?

But while I was busy struggling to sort this mild dilemma out inside of my mind, Julian and this man experienced a brief interaction, Julian passing Sam from out of his own arms into this stranger's so that he could lay her gently against the gurney that had been rushed towards us.

My eyes rooted themselves onto Julian's, watching as his face contorted into an absolute dumbstruck expression, his arms buoyed permanently upright in an effort to try and get used to the fact that there was no longer anything inside of them.

"I don't know." I finally managed to answer the initial question directed towards me, my feet automatically following as the small group of heavenly strangers immediately began rushing Sam into the back. "She's been sick for about a week now. I took her to the doctor but he just told us that she'd caught something viral. Then last night she came down with a really high fever, I was supposed to take her back to the doctor's office this afternoon, but then… I don't know, she got out of bed and was standing for a few minutes and then she… and then she just collapsed.

I ran my mouth like a machine, a nervous habit that I believe I have employed since birth.

Of course, the more I started talking, the less I believed that they were actually listening to a word I was saying as they rushed same into a private curtained off area, doctor's pouring in from every which direction, pushing us to the side as they began to do a million different things to Sam's chronically prone body all at once.

Wincing slightly, I watched them slide the needles underneath her skin, establishing a line that flooded her veins with a clear substance that could have been poison for all I knew in one arm, drawing blood instantly with the other.

Her head rolled limply, following the motions as the nurse at her head began pumping her with oxygen before slicing down the front, what had previously been one of her favorite t-shirts with a pair of what looked to me like gardening shears, leaving them free to stick pairs of adhesives across her chest; a modern art mosaic of all different colors and shapes so that the accompaniment of a sudden, shrill beeping was left to occupy my brain, literally knocking the thoughts right out of my head, leaving absolutely no space for any sort of thought.

"Pulse is 164 and tachycardic, pulse-ox 96% and her B/P is 94/72." I listened to a nurse shout vital signs with a hurried professionalism across the room but that didn't mean that I was able to make heads or tails out of them.

I couldn't help but ask myself in this moment why the hell it was that I had decided to go into business out of high school instead of going straight to medical school… Oh yeah, that's right, it was because I was as dumb as a post back in high school. Obviously, my seventeen year old self hadn't managed to effectively anticipate being stuck in a moment such as this one, where it was crucial for me determine for myself whether or not my daughter was dying.

Great, as if I didn't have enough on my mind already, now I was busy beating myself up over all of my old high school mistakes… again.

"What does that mean? Is she gonna be okay?" I asked desperately, resorting to trying my success at shouting my head off with questions towards the doctors until they got fed enough to give me the answers to them.

But of course, as per usual, my success was limited to nothing as every last one of my questions was left ignored as they chose instead, to ask their own.

Of course, in theory, there questions were much more important than mine.

"When did this start?" I was so taken aback by being flat out ignored by a total stranger for what I was pretty sure was the first time in my entire life that I couldn't help but actually hesitate in my answer.

"Um… I don't know, maybe about a week ago." I stumbled over my words, struggling in my ability to keep up with all of the chaos surrounding me.

Come on Brooke, think… I first noticed that Sam was sick on… that day that me her and Jamie were at Clothes over Bro's, and that was when…?

"Thursday," I came up with the answer after some sufficient digging around for it, "But she had… I thought it was just a cold… That started maybe last Sunday or Monday…" The nurse that had delivered the question towards me somehow kept up with my less than orthodox method of answering, nodding as she scribbled against a clipboard.

"Is she allergic to any medications?"

"No!" I shook my head so vigorously that I got dizzy.

I'd spoke my answer with a harsh assurance but now that she had actually gotten me thinking about it, I was starting to second guess myself. Was Sam allergic to any sort of medications? It was a topic that hadn't exactly come up over any of me and Sam's casual conversations.

"I don't think so." I questioned my initial answer, this time sounding much more hesitant than I had the first time around.

"Okay, how about any medical conditions or any sort of medical history that we should know about?"

"No, nothing; nothing like this has ever happened before!" I shouted angrily, my frustrations towards myself and this situation coming out unfairly towards the nurse. I mean, how the hell had I been so stupid never to deem it important enough to discuss Sam's past medical history with her? Hell, I wouldn't even be able to tell you whether or not she had the chicken pox as a kid.

"Alright miss, do you think that you can just follow me over towards the front desk?" She grabbed me by the elbow in a conscious effort to try and steer me from the room without resistance, and at first, I obliged mainly because I was too focused on my confusion; I mean, why the hell would they want to bring me and Sam over towards the front desk?

It was only after the stupidity of that statement entered my mind that I realized the truth of the matter; they weren't going to bring Sam to the front, they were just trying to get rid of me, and that was something that I was definitely far from okay with.

"What? No… no wait, I have to stay with her!" I nudged at this stranger, using my shoulder to attempt to resist the movement to drive me out of the back room and get back inside of it.

"Miss, we're just going to need to get all of the information possible on your daughter in order to have her admitted and you're going to have to do that at the front desk."

"Come on Brooke," Julian spoke, his voice calm, reasonable as his strong hands replaced the nurse's against my shoulders; enforcing, yet comforting as he steered me out of the back, "There's nothing that we can do for Sam here, okay? We need to do everything that we can for her, and for now that means going back to the front."

I allowed Julian to guide my motions, knowing that he knew exactly what he was doing, knowing that he was prepared to do absolutely anything in his power to help me through this while simultaneously keeping his cool.

I took a couple of deep breaths… Julian was right, he was going to be just fine, I was going to be just fine, and most importantly, Sam was going to turn out to be just fine…

Everything was going to be okay.

The nurse deposited us into the middle of the ER crowd before turning instantly on her heels, no doubt to head straight back to where I had left the care of my daughter into the hands of complete strangers…

For a brief second that felt like hours, I dug myself underneath Julian's arms, my eyes wide, my senses poised as I attempted to distinguish where we were and what it was that we should do next.

I was vaguely reminded of all those old movies we used to watch in history class back when I was in high school of old German or Italian immigrants getting dropped off in the early 1900s right smack in the middle of Ellis Island without knowing a word of English or having a penny in their pocket, desperately waiting to be told what it was they had to do next.

What exactly do I do next?

Everything was screaming at me to barge straight back towards where Sam was. I could practically feel my conscious attempting to give me a nice big kick in the ass just to get me moving, but I stood my ground, my wobbly knees struggling to allow any sort of movement to actually happen.

"Brooke," Julian continued partaking in his role as my saving grace, speaking directions calmly and soothing towards me, "I want you to go ahead and talk to that receptionist over there, okay? I'll be right back, I just have to go move the car."

I picked up on Julian's words, but still found myself lucky that he knew he would have to physically steer me towards the desk in order to get me there.

"I'll be right back," He assured me, pulling me closely into his shoulder briefly, planting his lips comfortably against my temple, allowing them to linger for just a second before he let go, walking towards the front door, looking back to check up on me only once before I found myself alone once again.

"Excuse me, miss?" I heard the voice directed towards me, immediately deducing that it was coming from the receptionist desk behind me, the woman sitting within it beckoning towards me.

I approached cautiously, feeling as if I was positively made of nerves, not quite sure what to feel or who to trust.

"We just need you to fill out these forms so that we can go ahead and start the process of admitting your daughter." She spoke casually as if it were completely normal for her to discuss the fact that Sam was as sick as she was.

Of course, in all fairness to her, I guess that in her world, things like this were completely normal; she dealt with them on a daily basis, but that didn't mean that I did too.

But what else could I do, right? So I'll tell you what I did, I nodded my head and I accepted the stack of papers five inches thick that she thrust towards my general direction.

Retreated back, I found the most secluded corner of cold plastic chairs that I could, took a seat, and dove head first into the questionnaire that I had been delivered.

Question after endless question, I filled them out as best as I could but the reality was the only thing it really did was provide me with a stark reminder of how little I really did know about Sam and her life.

As if I already wasn't feeling badly enough.

Did Sam have any sort of allergies? I didn't think so.

Thinking hard, I rubbed my hands through my hair, not really caring how disheveled or how terrible it made me look in the process…

Come on Brooke, think.

I had cooked for the girl a million times before and she'd never mentioned anything about not being able to eat any particular foods before… but I guess in retrospect, that didn't really mean anything.

But for all of my intents and purposes, it seemed good enough for me so I checked the little "no" box and moved on.

Crap, what the hell was her social security number?

Oh well, I guess there's no bullshitting that one, I'll just leave it blank.

This general pattern of half-assed filling out of a various array of questions continued for a relatively decent amount of time until I lost track of it completely.

Of course, that didn't' mean that I easily forgot the fact that Julian was taking much longer moving my car out of a tow-away zone than I would have liked… Who knew, maybe the car actually did get towed away, as if I needed any more problems in my life right now.

The buildup of panic rang through my head, overwhelming me and pumping me with adrenaline to the point that I was nearing a point of hyperventilation.

By the time Julian had finally found me again, I was wheezing, struggling against my airway, which I imagined was closing tighter and tighter with each breath I took, mere seconds away from achieving a full-blown nervous breakdown status.

I think that he noticed how dangerously close I was to losing it because I'll be completely honest with you, a deaf, dumb and blind man probably could have noticed how dangerously close I was to losing it, and he rushed the last couple of steps towards me, instantly sinking down into the adjacent seat and wrapping me up into his arms, a motion that I accepted and embraced more than willingly.

Twisting my head around, I buried it deeply into Julian's muscular shoulder, took a deep breath so that I was able to inhale his comforting scent, and finally, for the first time in a very, very long time, too long if you asked me, allowed myself to positively sob.

"Hey it's alright; she's gonna be alright Brooke." He rubbed soft circles into my back, offering an initial burst of comfort before falling into silence, understanding that I just needed a minute or two to collapse.

Without so much as another word, he respected my silent desire, holding me securely until finally, the tears began to dissipate and the sobbing chokes broke off into no more than a few residual hiccups and I felt safe and stable enough to actually be able to pull away.

"Thank you Julian," I mumbled, wiping at my eyes, red and swollen with tears, "For being here I mean." There were a million different possibilities of things that I could have said to him in this moment, but for now, that was the only thing that I could actually think of although I wasn't sure that words could have truly described how meaningful his presence was right about time even though I had the slightest feeling that he already knew.

"I wouldn't wanna be anywhere else Brooke." It sounded strange; I mean, of course sitting inside of an emergency department waiting room was the absolute last place that he _wanted_ to be, but I understood what he meant and that was the most important thing.

Taking several more deep, relaxing breaths, I felt my body relax, my mind settle around me… Sure, breaking down is fine, and in fact, it could be considered a healthy thing to do every once and a while, as long as you don't get too attached.

"I have to hand all of this stuff in." I sniffled, indicating downwards towards the paperwork before standing shakily to my feet, where Julian followed, leading me by the shoulders towards the front desk where I was more than grateful to be able to shove those papers right back into the receptionist's face.

She thumbed through them with an absentminded, vague look on her face; offensive considering the fact that I had just experienced a minor panic attack trying to fill them out.

"And can I just have your insurance card to make a copy?" I nodded, pulling Sam's wallet, which I had somehow remembered to shove strategically into my bag right before leaving.

A couple of months after Sam had officially moved into my house on a strict foster home basis, and I had delivered my initial petition of adoption, the Department of Health and Human Services had sent me a government issued insurance card for Sam considering the fact, as they had described so politely, she remained a "ward of the state" until my adoption of her was made official.

It was ugly and brown and I made Sam keep it in her wallet because it didn't match my own.

I had just handed over the tiny plastic laminated rectangle that funded the approval of providing Sam with life-saving care when I heard my name echo harshly off of the hospital walls and directly into my ears.

"Brooke!"

Distracted, I turned, my eyes focusing on Haley sprinting full speed towards my general direction, impressed by the fact that she was moving faster than even the professionally trained Nathan, who was trailing close behind at her heels.

I took a couple of steps forward in an effort to meet them in the middle, Haley colliding with me in a bone crushing hug that she refused to let go of.

"What happened? Where is she?" It appeared that Haley had all of the same questions that I did, in fact, she was doing such a good job of imitating my panicked frenzy, I felt as if I was suddenly looking into a mirror.

I could only shake my head in response to her question, not having the capacity to answer her question as much as either of us would have liked.

"I don't know… She collapsed in her room and then they took her back there… I don't… I haven't heard anything yet…" I turned from Haley, embarrassed towards the fear that I would lose control again if I continued speaking, falling into Nathan's arms as he awaited to greet with me with open arms, physically lifting me off of my feet in his attempt to provide me with at least a sense of comfort.

"Okay, she's okay; she's going to be okay Brooke. Sam's a strong girl." Haley was rambling, rubbing circles into my back as Nathan continued holding onto me, and she was trying, really I knew that she was, but the tone behind her voice was a clear presentation of the fact that she was trying to convince herself much more than she was ever trying to convince me.

Within minutes following Nathan and Haley's initial arrival, it seemed that half the population of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital's emergency room was designated friends of mine, looking to act as a support system as we waited desperately for any sort of news on Sam.

Peyton and Lucas, even Millicent who arrived with Mouth on her heels, all part of the calvary which I had learned, Julian had called in while he was outside parking the car.

It was a very tense hour or so, one full of tears and comforting hugs and friends that I couldn't thank enough, that a tall, slightly graying man approached our huddle; his strong set face and bright eyes that made me feel better just by looking at them sticking out amongst the crowd.

"Ms. Davis?" His voice was gentle and polite; the voice that every doctor should have, in my own personal opinion, even though I know well enough that most of them don't.

He pointed me out of the crowd quickly enough, most likely because I was the one that had shot up out of her seat the fastest, and stood the tallest, staring right through him as I burned the silent question straight through into his skull.

"I'm Dr. Bay," He introduced himself, his hand instinctively jutting out from his side in the motion of a handshake that I accepted quickly and weakly, "I was Samantha's doctor when she was brought into the ER."

"How is she?" My motor mouth carried my voice away, spilling the words before I had even given this poor man the opportunity to finish his sentence.

"She's asking for you." He told me with a soft smile and a nod of the head, and the effect of his words was instantaneous as relief slowly crept through my body, starting at my feet and traveling straight to my brain until I was positively warm with comfort.

Sam was asking for me, and that could only mean one thing.

"So she's awake?" The doctor passed towards me a quick head nod which was all of the conformation that I needed, "Can I see her?"

A second nod; a second affirmative answer.

"Of course," I was prepared to move before he so much as opened his mouth, poised and prepared to sprint if I had to, ready to barge into that back room and find Sam myself, but the feeling of a quick hand on my shoulder stopped me and I paused, swiveling back to the group of friends behind me, and Julian, hanging onto me for dear life, looking exactly as I felt; as if he were about to positively fall down he was so relieved.

But at the same time, a pang of guilt crept up my spine; I mean, here were my friends, the ones who had just spent the past hour firmly attached to my side, supporting me through every miserable second and I had barely hesitated in my willingness to leave them without so much as looking back.

"It's okay," Julian mouthed to me as if he had read my thoughts, nodding down at me and using the hand on my shoulder to give me a slight push in the direction the doctor was attempting to lead me in.

I grinned a watery smile up towards him, trying desperately to get my mouth to mumble an expression of thanks although my voice just couldn't seem to find me in that moment, rendering me silent so that I could only hope that my message was conveyed through my expression as I turned and followed the doctor through that exact same set of double doors that Julian and I had carried an unconscious Sam through only a few short moments before.

I could only take it as a good sign when this time, as I walked forwards through them, I found myself feeling not nearly as panicked as I had been the first time.

We travelled down a long, seemingly endless line of curtained-off cubicles, each one filled to capacity with a variety of sick or injured people, ailing to varying degrees alongside their loved ones, and stupidly I allowed my mind to wander, unable to help but wonder where it was that Sam ranked amongst that spectrum of severity…

I peered through the cracks of every last curtain, hoping to God with each passing one that this would be the one that I would be able to catch a glimpse of Sam behind.

In fact, I had gotten so carried away with this seemingly menial task, that when Dr. Bay finally did stop walking, I hadn't even noticed and almost ended up crashing straight into him.

Taking a moment to straighten myself, I peered upwards at his much taller form, an expression of confusion automatically contorting itself onto my face as to why this doctor had stopped walking before he had taken me to Sam.

I watched him carefully, my heart plunging in a dramatic freefall as I watched his own expression soften into a much more serious undertone than I had noticed before inside of the triage department.

"Ms. Davis before I take you into the back to see Sam, I just wanted to talk to you briefly about the initial results of her blood work." I gulped nervously. I had been so anxious to arrive at Sam's bedside that my desire to see her completely obscured the fact that the reason we were here to begin with was because something inside of her had gone terribly, terribly wrong. "They came back a little bit… problematic."

He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully but even still, that didn't stop my mind from instantly racing towards the millions of different possible scenarios; each one worse than the next… What exactly did he mean by problematic?

I eyed him with a forced look of intensity, determined to keep my cool, determined not to show him just how terrified I actually was.

"What does that mean problematic?"

"Well, the biggest problem that we saw has to do with her blood cell counts. Basically, what we discovered was that she was presenting with only a count of about 3.5 million red blood cells and an even more abnormal count of platelets at 20,000. But the biggest deviation we saw was in her white blood cell count, which is presenting somewhere at about 200,000."

Okay, I was confused; the doctor spoke these results with a dramatic undertone, but I had absolutely no idea what they meant so that the alarm didn't register with me right away, and once again, I was cursing myself for ever thinking that not going to medical school was a good idea on my part.

"I'm sorry… I don't really understand…" I felt like an idiot expressing my lack of knowledge towards my own child's health, embarrassed by this little one-on-one meeting between Sam's doctor and myself, and even more embarrassed towards the fact that this guy probably thought that I was a total idiot.

"Well it means that her red blood cell, as well as her platelet counts is alarmingly low."

"Could it be anemia?" I was so determined to say something, to make a tangible contribution to the conversation that I cut the poor guy off before he was even finished speaking.

"Well, the blood work that we took in the ER wasn't exactly conclusive so anemia isn't something that we've ruled out entirely just yet, but something that we also have to take into consideration is the fact that her white blood cell count is alarmingly high. For kids her age, normal counts range anywhere on average from about 7,000 to 8,000… maybe hitting in the 10,000 range during bouts of infection and Sam is more than twenty times over that average."

"That sounds bad… Is that bad?" Now here I was, once again babbling like a fool… great.

"Not necessarily," He spoke quickly, seeing my level of panic rising right before his very eyes, "It can mean a lot of different things really, and her symptoms, her labs, well their pointing to a very wide variety of diagnoses that will require some more testing before we can say anything conclusively. It could be anemia, as you mentioned before, or it could be some sort of immune deficiency or even a more intense viral infection like maybe a more severe strain of mono…"

He counted the list of potential ailments that fit Sam's symptoms off of his fingers, adding them up in a tactic that I wasn't sure was supposed to be making me feel better or not… Either way, it wasn't.

"Just to be sure, I'm going to send her to see a specialist."

Reaching downwards into his breast pocket, I watched him warily as his hand re-emerged clasped onto a business card that he handed over towards me immediately

_Dr. Lauren Miller, M.D._

_Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Tree Hill Memorial Hospital_

_910-394-9922_

"This is the doctor that I'm going to send her to."

I shook my head in response to his statement; this couldn't be right, there had to be some sort of a horrible mistake here.

"Oncology… but that's… that's cancer." A part of me wanted to hand him the card back, wait for a dire apology before he handed me another business card, one that called for a doctor that specialized in the common cold… But he never did.

"Ms. Davis like I said, Sam's blood work indicated the possibility of numerous conditions on a very, very long spectrum. Now, that spectrum in question can range anywhere from something such as a simple virus…" He paused, initiating a dramatic effect that I wished he hadn't, "To the possibility of some form of leukemia. Now, we're only looking at that possibility as a precautionary measure for a worst case scenario kind of a situation, but still I would be more comfortable with being completely thorough… just in case."

I had no response for him. Leukemia… it just wasn't possible. That meant cancer, and cancer was one of those things that you only heard about other people getting, and sure, you felt terribly sorry them but still, you went about hoping and praying that it was something that would never happen to you.

No Brooke, don't get yourself caught up in this. He'd said that it was only the worst case scenario, and worst case scenarios never happen, it's always something somewhere in the middle… right?

"Dr. Miller has already been paged. She should be down here in a few minutes to come talk with both you and Samantha but until then, you're welcome to go in and sit with her if you'd like." He guided me several additional steps forward, pulling back the curtain previously veiling the corner cubicle before stepping away in an effort to provide me with room enough to walk through.

Pushing all additional thought out of my head, I begged myself to occupy all of my time and effort onto Sam and not onto the possibilities of what could be wrong with her, an easier task than I had previously anticipated on it being, I was surprised to say, as the second I stepped within the confines of Sam's room, any response that wasn't directed towards immediate care for Sam was shut off completely.

My heart cleaved into two distinct pieces upon resting my eyes over Sam's frail form.

Her eyes were closed, however, as opposed to the last time I'd seen her, trapped within a fitful unconscious, she looked much more peaceful, much more rested than when I had seen her a little over an hour ago…

Of course, that didn't make it any less terrifying to see.

Tubes and wires snaked into and back out of her body, connecting her to machines that I couldn't make heads or tails out of as they beeped, whirred and whistled around me.

This was too much… this was all too much.

"Sam?" I leaned closely into her bedside, looking for, but not really expecting any sort of response, which might have been why I was so surprised when she squirmed slightly underneath my words, instantly struggling against the confines of a drug-induced sleep.

"Sam, can you hear me?"

Her eyes fluttered, striking me with a sudden fear as to what it was I was supposed to do, what I was supposed to say to her once she awoke?

Should I tell her everything that her doctor had told me about the blood tests and their results or the oncologist currently making her way down to the ER to talk to us about the possibility that Sam had cancer…

It didn't take me very long to ultimately decide against doing so, but the main purpose for that wasn't because I was particularly worried about how Sam would handle it, instead, it was because I had actually forgotten all about it in the briefest of seconds upon being ultimately distracted by a voice, barely above a whisper but although it still appeared to have come directly from the heavens themselves…

"I'm sick mom, not deaf."


	6. Through Still and Storm Part 2

Chapter 6: Through Still and Storm (Part II)

**Monday, October 31****st****, 2011**

**SAM**

I think that it was safe to say that I had only a very vague idea as to what it was that was currently going on around me… or with me I guess would be the more appropriate thing to say.

And of course, by vague, I meant extremely vague, so here is what I'd managed to breakdown about my situation so far –

I knew that I was sick, yes that was a start, a very good start might I add. I also knew that because I was sick, I was in the hospital, a fact that had taken me about a half an hour following my awakening from a blissful unconsciousness that I didn't even remember falling into to figure out.

I also knew that I was tired; I was really, really tired, and although I'd apparently spent the majority of this morning satisfying that craving for sleep, no matter how much I seemed to get it seemed, I remained to be really, really – and just so I'm sure to get my point across – really tired

Strange how things like that turn out sometimes, isn't it?

Now, the reason that I'm telling you all of this is this; for the first time in quite a few hours now, I was experiencing a feeling other than overwhelming exhaustion, and that feeling was pissed off.

I'll tell you why I'm pissed off, I was pissed because mere minutes after I had finally managed to settle down into a nice, natural sleep, somebody, once again, was trying to pull me right back out of it.

At first the noise sounded kind of like a distant foghorn. In fact, I was barely able to make it out at all through the giant clog that was currently my brain, but as I fell forwards, closer and closer into a more respectable level of consciousness, I somehow finally began to decipher what actually turned out to be English words.

In fact, I think that that was my name that I was hearing… Yeah, somebody was definitely calling out to me, telling me to wake up, asking me if I could hear them…

Wait a minute, I knew that voice, hell, I could spot it from a mile away at this point; it was Brooke, it was definitely Brooke.

And, just for the record in case you lost count, this is the second time today that she was waking me up when all I really wanted was some sleep.

But I felt badly, after all, I had probably just put her through hell and back the way that Brooke worries, so I gathered all of my strength, and after a couple of seconds managed to build up just enough energy to grunt out an appropriate response –

"I'm sick mom, not deaf."

It was your average, every day response despite the fact that this was not your average, every day situation, but I wanted to display myself in a measure that would tell Brooke that I was fine without actually coming straight out to tell her that I was just fine.

Besides, she deserved some good news after I'd spent the past couple of days doing absolutely nothing other than raise her blood pressure up a couple of notches.

I took my chance and followed up my sarcasm by prying my eyes open, where they instantly latched onto Brooke's, swollen with unshed tears, confirming to me that I had achieved the emotional affect that I was going for in at least semi-convincing her that I was going to be fine.

And besides, you have to trust me when I tell you that I hadn't just decided to use that coveted "mom" word because I was high on morphine; it was because I knew that she needed it, the assurance I meant, and considering the fact that I had been the person who had snatched it from her to begin with, well, something so simple was the least that I could do.

Brooke paused briefly, and for a second I swear, I could see her eyes positively spinning around inside of her skull so that she looked like she was about to go into some sort of emotional overload, making me fearful that I had just said the wrong thing, but as my words began to settle in around her, she'd proved me otherwise by living up to her title, going into immediate mom-mode.

"Hey Sam, how are you feeling honey?" She bolted into action instantaneously, shuffling around the small cubicle that they had stuck me inside of, attempting to multi-task, doing about a million different things at once in an effort to keep me comfortable.

"I'm fine Brooke, I'm fine." I waved her off, hoping for her to get the hint to just sit down already and relax herself. The problem was this; Brooke was just as stubborn as I was on most days, if not more so, if anything, I was expecting to be yelled at for telling her that I was just fine despite the fact that she'd just spent the past hour or so sitting in a waiting room and probably having a mild heart attack in the process.

Maybe that was why I was so surprised when she actually stopped.

Looking down at me, her mouth opened slightly as if she was preparing to tell me something but the words never actually came out… They were in there, I knew that they were in there, I could practically see them in her eyes, but whatever they were, I would never know, because she took her motions back just as quickly as she had almost allowed them to slip through the cracks.

"How are you feeling?" She asked the same question again, clearly determined to achieve a satisfying answer from me despite the fact that I still had the strangest feeling that that was not what she had wanted to say.

"I'm loaded up on drugs." I shrugged, displaying the truth in the fact that to be completely honest with you, I couldn't really feel much of anything right now, and in fact, it was the best I'd felt in over a week.

"Shouldn't I be yelling at you for that kind of stuff?" I couldn't help but laugh at Brooke's attempt towards humor in her great pursuit to release the tension that was pressing up against the walls in such a manner that was starting to make it feel like an over-inflated balloon.

"Yeah, I guess."

"So is that a good thing or a bad thing?" She released a small laugh herself in response to my own, finally dropping down into the seat besides my bed so that I was forced to lean closer towards my right just to capture that excess body heat that was comfortably radiating off of her and onto me.

"A good thing, I guess." I sighed, wondering how much longer it was that we were going to sit here and pretend that nothing was wrong despite the fact that we were currently enthralled right smack dab in the middle of an emergency room.

"Hey, um… did they tell you what was wrong with me yet? Because they're not really telling me much of anything about what's going on." I initiated the course of conversation because as much as I knew that Brooke wanted to, I didn't think she really knew how.

"No," She answered to quickly and curtly for it to be entirely believable, and that was all despite the fact that I could hear the clear lie echoing off of her tongue. "They just told me that your blood work came back and that it was inconclusive… They're working on it Sam."

She tried her absolute hardest to be reassuring as she dragged her chair forward and closer towards me, reaching up to gently massage my shoulder and release the stress knots that were currently building up inside of my muscles as we spoke.

"But hey, I know something that should cheer you up," She straightened herself up in her chair after a couple of seconds, making her voice as enthusiastic as possible in her effort to make me as enthusiastic as possible, "Julian is here."

"Is he really?" I must say, her efforts worked like a charm.

She nodded firmly in her answer and I silently thanked God because the one thing that could possible make this day suck at least just a little bit less was the mental image that I had just gotten of Julian and Brooke locked together in a comforting embrace over my sick bedside with Julian professing his love towards Brooke alongside his commitment to be there to take care of us forever…

Okay, so maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, I wasn't that needy but still, that's the way that I would have preferred it.

"Yeah, he stopped over the house this morning… He's out in the waiting right now with Haley, Peyton, Nathan, Lucas and a few other people." She began counting the list of names off of her fingers…

Wow, that was a lot of people, and after spending the majority of my life believing that nobody ever really cared that much about me, it was strange to think of so much as one person, let alone an entire group of people hanging around a hospital for hours waiting for news about my general welfare.

"Really?"

"Really," She confirmed, "And they're all really worried about you, just so you know."

"Yeah well, you can tell them all that I'm fine."

"I can tell them all that you're fine a little bit later." She took my previous statement as a test and formulated her response carefully, solidifying the fact that she wasn't about to leave my side any time soon and I couldn't help but smile despite myself.

Brooke wasn't quite ready to leave me any time soon which was a good thing considering the fact that I wasn't quite ready to be alone just yet.

I made a quick move to express my gratitude towards her but before I had the opportunity, both that thought, as well as every other thought lingering in my mind was suddenly erased, replaced only with an unexpected flash of bone-deep pain strong enough to even overcome the barrier created by the strongest of pain killers that the hospital could legally provide.

I tried to hide the external expression of the feeling from Brooke but she was too good; it was that one second's hesitation, that slightest twitch in the corner of my eye, and she had caught onto it.

She stood up instantly, begging me to provide her with instructions that could prove to be helpful, but there were none; all I could do was screw up my eyes in concentration, befall myself to silence, and mentally will away the feeling… the problem was, it was hard to concentrate on much of anything when waves of dizziness bounced off of my skull to the point that my brain roughly resembled a pinball.

Don't do this Sam. Not here, not in front of Brooke.

Slowly, the pain began to dissipate until I felt it safe to open my eyes again, making out Brooke through the corners of my glossy vision as her mouth slid open, probably in preparation to ask me if I was okay for the millionth time that day before she was silenced.

"Ms. Davis?" A woman had poked her head cautiously through the curtain, quickly assessing the scene before feeling comfortable enough to grace us with the presence of the rest of her body, "Hi, I'm Dr. Miller. I was called down here to talk to you by Dr. Bay."

I had absolutely no idea who either of those people were but judging by the expression of realization that had just flashed across Brooke's face, she did.

Brooke stood politely, greeting the doctor with a firm hand shake. Of course, I would have done the same but, you know, that wasn't exactly in the cards for me right now.

"Brooke Davis," Brooke introduced herself, always good at playing a solid professional role which I guess made sense the more I thought about it, you know, act professional, hit it big time, end up rich…

No wonder I had ended up so low on the totem pole.

"And this is Sam," Brooke spared me the need to introduce myself as the doctor turned towards me and took a step forward, offering me her hand so that I had no choice but to accept although I was steel recovering from the residual sparks of searing pain that continuously flared up underneath my skin.

This Dr. Miller woman, well she wasn't exactly what I envision your typical doctor to look like…

First and foremost, she was pretty young; we're talking early forties at the oldest. Secondly, she was actually rather pretty; tall and skinny with red hair that extended down the length of her lower back in a manner that lead me to conclude that she should be wasting less time here in a hospital and start spending some more time on a fashion runway.

I'm just saying, maybe it wasn't a coincidence that she was sitting here chatting it up with Brooke Davis…

"Hi Sam, how are you feeling?" I could only muster up enough energy to produce the smallest of shrugs alongside a reply. Brooke could yell at me for being rude later.

"A little better,"

"Good, that's good." I was spared the task of attempting to come up with a second wave of conversation in response for her dead-end comment by the doctor moving on past how it was that I was feeling almost instantly… Good to know, right?

"Well Sam, I just had the opportunity to look over some of the blood samples that were taken from you when you were brought into the ER this morning, and I wanted to come down here to talk about them with you and your mom."Brooke and I passed each other quick, uncomfortable glances. Here was this doctor, sitting here preparing to tell us what was wrong with me, and the only thing Brooke or I cared about was whether or not one of us was going to correct her for calling Brooke my mother.

Neither of us ever did.

Dr. Miller carried on her conversation as if she hadn't even noticed the awkward silence, immediately speaking with a machine like quality as she spit out numbers and facts that I could barely keep up with, let alone hang onto.

Yeah sure, I probably should have been paying attention to all of it, but once I'd found myself nice and initially confused, I couldn't help but lose focus so that my mind instantly started to wander.

I couldn't help but wonder what it must be like to have this as a job; sitting around all day delivering bad news to unsuspecting families…

It all sounds pretty bogus if you asked me.

"And because of those abnormalities Sam, the results of your blood samples weren't exactly what I'd expected them to be."

I caught the tail end of her speech, her words sure as hell grabbing onto my attention now.

Wait? What was she talking about? Shit, I knew that I should have been paying attention to what she was saying.

Okay Sam, don't start freaking out now, besides, you weren't really paying that much attention anyway. Maybe you heard her wrong, maybe she'd said the exact opposite of what you'd thought… Maybe… maybe you should stop bugging out and actually start paying attention, yeah, that seems like the most logical thing to do.

"So what I saw was this; you had a very abnormal complete blood cell count specifically a very low erythrocyte count, which is your blood cells as well as a very low thrombocyte count; your platelets. Now this anemia, as well as your low platelet count, which is responsible for the bodies healing processes can account for things such as the particularly overwhelming exhaustion you've been feeling lately, as well as the ease by which you've been bruising, which is clearly apparent."

She nodded awkwardly towards my right eye, still swollen shut and just as black and blue as ever.

"To correct the defects in that particular area of your blood count Sam, you were given a blood transfusion when you arrived in the emergency department a couple of hours ago now, and once that's complete we'll be able to determine its success, however what really concerns me about your blood work is actually your leukocyte counts, your white blood cells, which are astronomically high. Now you did come in here presenting with streptococcus infection which resulted in a bout of laryngitis that we're giving you antibiotics for, but still, an infection could account for a slight elevation of white blood cells, but nothing nearly as severe as what we're seeing on your CBC."

Weren't doctors supposed to make you feel better? I wasn't so sure anymore because this lady was definitely not making me feel better. In fact, in an absolute contrast to the above statement, she was actually making me feel worse; a lot worse.

"I took a bit of a closer look at your white cells and I found that the overwhelming majority of your white blood cells are extremely immature and that you're presenting with a 65% myeloblast count." She paused in an effort to initiate dramatic effect; an effect that probably would have been much greater had either me or Brooke had the slightest idea as to what the hell she was talking about.

I wished that people around here would start remembering that I'm not a doctor; hell, I'm not even a high school graduate.

"So what do you think this all means?" There it was again; that tone behind Brooke's voice that told me that she knew something that I didn't. I had no idea why it was there or what said something was, but to be quite frank, it was starting to annoy the hell of me considering I was starting to get the hint that the only person around here that didn't know what the hell was going on with me was me.

There was an immediate hesitation behind the doctor's voice in the gap between Brooke's question and her response, forcing me to swallow hard with nerves.

My doctor was presenting with nervous habits, and that my friends, was never a good sign.

I could feel the butterflies as they were instantly released into my stomach; no, scratch that, it felt more as if full grown eagles had taken flight inside of there.

"Well, we're going to have to run a bone marrow sample for a definitive diagnosis but at this point Sam, all of your blood tests are indicating towards me that you are presenting with a leukemic syndrome, more specifically acute myelogenous leukemia."

Wait a minute… did she just say…? No, no it couldn't be, I must have heard her wrong… Yeah, that was it, I heard her wrong because what I thought she'd just said was that I had leukemia which definitely wasn't true because… well because that just wasn't possible.

In fact, I had convinced myself that this was all just one giant misunderstanding so thoroughly that I went as far as to open my mouth and ask her to repeat what she'd just said because I knew I must have missed it.

But unfortunately, before I'd so much as managed to allow a single word escape past my lips, I caught the look on Brooke's face…

Her skin had gone an entire shade whiter, her bottom lip trembling powerful enough to provide me with the reinforcement that I needed.

I felt my heart take a freefall, diving straight down into the very pit of my stomach where it pounded so hard that I was surprised Brooke and this doctor couldn't hear it from where they stood.

In an absolute instant, the entirety of my brain shut itself down; my life stopping short; lights off, power lines down, the works.

For several seconds I truly felt as if time itself were standing at an absolute standstill.

But as quickly as it had escaped me, it had jolted back to life again. I mean, what else could I do? Rolling over and dying wasn't exactly an option over here.

And of course, at this point I was speaking both literally and figuratively.

I could feel Brooke's eyes pounding a hole through me in a desperate effort to read my thoughts but I couldn't help but think that she was wasting her time; I had placed my emotions on the off switch and I wasn't exactly sure how to get them back on again - or if I even wanted to.

I tore my eyes away from hers, unable to find the strength to linger considering the fact that I was having a hard enough time as it was holding back the tears so desperately close to falling that they burned in their pressure like hot coals against the backs of my eyes.

But I wasn't going to do this; not here, and not now. After all, I hadn't gotten this far in my life by crying every time times got a little bit tough. Hell, if I'd done that, I would have probably drowned years ago.

For some reason, I thought it had been hours, days even since the doctor had presented me with that temporary, yet fateful diagnosis when in the reality of the situation, less than ten seconds had probably gone by.

She'd paused strategically, I was convinced, giving us a couple of seconds to soak it all in before she began her speech again, which I was thankful for considering much more of that and my mind probably would have imploded from being so bogged down.

"The aspiration is done under a local anesthetic," She continued in her efforts of explaining as best she could something I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to fully comprehend, "It should only take about twenty minutes or so. What we'll do is we'll insert a thin needle directly into your hip bone through the back right here –" Swiveling around, she pointed to a spot right above her own ass in an effort to give me a clearer picture of what would happen when they actually put a needle through mine – "We'll extract a sample of your bone marrow and send it to the lab so that we'll be able to see a much clearer picture of what exactly it is in there that's making you so sick."

I gulped nervously; she could have explained that to me as gentle as humanly possible and it still wouldn't have sounded particularly good.

"Does it hurt?" Out of all of the questions that I could have come up with in that moment, that was the only one that actually managed to escape my mouth despite the fact that I was absolutely terrified of what her answer was going to be.

"You're going to feel a lot of pressure… kind of like getting a shot that lasts twenty minutes. But the anesthetic should make it so that you don't feel too much pain… Most people say that it's more uncomfortable than it actually is painful." I guess I could respect that answer; her lack of sugar coated euphemisms boosted her up a notch or two higher on my good list, which was a good thing for her because trust me, she needed all the points that she could get, after all she had just been knocked down straight to the bottom upon her diagnosing me with cancer.

Okay, so in all fairness, she had only temporarily diagnosed me, after all, the diagnosis wasn't a hundred percent quite yet but I'll let you in on a little secret; I knew, and she knew that her saying that was strictly a formality designed to give Brooke and Brooke alone a couple of extra hours to latch onto a bit of hope.

Here's the thing, when you're sick, and there's something inside of your body that doesn't belong in there well you can feel it. It crawls around, infiltrating every last open crevice of your body until your left itching in places underneath your skin impossible to reach.

At this point, it was a feeling familiar to me; the only difference now was that I finally had the capacity to put a name to a face.

"Okay,"

The only thing that I could now was fight it.

"I'm ready."

* * *

They'd had me out of the Emergency Room within fifteen minutes.

You see, I've learned a very valuable lesson today, that being if you want a little bit of special treatment when you're stuck inside of a hospital, you better make sure for damn certain that you really are dying…

Look at me, already playing the cancer card. Yes, so it is a little bit sick but hell, so am I, give me a break.

I don't think that Brooke's hand had actually left my own ever since Dr. Miller left our small little cubicle in the ER to prepare for what she'd deemed "the procedure"- I know, how foreboding, right?

Currently, she was holding me in a death grip that had barely loosened the entire journey from the ER to the upstairs inpatient units and I'm not gonna lie to you, at first it was kind of annoying, and in fact, it wasn't until we'd approached an eerie set of double doors and they'd wheeled me past a large sign labeled that read "Pediatric Oncology" which was decorated with little painted-on balloons and cartoon characters that attempted to make the prospect of having cancer a little bit less alarming for all of the kids that came through these doors, that I latched onto her even closer, grateful for a hand to squeeze in the moment.

Our adventure had come to an abrupt halt at the end of a long hallway as we made a right hand turn into a previously empty room, and a group of very hot, very, very male orderlies shifted me comfortably into a permanent bed, making me suddenly very aware of just how exposing hospital gowns could actually be.

Hell, they hadn't even left the room yet when Dr. Miller was back, accompanied closely by a nurse who dragged in front of her a tray of what looked to me like very threatening, very, very unwelcome instruments…

Or maybe they'd just looked that way because I knew of their intentions…

But seriously here folks, do you think that you can just back off for maybe a minute or two and give me a little bit of room to breathe?

"Are you ready Sam?"

My silent plea fell to deaf ears. Actually, I wasn't ready, I needed to think about this, I needed some time, I needed two damn minutes alone just to process what the hell it was that was going on around me and to try to wake myself up from this dream that I had so clearly fallen into.

"Yeah," Of course, instead of saying everything that I had wanted to say, I had responded with this instead.

She responded to my skeptical affirmation with a strong nod that I really did think was her attempt at trying to make me feel better despite the fact that the effect would have been much more prominent had she not done it alongside pulling on a pair of dark blue rubber gloves while taking several ominous steps forward.

"Okay, here's what I'm gonna need you to do here; I'm going to have you flip on over and lay flat on your stomach, alright?"As much as I wanted to tell her and her instructions to suck it, I obliged willingly, silently turning myself onto my stomach, now more exposed for all of my glory than I had already been before.

Great… As If I hadn't already hated my life before this moment.

"Okay Sam, the first thing I'm gonna do is drape your back so that the only thing exposed is the area that we're going to put the needle in for sanitary reasons, okay… Then what you're going to feel is me cleaning the area with some iodine. It's not gonna hurt, it might just be a little bit cold."

I didn't say anything, just flinched involuntarily despite my best efforts not to as the cold iodine swab came into full contact with my skin, staining it with the copper liquid.

"Now I'm gonna give you the anesthetic, it should just be a little pinch." My muscles tensed in anticipation but when said needle actually came, it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated; nothing I couldn't deal with anyway.

Hell, maybe this wouldn't be as bad as I thought.

"Alright, now I'm gonna put in the second anesthetic, this is the 2% Lidocaine and its going to go directly into your hipbone so you're going to feel a bit more pressure this time around."

Crap, maybe I'd spoken too soon.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah," Ready as I'll ever be, I guess.

I could hear the rustle of the sterile gown she was wearing as she moved to pierce my skin with the second needle, but thanks to the initial dosage of anesthetic I'd received, I didn't even feel it, and in fact, I barely even felt it as it made its descent through each layer of tissue in its journey towards the bone but in a way, I think that made it even worse for when the eagle finally landed and an unexpected jolt of pain flashed up my spine, forcing my to jolt instinctively which only made the pain even worse.

"Okay Sam, I've reached the bone." Thanks buddy I could have told you that much and I didn't even need years of medical training to teach me that, "Are you still okay?"

"Just fine," My voice was remarkably high; impressive for somebody suffering from laryngitis to the point that I couldn't even speak a few hours ago.

"Alright Sam just take some nice deep breaths, deep, long breaths." I followed her direction, inhaling deeply through my noise and exhaling even stronger out my mouth, and despite my doubts, as I felt the warm, liquid anesthetic flood from the syringe and into the depths of my bone cells, the numbness did indeed follow suite and suddenly, it didn't hurt quite as badly as before.

"Sam, this is the last part, alright, the bigger needle is going in now." Great, I should just ask this woman to cut off my damn arms while she's at it.

I forced my head away from the little I could see of the doctor and what she was doing directly above me. On my other side, Brooke was gripping at my hand tightly in her efforts to provide me with moral support, but that was about the best comfort that she could offer, Brooke was intolerably squeamish.

But to be honest, I think that that actually made me feel better considering the sight of her with her eyes squeezed tightly shut actually made me laugh; a difficult feat considering the fact that I was having needles drilled into my pelvis at the moment.

"Sam, can you feel that?" The doctor called back to my attention, her words surprising me considering I hadn't felt anything… Well, I guess that answered her question.

"No, I…" I began to deliver my sentence but it was sharply and suddenly erased before its completion, any hint of words that I had previously had lingering on my tongue wiped clean out of my mouth by a sudden sharp, piercing pain that made me feel as if the entirety of my left side was being hacked away with a chain saw.

Maybe it had something to do with the suddenness of my silence, or else the fact that I was suddenly gripping Brooke's hand so tightly that I could feel her very bones groaning under the pressure, but whatever it was, it had proved to act as a very nice indication for my doctor that her stupid needle had in fact reached its destination.

Great, nice and scientific; I'm glad I could help out.

"Sam honey you're doing great, it's almost over I'm just going to put in the next needle now." Did she just say the next needle? No, but seriously though, did she just say _the next needle_? Can't we just take a little break here or something? After all, I was still trying to recover from the first needle, and the second, and the third for that matter.

"You're going to feel a strong sucking sensation soon Sam, that's going to be the actual marrow being extracted and after that, you'll be all done."

Well, she was right about one thing, I sure as hell did feel it alright, but I can't lie, this feeling hadn't been quite as bad as the last, but I guess if you truly wanted to put it into perspective, a punch to the face isn't quite as bad as a gunshot to the kneecap either… Or so I've been told.

I forced my attention to wander, begging my thoughts to linger on something other than the searing pain that I was currently experiencing.

Looking down at my hand, I watched my knuckles as they faded into a shade of sheet white, the crushing grip that I was currently displaying around Brooke's own hand effectively cutting off all circulation in both of our fingers.

But that was a bad distraction, in fact, all it did was remind me the reason why I had been grasping onto Brooke's hand so tightly to begin with.

But as it turned out, my search for a distraction ended up becoming a fairly decent distraction in itself because the next thing I knew, the pain lingered, radiated for a brief moment and then, just as suddenly, was gone.

I could feel the needle retracting, sliding upwards the same way it had entered, leaving me a bit of a souvenir in its wake in the form of a dull throb that made me feel as if an elephant had just lay down on top of me.

"You did great Sam, it's all over. You did great." Brooke was trying her hardest to praise my ability to be such a trooper but in all honesty, she sounded more relived about this thing being over than I was.

I felt my breathing gradually begin to steady in time with my heart rate declining back to its normal flutter. Slowly realizing that my hand was still clenched amidst Brooke's in an almighty death grip.

Slowly, I loosened my fingers, relaxing to the point that the feeling actually began to flush back into my appendage, but I refused to let go of Brooke's hand in its entirety as I began to fight vainly against the side effects of having multiple different forms of pain-killers circulating through my veins, cursing sleep for choosing never to just leave me the fuck alone as my eyelids began to grow steadily heavier and heavier.

"Sleep honey,"

"No…"Didn't you understand Brooke? Sleep was the exact thing that I was trying to avoid. I've been sleeping all damn day and now that I was sick… Well, what if I never woke up again?

"I'll be right here with you when you wake up."Well, Brooke didn't seem think that I was about to positively drop dead right here on the spot, and as long as I had her assurance, well I figured that I'd be able to make it through the next couple of hours.

"Promise?" I mumbled, my words slurred with a combination of exhaustion, morphine, and 2% Lidocaine which in my personal opinion should be upped to about 99% Lidocaine for procedures such as the one I had just endured.

"Promise," She spoke assuring, leaning closer into my body so that she could comfortably continue carrying out her post at my hand as I, still lying ass up on my stomach, finally lost my battle against sleep in its entirety, allowing the walls to get smaller and smaller around me until eventually, they just closed in all together, leaving me in pure, indistinguishable darkness.

* * *

**BROOKE**

After I had watched Sam fall significantly into the depths of her drug-induced sleep and after the muscles of her hand finally relaxed around my own and slipped from its comfort blanket provided by my own skin, and even after I had watched the numerous tube of Sam's painfully extracted moment, hiding in code the most important information of our lives, get carefully packaged to be sent to the lab, I still refused to allow myself to leave my position, securely fastened at Sam's side.

I had been sitting with her for a while now, allowing my own exhaustion to build slowly so that every now and then I couldn't help but find myself nodding off for a second or two before I'd finally realized the error and rectified my mistake with a sip of coffee provided to me by Sam's head RN, leaving me awake and able to continue my self-assigned task of keeping track of Sam's heartbeats, feeling them pound gently beneath my fingertips lingering at the pulse point in her wrist, just so that I could make sure that they were still there.

So far so good.

I gave my tired eyes a quick rub, taking a cautious glance towards my right over at the clock displayed on the windowsill, nervous for the information that it was about to provide me with.

It was already 4:32 in the evening… I guess it's true what they say; time flies when you're having fun.

Right before she had left, Dr. Miller had given me a sympathetic smile and a quick assurance towards the fact that they would have the results of Sam's bone marrow aspiration back by tomorrow morning latest and that I would be the first person that she would come to see upon her hearing them…

I had mixed feeling about this, because as desperately as I needed to know what the results of this test were, at the same time, I wasn't sure that I actually wanted the answer.

It's hard for me to process the fact that it was less than four and a half hours ago now that I had been sitting in my kitchen with my biggest problem being that I feared Sam and I being tardy for the doctor's appointment I had made her…

And what do you know, as it turned out, we were. It's funny how quickly plans can change sometimes, isn't it?

It was only now after I'd truly begun counting the minutes that I was forced to remember… Julian; and not just him, but everybody else as well, all downstairs, all still cramped into that small waiting area, anxiously allowing their imaginations run rampant towards where the hell I could have gone, why I hadn't returned yet with news…

News that I had been selfishly hoarding onto for the past several hours now myself…

This notion left me in a sort of a jam; one part of me felt absolutely horrible about leaving people who had rushed so quickly and so willingly to my aid in the dark for so long, while the other side of me knew that I just couldn't leave Sam up here all by herself.

What if she woke up? She would be alone, she would be scared, she would think that I'd abandoned her completely.

I found myself conducting a brief, yet vicious debate inside of my head, allowing a full-blown war to break out between my two options until, believe it or not, the part of me that said that Sam would be fine by herself for a couple of minutes while I went down to the ER and broke the news to all of our friends that might as well have been our family, won.

Besides, by the looks of things, Sam was going to be out for the count for the next couple of hours at least. She would be just fine… We were all going to be just fine.

I released her hand gently, jumping up to my feet, moving slowly out of fear that any sort of sudden movement would jolt Sam awake.

It was now or never; I knew that if I continued to sit here and debate this issue with myself, I would never leave, so I backed slowly out of the room, lingering in the doorframe only briefly before slipping out of it and into the hallway.

She will be fine, Sam will be just fine.

I repeated this phrase, so simple to say, yet so difficult to believe over and over again in the back of my mind, the tempo of my movements changing rapidly as I moved from a careful crawl to a frantic dash, rushing down the length of the hallway with the idea in mind that the faster I managed to get down those stairs, the faster I would be able to come back up them.

I embarked on a journey that, much to my dismay, was filled with long numerous twists and turns, long hallways, and more elevators than I could count on one hand.

I maneuvered my way downwards towards the ER with great difficulty, allowing me to truly appreciate for the first time in my entire life just how large Tree Hill Memorial Hospital truly was.

Through the blurriness of my sprint, I attempted to identify landmarks, nervous that once I found my way towards where I wanted to go, I wouldn't be able to find my way back, terrified that in my journey, I would lose Sam permanently.

I was forced to stop for directions twice, having gotten lost somewhere through the maze of secret passages in my misinterpretation of the first set that I'd received, but by the time I actually started seeing signs directing me towards the emergency room, my feet were set on automatic pilot, guiding me towards the same place that I really hadn't left as long ago as I might think, finding that the small group that I had left behind had diminished significantly in my extended absence.

Peyton and Julian were sitting alone amidst the crowd, sitting side by side despite having their heads permanently affixed in opposite directions, an uncomfortable silence lingering between them as they waited with apparent diligence for my return.

Peyton's eyes were darting side to side randomly, a habit, I knew from experience, she performed out of nervousness.

It wasn't long until her eyes found me, however her motions had been so random that she hadn't even acknowledged the fact that we had locked eyes at first; she looked away again only to pause in realization, not only her eyes, but her entire body snapping back towards my direction the second time she'd turned back to me.

I watched still as she shot out of her seat like a rocket, laying a firm punch against Julian's shoulder as she went in an effort to indicate my presence to him without actually communicating to him, before she darted towards me, not so much as hesitating before wrapping her arms around my waist and squeezing tightly.

"Brooke, I'm sorry that it was only me and Julian that could stay. Lucas had to go get Sawyer from daycare and then Nathan and Haley went to go pick up Jamie from school and…" I cut her off in her apologies, shaking my head to indicate that it wasn't warranted; I understood, my friends had their own families to take care of, and as for me, well mine needed me right here.

"It's fine, it's okay Peyton."

"So… how is she?" Peyton asked, a slight indication of uncertainty behind her words as she pulled out of our embrace slightly in order to look me square in the eyes in preparation for my answer… I just couldn't find it inside of me to match that look.

I'd spent the entire, extend period of time walking from Sam's room upstairs down here telling, no, begging myself to pull it together, to man up and make sure not to lose my cool.

I thought that I would be okay; I thought that I could actually handle this.

But despite the fact that it had taken me a long time to convince myself that I was actually fine, it took less than ten seconds for me to realize how false that statement actually was.

I felt the tears before they actually fell; white hot and burning as they stung at the backs of my eyeballs, the pressure of pent up tears physically hurting me seeing as how I'd had to maintain my composure in front of Sam for hours now, and was only now allowed to expose myself for the phony I truly was.

"Brooke what's wrong? What happened in there?" My face was buried deep within the fabric covering Peyton's shoulder but there was no way that that was her voice; not unless it had suddenly dropped several octaves within the last couple of seconds…

I felt a strong set of hands come up behind me, grabbing me by my upper arms, smoothly running up and down their length… The familiarity of my skin underneath Julian's palms stung at my heart with the reminder that familiarity was something that was now going to have to be rewritten for us… for all of us.

"The doctors… they say she… they told me she might have…" I choked, stumbling painfully over each word, filling the spaces between them with gut-wrenching sobs so that I could barely find it in me to finish it. "Cancer, they say she might have cancer."

With great difficulty, I allowed the word to escape through my lips, but it physically hurt me to say, leaving tiny ulcers dotted alongside my tongue, my body punishing me for even thinking about such a slanderous statement.

Neither said anything at first, both, as I had done, leaving the slate empty in an effort to give me an opportunity to correct the obvious mistake I had just made in my announcement.

I knew the feeling, I had just experienced a very similar one mere moments ago.

"Her doctors, they told us that they think that it might be leukemia." I confirmed the fact that they had indeed heard me correctly the first time.

"Okay… okay Brooke, it will be okay. Sam will be okay." Peyton's voice was pushed, clearly indicative of her attempts to break through that initial barrier of shock in order to be on a clear path to support me emotionally, even if she did sound unsure of her own words herself.

But despite all of this uncertainty that had been steadily filing itself into my life ever since the moment I woke up this morning, it's hard to describe that feeling of relief that you get, the sense of calm that washes over you with the realization that there's actually a support team standing in as backup to help Sam and I charge through the front lines.

"I know," I gathered myself together, forcing myself not to get trapped inside of this momentary weakness. Yes, Sam might be sick, she might be sick to an almost incomprehensible point, but that didn't mean that I could sit down here and grieve for her as if she were already gone.

It's time to pull out those old survival instincts Brooke. It's time to do whatever it took to protect her, to get her through this, to get myself through this…

"I just wanted to come down here and give you guys an update on what was going on. Sam's asleep now we're just waiting for a few more test results to come back in… I should go upstairs to be with her." I tried to pass the slightest of hints over towards them that they didn't need to stay, that I didn't want them waiting around here all night looking for news, I felt bad enough as it was that they'd been stuck here all afternoon…

"Go," Peyton assured me, indicating towards me that she had gotten the point that I was trying to get across, "Go be with Sam, I'll call everybody who needs to know and let them know what's going on."

"Thank you," I mumbled meagerly, allowing the words to flow over my barrier of increasing emotional instability as I gave her, followed by Julian, a firm embrace indicative of my goodbye, "I'll call both of you if anything changes." I nodded the assurance that I would give them that much, turning away without so much as another word feeling empty, alone, and completely drained of everything indicative of emotion.

In a complete change of pace from my journey here, I chose to drag my feet back towards the elevators that had gotten me here; moving in a slow death march as opposed to openly embracing the same sprint that I had chosen to come by here in.

Of course, it was a decision that honestly had a lot more to do with my aching calves than the fact that I wasn't in nearly as much of a rush as I had been in before, but at the same time, I also couldn't help but think of how much I needed an opportunity to think, to absorb, to look for something, anything that could ever possibly help me get through this one…

It sounds stupid, and it sounds desperate, I know this, but as I meandered on back up the hallway, wading through a ward full of sick and dying children in an effort to sit with my own sick and dying child, I couldn't help but find myself searching for at least a little bit of hope, completely convinced that I would find it somewhere hidden deep inside of these walls or underneath the plush carpet… anywhere really.

It didn't take me very long to remember that there was absolutely no hope here; not in these walls, not under this rug, and certainly not within this building at all.

I was at the elevator; in fact, my hand had already pushed the up button, my arms now just crossed firmly against my chest, my foot tapping against the floor in my impatience as I awaited the little claustrophobic box that would take me back up to where I belonged when I felt a small tug at my elbow that stopped me dead in my tracks.

Swiveling around, my drained, empty eyes locked with the big, hazel orbs that had comfort displayed all over them.

Julian.

"Hey, I thought that you might like the company."

I guess it's true that I have learned a lot of extremely important life lessons across the span of this day; some better than others, some good, some unspeakably devastating, but for right now, as I sat here within this otherwise empty hospital lobby, I found myself learning the most important lesson of them all.

I had been wrong before when I'd said that there was no hope inside of this building, there was; in fact, there seemed to have been hope everywhere, all around me, emphasized in the fact that even in the most darkest of times and desolate of places, even when all seems lost and you don't think that it's possible for you to ever be found again, you can still find hope within the places that you least expect it.

Maybe it's within the thin drywall of a hospital wall, or underneath the mismatched carpet decorating the lobby, or maybe you will find your source of hope in the arms of somebody that you love, or in the guarantee that maybe, you're not as alone as you'd previously thought after all.

* * *

**JULIAN**

For a brief second following Brooke's barging into the ER, looking frazzled and exhausting, as if she'd had the weight of the world bearing upon her shoulders, after her short, yet insurmountably devastating visit, after she'd begged us to leave alongside the argument that her place was here while ours was taking care of ourselves back within the outside world, I had almost been stupid enough to actually let her go.

The thing was, the only reason that I had ever really considering it in the first place was because I couldn't help but get the feeling that she just didn't want to be with anybody right now, that the only thing that she wanted to do tonight was to spend some time alone with Sam… poor Sam.

I guess now that I thought about it though, I just couldn't believe that I had been stupid enough to allow her to get as far as the hallway before I realized that right now, the very last thing that Brooke wanted was to be alone, no matter what sort of front she put up in order to make everybody feel otherwise.

And that was how I had ultimately made my final decision to follow her.

In the long run, I'd almost actually allowed her to slip right between my fingers, but thanks to a particularly slow set of elevators, I'd managed to get lucky and caught up to her right before she'd disappeared for good.

"Hey, I thought that you might like the company."

I held my breath for several tense seconds as I awaited her response, but as the shadow of the smile that I had known all along was hidden somewhere inside of that beautiful face broke out across her features, I realized in an instant that I had made the right decision.

"Come on," I told her, wrapping one arm protectively around her shoulders, the other wrapping around to grab her hand as I guided her through the elevator doors as they slid open and shut around us.

I tried to be the one to bring her back to Sam but the reality of the situation was that I had absolutely no idea where I was or where I was going; the problem, I'd learned quickly was that neither did Brooke.

But in all fairness, although it had indeed taken more than a little bit longer than either of us would have ever liked, we had managed to get ourselves back towards where Sam was still fast asleep in her bed… eventually.

The poor kid looked sick as a dog, which in all fairness to her made sense considering the fact that she was indeed sick as a dog.

I forced my gaze away from her, begged myself not to get to wrapped up in this right now; Sam was okay for right this moment, she was perfectly comfortable allowing herself to sleep and exist in a world where she was healthy, where she wasn't in anymore pain, and I had to give her that, because the way that it was starting to sound to me, the next few weeks were going to be absolute hell, and Sam was going to need all of the rest that she could possibly get.

Brooke on the other hand, very much so unlike Sam in her current state, was awake, alert, and subsequently scared shitless; still struggling to wrap her head around this new reality that we had inadvertently found ourselves trapped within.

"Brooke, here, sit down." It wasn't a suggestion, instead a command as I pulled out the chair fastened a safe distance from Sam's bed and adjusted it alongside the set of spare pillows and a blanket I'd found immediately on Sam's bedside table, figuring I might as well make Brooke as comfortable as humanly possible as long as I was practically forcing rest upon her.

To my surprise, she took my gesture with an open invitation, practically falling into the awaiting armchair, pulling the lever that lifted her feet up before dropping her head back against the cushion, closing her eyes through several loud, deep breaths in an effort to relax as I carried my own chair over next to her from the empty, adjacent bed reserved for Sam's nonexistent roommate.

"How long has she been out?" I whispered, positioning myself in the perfect position that would allow me to watch over both Sam and Brooke at the same exact time until the sun went down and came back up again if that's what it took…

"I don't know, probably about an hour or so." She answered through a yawn, forcing her eyes open as she pushed herself upright in an effort to turn her gaze back onto her sleeping daughter, "They gave her a pretty strong anesthetic so that they could take a bone marrow sample out of her hip."

I nodded my head, allowing our movements to fade into a stony silence for several more minutes as I contemplated whether or not I truly wanted to break it, taking several more minutes before actually deciding in favor of doing so.

"What happened to her eye?" It was a question that had been lingering in the back of my mind since I'd first seen her earlier this morning; however it had escaped me through the chaos until right now when it was staring me directly in the face once again.

"She was playing basketball with Jamie and…" She tapered off mid-sentence, looking down at her hands as she twiddled her fingers together in sporadic motions for a couple of seconds before she burst very suddenly into a fresh set of tears.

I felt horrible, great I had made her cry… again.

My mind raced, trying desperately to think of what it was that I could do in order to rectify this situation… Well duh, that was a stupid question, I should apologize; whenever you made a girl cry, especially when that girl was your girl, you always apologized.

"Brooke I'm so sorry I didn't mean to…"

"I didn't even realize that she was so sick!" She blurted suddenly, interrupting me before I could so much as finish my apparently unwarranted apology.

"What do you mean?" I asked, attempting to express sympathy through my confusion as I pulled my chair in closer towards her until I was close enough so that she was easily able to latch onto my and bury her face deeply into my shoulder, which I was sad to say, was probably still damp from the last time that we had been in this exact same position.

"I was so busy thinking about myself, caught up in my own problems… What kind of mother doesn't even realize that her kid is this sick? I should have known that something was wrong, I should have done something sooner."

"Don't say that Brooke," I spoke dumbstruck, shaking my head from side to side, too shocked towards the fact that she would ever even think of something to horribly untrue to come up with an appropriate response, "You did everything that you could for Sam but who would ever think… who would ever want to think that it was something like this. Sam got sick Brooke, and that's tragic it is, but it's not your fault."

"What if I lose her Julian?" She submitted to me her deepest of fears, and I was forced to take a minute to assemble a convincing enough response to at least keep Brooke from knowing that I had been asking myself the same exact question.

"We're not going to Brooke," I pulled her closer, a physical emphasis of my projection; "Sam is going to get through this… and so are we." I added my final statement, hoping that I sounded convincing and assuring although I couldn't really tell whether or not it had worked with Brooke considering that despite the slightest hint of a smile on her face, she was still crying.

"She called me mom."

"That's because you are her mom." I spoke firmly, reaching up with my index finger to wipe the remainder of her tears out from underneath her eyes as her face finally began to brighten with that glow that I loved so much.

"Thank you Julian," She muttered, sinking a little deeper into her chair, readjusting her body so that her head was now resting peacefully against the shoulder by which she'd previously been crying on.

"You don't have to thank me Brooke."

I could have sat like this forever, Brooke leaning up against me, my fingers weaving absentmindedly through her soft strands of hair as I felt her head growing heavier and heavier against my shoulder, her eyes unwillingly beginning to close.

"Sleep Brooke," I whispered, ready to relieve her from her watchful duties, ready to become the guardian angel that I knew Brooke, and especially Sam needed right now, "I'll watch Sam until you're up again."

"Will you wake me up if she wakes up?" She asked me groggily through a yawn and closed eyelids, not protesting my suggestion, but instead laying down the stipulations.

"Of course I will."

"And will you… will you…" She never finished her sentence, instead allowed it to linger forever incomplete on her lips, drifting away into oblivion leaving me to sit completely still, completely silent, holding her tightly until the steep rise and fall of her chest against my body told me that she was in a deep, and more than well deserved sleep.

Gently, I lifted her body off of me, arranging her more comfortably against her chair before standing up to collect the spare blankets that I had noticed earlier, draping one around Brooke's shoulders, and the other over Sam's.

It had taken a while, and a large amount of self-convincing, but when I was finally certain that they were comfortable enough, I found myself heading back over towards my own chair, adjusting it back into its previous position where I was free to rest my feet up against the rails along Sam's bed, making myself comfortable in my preparation to begin my vigil keeping a close watch over my two girls.

I sat through the hours, my senses steadily adjusting alongside the changing tides of day as the room gradually became darker and darker until it fell into a single, consistent shade of black.

I tried desperately not to think too much for fear I would get overwhelmed by it all, but the problem was, when your spending the entirety of the night sitting up wide awake in a girl that was just as good as your daughter's hospital room, trying to keep the two people you cared about most in the entire world safe, there wasn't much room to do other than try and wrap your mind around reality.

I wracked my brain for answers; coming up with lame alternatives in my effort to pretend that there were actually some answers around here to be found.

But no matter how hard I tried, nothing stuck out to me, nothing except for a single, lingering phrase; that ultimate question repeating itself over and over again inside of my head like some sort of obscure broken record –

My God, just what the hell was it that I was supposed to do next?


	7. Lead Us Through the Night Part 1

Chapter 7: Lead Us Through the Night (Part I)

**Tuesday, November 1****st****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

As badly as I might have felt about actually admitting this, I must say that I had actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep last night… well, for at least for the first couple of hours anyway.

But please, don't go jumping to any sort of conclusions; I wasn't being selfish here, not when there were things to be done and late night vigils to be had, because if you would be so kind as to back track slightly, you'll note that my statement included only those _first_ couple of hours.

Ever since then, well let's just say that I'd been trapped in that limbo of an awkward on again/off again sleeping cycle that was mostly just always off more than it was on, the main problem being that every time I found myself waking up from one nightmare, it was only to find myself face to face with a real one.

Things for me had been rocky ever since around midnight when I had first awoken to find Julian, so determined to spend his night playing watchdog mere hours ago, now fast asleep where he sat; his neck tilted backwards in such a way that would guarantee him awakening with a stiff neck in the morning…

And Sam… well Sam was still sprawled out like a damn eagle, flat on her stomach and looking no closer to waking up any time soon than she had seven hours ago.

Ever since then, I had watched infomercials on mute for so long I had half of the telephone numbers memorized, I'd flipped through the pages of my very own magazine and scribbled cartoon mustaches and devil horns on every single picture of Victoria that I'd come across, and I'd even spent a handful of hours simply staring at the wall waiting for the sun to come up, to deliver any sense of a light that would pull me out of this darkness…

The thing was that when 6:13 a.m. finally did roll around, and the sun began its scheduled ascend, and I still found myself feeling exactly the same as I'd had in the night, I was out of potential strategies to be used in order to convince myself that everything was going to be alright…

But at least I had managed to do at least two things successfully; firstly, I had managed to successfully, as well as falsely, convince myself that I had had a perfectly legitimate reason for pulling this all-nighter, and second, well I had solidified the already well known fact that I was nervous, I was fidgety, and I was feeling scared out of my ever loving mind with the threat of Sam's test results and their looming closer and closer with each passing second constantly floating across the back of my mind, showing no signs of stopping.

I kept my eyes glued to the clock hanging against the wall directly above me, my toes tapping in double time against the tile, my fingers drumming a constant cadence against the rest of the arm chair as 6:59 turning into 7:00.

I should be waking Sam up for school right now.

I should be cooking her breakfast, knocking at her door and threatening her with violence if she didn't hurry her ass up in getting out of bed.

I shouldn't be sitting beside her hospital bed waiting to hear whether or not she had fallen victim to cancer, I just shouldn't be.

"Ms. Davis?" The suddenness of noise amidst the silence hit me like a bullet; I jerked so violently that my ass literally lost contact with the seat below me for several seconds; I turned my head so quickly that the bones of my neck cracked the length down my spine underneath the strain.

My eyes squinted, adjusting slowly to the glow of light beaming in from beyond the hallway so that I eventually made out the vague outline of the single only person that I wanted to see right now as she stood silhouetted against the hall lights contrasted against the room's darkness.

I gulped dramatically… This had been the moment that I had been waiting for this entire time but now that it was staring me in the face, I wasn't sure that I was ready for the answers, for the possibilities…

"Do you think that maybe we can talk out in hallway?" I opened my mouth to reply to her, but no words ever came out; the only thing that I'd managed was a quick nod of my head, my legs moving accordingly, flexing to a stand as I nudged Julian quickly in the ribs en route.

I heard his grunting indication of being awake before he scrambled with a confused start, trying desperately to comprehend the source of this sudden disturbance until his eyes met with the doctor's in the doorway and understanding rained over him like a hurricane.

"Is it Sam?" His voice was laced with exhaustion although I could tell that he was trying his best to hide it.

"Yeah," I nodded, "Come on." I extended my hand to him, allowing him to link his fingers between my own, grasping for comfort in the webs laced between their bases as I practically pulled Julian to his feet, allowing him to lead me out into the tiny nook that separated the room from the actual hallway, packing in shoulder to shoulder between Julian and the doctor, leaving absolutely no room for any sort of misinterpretation to leak through cracks between our bodies.

"I'm sorry."

Here's a little bit of a life lesson for you; when the first words that come out of your child's doctor's mouth are "I'm sorry", it means that the conversation will never, ever, under any type of circumstances lead to a good scenario, "The biopsy confirmed the initial results. Sam has acute myelogenous leukemia."

Yesterday afternoon when I had heard of this possibility, this probability, I had somehow actually managed to convince myself to hold on to those miniscule, yet ever-lingering fragments of hope, and for a little while, that tactic actually seemed to be working for me…

I had put all of the shattered pieces back together and forced myself to believe that maybe, just maybe all of this had just been some terrible misunderstanding.

It's hard to describe the feeling that accompanies the realization that everything that you had ever believed in is suddenly, and entirely destroyed, when your body begins to splinter slowly, beginning at the very core of your heart before spreading outward, but I can tell you this much; it doesn't feel very good.

In a natural response to the sudden, non-physical invasion flooding over me, my body began to literally shake underneath the pressure of pure adrenaline flooding my veins, initiating my fight-or-flight survival response that would prepare me for the battle that I was no doubt expected to fight.

I could feel my lungs opening, begging for an additional intake of air, my heart racing against the extra influx of oxygen that seemed to be getting me absolutely nowhere as my pupils constricting to mere pinpoints in a desperate effort to prevent the stinging tears from actually falling…

No Brooke now was not the time or the place for tears… But then again, when the hell would be?

"AML is a form of cancer in the myelocyte group of the white blood cells. The problem in particular cases such as Sam's is that these cells are growing very rapidly but at the same time, aren't fully maturing which eventually renders them completely useless." She delivered the facts, continuing her succession of speech probably utilizing a clever tactic to merely continue talking to distract me long enough so that I didn't have a full blown nervous breakdown in front of her.

"With acute leukemias, like in Sam's case, there is a very rapid progression of the burden of disease which is why it's very, very important that we start her on a very rigorous, very intense treatment regimen right way… We can get her settled as soon as tomorrow, which I recommend in her instance, if you're okay with that."

Something inside of me sparked in the instant that I heard that magic word…_ treatment_.

Somehow or another, despite the fact that I knew more than anybody that this was a possibility, the thought that we would have to treat Sam, that we would have to force her body into remission never so much as crossed my mind..

And suddenly, I could feel my brain clearing, the reality seep through every groove of its anatomy, literally forcing me to concentrate on anything other than my current sorrow; I couldn't do this, I couldn't get caught up with my own selfish grief, I needed to concentrate; we needed to get Sam into treatment, and more importantly, we needed to get her healthy again.

"What does the treatment include?" I forced the words out of my mouth, instantly transitioning my mindset into that of a selfless momma bear ready to do anything and everything to protect her cub… I became dutiful, productive, attentive… in half of the time that it takes to blink an eye, I found myself going from unofficial foster parent, to the mother of a cancer patient.

"Chemotherapy is the main route that we will take." Yeah, I had feared that beyond anything, "For Sam's particular case, the chemo will be given in three distinct phases; first will be induction therapy, followed by consolidation therapy which will lead into a final maintenance schedule."

Hell, I didn't even know that there were that many different kinds of chemotherapy, I just thought that you merely threw a few drugs together and hoped for the best…

It looked like I had some research that I had to do.

"With the induction cycle, the main goal will be to induce remission so that by the time she's completed that course, there should be no more detectible cancer cells inside of Sam's body. It will be given over a thirteen day consecutive cycle in a twenty four hour continuous infusion. For the first seven days, she'll receive a drug called Cytarabine, following that will be three days of another active chemotherapeutic agent called Daunorubicin, and finally, three days back with the Cytarabine."

Okay, I officially needed a pen; or somebody else's brain, preferably one that came equipped with a fully photographic memory.

"So what happens after that?" I could see Julian getting pale in his anxiousness, looking too far ahead into the future to remember that we actually had to reach the future before we could actually think about it.

"Well hopefully we will be able to start her on the consolidation therapy which is designed to eliminate any leftover cancer cells that might be lingering inside of her body so that the threat of relapse is significantly diminished, but we can't say anything for sure this early in the game. The number one rule that you guys will have to remember is that nothing is going to run in a completely straight line, as frustrating as that may seem sometimes. At this point, the course of the treatment is entirely dependent on how Sam's body reacts, so when things don't follow a particularly text book path, you shouldn't be too alarmed."

Well, luckily for me, I had absolutely no idea what the textbook path actually was so that should we deviate from it, there's a good chance that I wouldn't be alarmed at all; in fact, I probably wouldn't even notice.

Jesus Christ, I'm not ready for this.

"So what happens if this… what if all of these chemotherapy treatments don't actually work?" I hadn't actually meant to ask that particular question, but I sure as hell was thinking about it so that I could only guess that somewhere deep in my subconscious mind, I really had wanted the answer considering I'd allowed the inquiry to come out.

"Well there a couple of different options that we would be able to explore. Radiation therapy, different drug combinations… We can continue delivering her consistent blood and platelet transfusions and ultimately a stem cell transplant is a particularly effective method of inducing long-lasting remission… Of course, for donation processes, it is preferred to use related donors… Does Sam have any siblings that we can test for a match in case we need to progress to that possibility in the future?"

I sighed, weaving my fingers slowly through my hair… Did this woman really think that Sam was my biological daughter? Did I really look that old?

Well… now that I thought about it, after the night that I had just had, I probably did look that old.

"No… no she doesn't, and um… Sam, she's my foster daughter so I… I…" I cut the sentence short, very suddenly running out of things that I could actually say.

"That's alright we'll still be able to test you, there's no reason that you can't be a match, and the worst case scenario is that we'll just have to go to the donor blanks… thousands of kids have been just as successful with anonymous donors as they've been with related donors. Even still, something like a BMT isn't an option that will be in the cards for a little while down the road, and I know that as much information as this tends to get very overwhelming very quickly; things move very quickly in these first couple of days and I don't want you bogging yourself down with more information than you already have had."

"What… what about the cure rate for all of this?" I'm not sure that Julian had heard a single word that this woman in front of us had said after the announcement that Sam had leukemia because he'd remained silent the entire time, only now building up enough courage to ask the question whose answer I was too afraid of to dish out myself.

She paused briefly before answering, and I couldn't tell if it was a sympathetic pause, or a pause that was indication that I wasn't about to like the answer that I was about to receive.

"We've come a very long way in leukemia research," She started, but I was still waiting to hear a "but" somewhere in there, "If you factor in all of the things that Sam has going for right now such as her age, and her otherwise health, and the fact that we managed to catch this very early on, statistics put her into as high as a marker as a seventy to eighty percent remission rate."

My biggest problem now was the fact that the only numbers actually sticking out inside of my head were the twenty to thirty percent that somehow seemed even higher than the former considering the fact that they were laced with the threat of death.

The fact of the matter was that there was a frank chance that Sam might die before seeing so much as her seventeenth birthday, and I couldn't help but trace all of the blame immediately onto myself.

This had to have happened because of where we lived, or maybe it was because of who we were, or most likely, this had happened because during those first harrowing weeks after I had found her sleeping in the trunk of an SUV, I had actually thought that I hadn't wanted anything to do with her.

Yes, I had been so quick to judge her, and now, I was even more disgusted with myself for ever even thinking that there had been no place inside of my heart for Samantha Walker all along.

"But please remember, we can't always go by the numbers. I know that it's frustrating that I'm unable to tell you exactly what group it is that Sam will be in, but I can tell you which one I want her to be in."

Oh good, was it uplifting motivational speech time? Because I was definitely long overdue for some kind of nice, big dose of encouragement right about now.

In the long run, I guess that she'd left me with a nice feeling; at least, one that had convinced me enough that she honestly did care about Sam; an important quality to have for the general preparing to lead us into the front lines as we spoke.

"So we start tomorrow?" I could feel my voice transform to the point that it was unrecognizable as I spoke; it was just that it was suddenly so strong, so determined, so sure…

"We start tomorrow."

I looked towards Julian, his eyes matching mine easily... The decision seemed to be rather simple, after all, what the hell other option did we have.

"Okay, let's do this then," I expressed towards her my verbal consent, speaking in the manner that I thought would benefit Sam the most considering the fact that I had clearly failed her once before, and I wasn't about to do it again, "Do whatever it is that you need to do."

"Okay then," She jumped into action rather instantaneously, her movements throwing off the safety circle that we… or at least I, had been clinging to so tightly up until this moment so that I suddenly felt naked. "I would like to run a couple of more tests; just some more blood work and a quick CT and a spinal tap just to ensure that the cancer cells are still isolated…"

Remember before when I'd said that I could really use a pen right about now? Well, I'd never gotten it, but once again, I was regretting that…

"I would also like to fit Sam for a port catheter. It's just a temporary line that we'll place under her skin right below her collarbone area. It will be fed through her jugular vein and towards the heart and will stay there for the entirety of her treatment. It will be used to administer the chemotherapy, do perform blood draws when necessary… things like that so that she won't have to be stuck with needles every time we do a procedure… Most patients find it very convenient to have."

I couldn't help but think that most patients would also find it very convenient not to have cancer, but that was a thought that I kept to myself.

"It will be removed as soon as her treatment cycles are complete." She added that final, rather important detail quickly when the skepticism shined bright across my face.

I was struggling to wrap my mind around the complexity of all of this, around the fact that I had just been forced to make difficult decision after difficult decision in a matter of mere minutes…

"I think… I think that maybe I should talk to Sam about all of this first, see what she wants to do…" That seemed like a logical enough thing to do in my book. At the very least, I thought Sam deserved that. "Can you give s a couple of minutes?"

"Of course," She nodded in her compliance, quickly placing a supportive hand down against my shoulder before she backed off in her entirety, "And listen, I know that I just piled a lot of heavy information down onto the both of your shoulders, but if you have any questions, you know where to find me… don't hesitate to ask alright? I'll be right outside waiting for you guys in the hallway."

Politely, she complied to our request for privacy, stepping backwards and out of Sam's room so that we could enter it.

Sam had finally shifted from the position that she'd spent nearly fifteen hours previously sleeping in; currently laying flat on her back, stiff as a board with her eyes closed in a very forced, very fake sleep…

My heart cleaved into two distinct pieces in an instant; she had probably just heard absolutely every word that the doctor and I had just exchanged.

"Hey Sam," I took the few additional steps forwards cautiously, struggling to come up with exactly what it was that I was going to say to her as I clutched onto the edge of her bedrails for support, watching as she cautiously opened her eyes slowly at first, and then fully…

They didn't look like the eyes of somebody who was positively knocking at death's door as we spoke, and I think that that was just making that overwhelming sense of desire even harder to overcome.

"Was I that obvious?" She released a weak laugh, gingerly pushing herself into a more upright position as I quickly shook my head side to side in an expression that said she hadn't been despite the lie that that statement was.

"No, I'm just getting better at this; it took a little while, but I think that I'm finally starting to catch up on you." She didn't express the slightest hint of a smile towards the joke I had tried to place, only indicating to me that I had absolutely and completely failed to lighten the mood as I had wanted to do before I was to confirm that she had indeed just heard her doctor and I discussing exactly what she thought we had.

"So… I'm guessing that you heard…" She wasn't interested in small talk so I figured I might as well just cut straight to the point.

"Yeah," She sighed, "I heard."

I tried to contort my face into a comforting smile but only managed a distinct grimace. What was I supposed to say? I wasn't sure, so for a little while I didn't say anything. Instead, I sat against the edge of her bed, leaning myself forward and wrapping my hand around her own in a protective cocoon that just made me wish that I could offer the same support for the rest of her body as well.

"Don't let this get to you Sam," I rubbed at her hand gently, silently begging for Julian to filter in for support; an action that he complied with quickly.

"Yeah Sammy," He nodded firmly in accordance with my words. "You're a strong girl, we all know that much, and we all know that you can fight this and you can beat this… and besides, we're going to be with you every step of the way to help you do this."

"He's right," Julian and I concerted and orchestrated speech, playing off of each other's lines to stimulate our next, "And I know how scared you must be right now Sam, and I know that it's not fair that you're being forced to prove just how strong you are all over again, but… but at least this time you won't have to do this alone."

Closing her eyes against my words, I struggled to control myself as a single tear escaped from the barricade underneath her eyelids, squeezing her hand underneath my own in an effort to prevent myself from doing the same.

"Okay…" She slid her eyes wide again, revealing a quick transformation, a shining defiance, "I'm ready to do this… I'm ready to beat this."

"Alright… then we'll fight this, and we'll beat this, and we'll do it all together, okay?" I ensured her of the support that I was prepared to give to her up until the very end if that was what I had to do, "But you know, they're pretty determined to get you started right away… From what Dr. Miller was telling me, they're ready to start you on chemotherapy tomorrow…"

"I know… I heard." She smirked, reminding me of just how thin these hospital walls really were, "They wanna take me into surgery today to get me ready for chemo tomorrow… Trust me Brooke, I heard it all, and I'm ready for it…" Her eyes glowed with a fire-like determination, but I could tell that her motivation was sweeping her straight off of her feet already when all I really wanted her to do was take a minute to think, to absorb the massive amount of information she had accidentally listened in on mere moments ago…

But was starting to think that she understood a little bit more than I did, that the rapid pace that we were all currently moving in was making it very difficult to do that.

"Okay, okay Sam, take a minute or two to think about this," I tried to get her to slow down just because I was struggling so much to catch up, "This is a big decision and you don't have to make it right at this very second."

"Actually, from what I got out of the conversation, I kind of do…" I guess she had me with that point, because that was actually the hint that I had started to get from Dr. Miller as well. "Besides, what's there to think about Brooke? Either I start this treatment, or I literally roll over and die. I'm ready to go ahead and kick this things ass… really, I am…"

"Okay Sam…" I nodded in agreement, watching as the fire burned inside of her eyes, hoping and praying that it was a rage-filled passion that would remain following a course of treatment that struck full grown men straight down to their knees…

I envied her for her strength; I could only wish that I would ever be half as strong as she was when this was all said and done.

"I'll go tell your doctor, okay?"

She nodded me out of the door in a manner that made it so that I could practically feel her eyes boring a hole through the back of my head as I stepped out towards the hallway, lingering briefly in the doorway, pausing a split second, just long enough for me to locate the source of my own personal safe haven in the corner of my mind designated for forced optimism.

Entering the brighter, almost hostile environment of the hall, I felt my heart beat stronger and stronger in my chest as I was quickly forced to contradict everything that I had ever been taught and believe that there was actually a God out there somewhere because even though he'd been cruel enough to do something like this to our family that has already been through so much, it seemed like at this point, he might be the only one capable of reversing it as well…

So I closed the distance between Dr. Miller and myself with every step that I took, bowing my head down low once I was mere feet away from her before doing something that I hadn't done in a very, very long while; I prayed.

* * *

**SAM**

You have to trust me when I tell you that I have a lot of long days in my life. But out of all of the longest and the toughest days that I've had, I must say, this is the longest and the toughest of them all; by a long shot.

I think the saddest part about it was that it wasn't even noon yet.

Of course, I think that it might be about time that I start getting used to days like today because by the looks of things, I am going to be having a lot of them for the next couple of weeks, or months, or who knew; by my vague understanding of things, maybe even years.

I've spent the first several hours since my diagnosis now just trying to do anything other than speak to, look at, or so much as acknowledge anybody in any way, shape, or form.

I knew that it wasn't fair; I knew that it was rude beyond rude, but I also knew that this was just how I dealt with things; on my own.

But after a lifetime's worth of doing just that who could really blame me?

I guess it's true what they said; old habits really do die hard.

Funny, I used to hate morning talk shows; staying home sick from school, after the Price is Right was over by noon, morning TV went really downhill really quickly, but today, well today I was in love.

Needless to say, I spent the majority of the morning pretending that the entirety of the burden of the world's largest problems rested on the shoulders of the poor woman who went on Maury requesting a makeover because her wardrobe was so hideous she couldn't even keep a steady job, or the redneck on Jerry Springer who was upset because the state he lived in didn't acknowledge first cousin marriage and that hindered his life plans…

More importantly, I pretended that in comparison, my problems didn't even scale with there's.

Yeah, so maybe Brooke and I did have a lot to talk about, maybe focusing at the task at hand was going to do much more good than simply ignoring it, but I wasn't ready…

Of course, if we did indeed wait until I was actually ready, I was willing to bet the fact that I would probably be sitting on my ass watching _The View_ for the rest of my life.

"You know, I was a much bigger fan of this show when it involved Rosie." Julian was quick to comment on my television habits as he strolled back into my room, marking the completion of his journey back home in order to pick me up some things that I was certain to need eventually.

My hero; but seriously, if cancer isn't going to be the thing to kill me, boredom sure as hell will jump right in there to take its spot at the rate that I'm going.

"You would," I smiled feebly, feeling my face positively glow with appreciation as he handed me my hefty backpack, weighed down with all of the goodies I had asked him to return, helping me to lower it down beside me with one hand as he simultaneously balanced a tray of coffees in his other, a Dunkin Doughnuts bag enclosed firmly between his teeth.

"So… what'd ya bring me?" I asked, choking out my words through the progressing, but still continuous bout of bacterial laryngitis that had put me in this hospital to begin with.

"Oh you know, just some of your old knitting patterns, oh and I went to the store to pick up that denture cream you like so much, and don't worry, I didn't forget your bifocals so that you could be sure to watch Whoopie and Elisabeth argue over the Hot Topics all morning long." He joked with me, mocking my sudden TV interests in a manner that made me grateful; I couldn't even begin to tell you how nice it was to hear somebody talking with me about something other than my health for a change.

Julian truly was a lifesaver, in absolutely every meaning of the word.

Rolling my eyes in an effort to hide my true feelings, I dug into the bag beside me in an effort to identify its real contents; my iPod… well, Brooke's iPod that I had commandeered for myself weeks ago, my journal, a couple of old books and magazines, a few pairs of my favorite sweat pants and some t-shirts… basically all of the essentials and beyond.

"Thanks Julian."My words would have come out as a gasp of appreciation had I still had complete control over my voice.

"Do you have everything that you need?" I nodded quickly, "Good," He smirked, reaching over in an effort to give my hair its characteristic ruffle, taking advantage while he still could I guess, considering it would only be a matter of time until I didn't have any hair to mess up at all.

"I got you some breakfast." He stepped past me, extending a peace offering in the form of a freshly baked muffin towards Brooke, who grabbed at the bag with an exhausted gratitude before she dove into her breakfast in a manner that made it appear as if she hadn't eaten in weeks.

"Thanks," She spluttered upon feeling replenished enough to actually utter the word, her mouth full with an over-sized bite of chocolate chip muffin that she quickly washed down with a generous dose of coffee.

"I got you one too Samson… just in case." I appreciated his effort really did, but as he dangled the second paper bag in front of me, I couldn't help but think that he knew as well as I did that I felt as if my stomach could handle breakfast like it could handle battery acid, and that his purchase had been more wishful thinking than anything.

"You can have it." I winced; the thought alone was enough alone to make me queasy.

"So, who's on the guest list for today?" He changed the subject with a brief nod of acknowledgment that I was indescribably appreciative of before taking the plunge onto the edge of my bed, making himself comfortable in the mattress as he stared upwards towards the television dangling out of the ceiling in front of us.

"Antonio Banderas," The truth of the matter was, I actually had absolutely no idea who was on _The View_'s guest list for the day, I just shot off the first name that popped into my head, and glancing upwards towards the TV, I tried to be as enthusiastic about the prospect of Antonio as Julian seemed to have been, but I was finding it increasingly difficult…

The picture on the television screen had been given me an increasing headache for hours now, but considering I knew that the alternative, talking to Brooke, was likely to give me even more of a headache, I had put up with it, until now that is, as it grew harder and harder to fight…

Luckily for me, I was a great pretender.

But really, it wasn't quite as difficult as one would probably believe, after all, as it turned out; Julian's comedic relief was all that I ever really needed… I just wondered if he was aware of that fact, or just how much it actually meant to me right now.

I held onto every joke as if it would be the last one that I was to ever here, I channeled every instance of laughter escaping from my mouth, just hoping that I'd be able to capture it and hold onto it just in case I ever forgot how to make the motion somewhere down the line…

I did it because I swear if I had to look ahead into the future and see only the hard times that inevitably awaited me, I would go absolutely crazy.

Right now, it's about focusing on the positives, it's about holding onto each passing minute, each passing second even so that whenever I felt like I just wanted to give up, I would remember right now, and I would never forget what it was like to be this ready to fight.

But that didn't mean that it still didn't feel good to make believe alongside Julian that our biggest issue at the moment was the fact that Antonio Banderas, more to Julian's dismay than my own, never made his appearance onto our television screen this morning…

Ugh, I wish.

But like all things in life, I guess, the credits had to roll eventually, and once noon hit alongside a screening of the latest update on the news, spewing their latest stories of death and destruction, I was right back to being in the hospital again, back to being a leukemia patient.

This reality sucks. Can't we just go back to living naively in the other one?

I tried to find something constant to stare at, tried to find something that would remain the same no matter how many times that my eyes lingered across it, but I couldn't help but go back to Julian each time I'd even come close to finding something, watching as he snuck quick peaks downwards towards his watch every couple of seconds or so.

"Got a hot date Julian?"

I was joking, of course, but still, my words seemed to have sparked something deep within the depths of Brooke's mind because her head immediately shot upwards, her eyes widening unexpectedly…

"Julian, that meeting…" Crap, apparently he had had a date… only probably not so hot.

"What meeting?"

"The meeting with those people from the studio, the one for that new movie," Brooke answered my question for him considering the fact that Julian found himself suddenly very busy in his task of pretending as if he had absolutely no idea what Brooke was talking about.

"I'm not going." He told her with a short head nod, crossing his arms across his chest as to assert the fact that this was his final decision.

"But… but you have to go!" I blurted out my insistence before I could even think to stop myself, feeling as a sudden ripple of shame flushed across my face; here we were in day one and I was already ripping people out of their own lives…

I'm not the needy, attention whore type, never have been and probably never will be, so when somebody chooses to put their life on pause strictly on my account, I didn't take to it too well.

"Sam, the only thing that I have to do is to stay here with Brooke, and to stay here with you and to make sure the two of you are okay."

I recognized my attempts as a lost cause, turning towards Brooke and begging her with my eyes to do something about this…

Sighing, she grabbed him tightly around his muscular shoulder – "Can I talk to you for a second?"

He nodded with a sigh, understanding what the course of this conversation was going to be and how little he was going to want to hear about it. He followed her lead as she tugged at him gently towards the hall before closing the door behind her although I had absolutely no idea what she was trying to play at with this one; hadn't she'd learned the valuable lesson about how thin these walls were when I had overheard my doctor whispering about my cancer diagnosis even through the barrier of sleep.

For a very quick second, there was silence followed by a shuffle or two as the two arranged themselves strategically around each other.

I heard Brooke's voice first.

"Don't do this Julian. Don't stop your life because of everything that's happening with Sam right now. We need to carry on with our lives as best as we can and we need to do it for Sam… Besides, you know as well as I do that she would absolutely kill you for simply just rolling over and hitting the pause button."

Truth,

"I don't think I can do this Brooke," He sounded close to tears, a factor that I immediately blamed myself for, "Ever since… every since this morning, every time I walk out of this damn door, I'm afraid that I'm going to come back and she's going to be gone."

There was a long pause; so long in fact, that for a while there, I feared Brooke's response got lost somewhere in the fragments of the drywall.

"This sucks Julian, it does, but we're in this fight now so if Sam can do it, then so can we. This is just how we have to do it."

"I guess now it's just about having my ass kicked by a bunch of douche bag movie producers or getting my ass kicked by Sam."I caught myself exposing a rare smile to nobody in particular; that was a true statement if I'd ever heard it.

"And I think that we both know which side of that fight we'd rather be on." There was a trace of laughter in Brooke's voice; a rarity these days, although it still sounded like music every time it was exposed.

"Yeah…" Julian faded, but his tone was once again serious, no hint of his humorous disposition left, "Yeah, Sam is one hell of a fighter isn't she?"

"That she is," Brooke agreed easily, "Which is why we'll both be fine for the few hours that you'll be gone. I'm reliving you of your duties as us Davis girls' knight in shining armor… for now anyway."

Towards the doorway, I could hear the doorknob rattling once again with the threat of opening, and I spent the last millisecond that I knew I had before Brooke and Julian's reappearance to arrange myself inconspicuously trying to pretend as if I wasn't just listening.

It was just as I was settling back down against the mattress that Julian burst through the door, leading Brooke as he made his way instantly towards my side, bending over and leading me into a firm hug which I returned enthusiastically, clutching with the strongest grip that I could manage against the fabric of his shirt.

"I guess it's two against one here." I nodded my agreement with that fact against his shoulder, "Try not to give all of those doctors any grief, alright? You'll do great."

Pulling away, I displayed the most confident look that I could possibly manage on my face.

"I know,"

"I'll try to be back here before you wake up from your surgery… this meeting shouldn't take too long."

"Well in that case if you're not, then I'm holding against you." I joked, playing against his initial fears towards his departure to help motivate him to go.

"Keep that chin up kid, okay?"

"I will." I nodded in my promise, his hands clutching onto mine as long as his reach could possibly extend as he stood from my bed and made his way over towards Brooke, managing about three steps backwards until our palms fell from each other's lazily at our sides.

"Call me when she gets out?"I heard him extend the inquiry to Brooke as if he wouldn't be the first person receiving a phone call.

"I will, I promise."

Unable to contain my reaction, I smiled as I watched creepily from the corner, Brooke and Julian's bodies make contact against each other's in a close embrace, Julian rocking Brooke slightly from side to side for several seconds as she took the invitation to move closer; resting her chin against his shoulder, inhaling deeply against his scent as her eyes automatically slide closed with the desperately needed comfort.

"You don't want to be late." She whispered into the air after she had taken her effective moment.

"You'll be okay?" He asked one more time for insurance purposes.

"I'll be okay."

"How about you Sam," He turned towards me, "You'll be okay?" I gave a firm nod; as assuring as I could be.

"Don't worry," I promised him, "I'll look after her."

"That's my girl." He flashed me his million dollar smile, his face glistening briefly before it turned away from me, leaving through the door it seemed as if he had just walked into.

And then there were two…

"Do you need anything?" The second that Julian was completely out of sight, Brooke turned her full attention back onto me, but I just quickly shook my head.

"I've got everything I need right here." I hope she didn't think that I only meant the backpack full of goodies that Julian had just brought me either.

"Good," She nodded, telling me that she had gotten the point, "How are you feeling? Any better than before?"

"Yeah…" I started the lie, but I'd cut myself off abruptly…

Actually, I didn't feel better, in fact, if anything, I only felt worse. My head was pounding at the temples to the point that the room had begun to spin, and that lingering dull pain localized at my hipbones from yesterday's bone marrow aspiration seemed to have finally start spreading across my entire body…

Of course, I knew that that wasn't exactly what she had meant when she'd asked me how I was feeling. After all, it has been a few hours since my diagnosis now - okay, so I won't pretend as if I didn't know that it has been four hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty two seconds since my diagnose – but the point was, it's been just as long, if not longer since I'd chosen to talk to Brooke about what was going on with me as well.

There were so many things to say, so many things that we had to talk about, yet every time I so much as opened up my mouth, I couldn't seem to find the words.

"Actually…" Brooke's shoulders rose, her attention flaring as I felt my emotions, my feelings slowly begin to slide up my throat in the prospect of absolutely spilling my guts… "I – "

"Sam?" The words were cut off so abruptly that I'd choked on them before losing them in an instant.

In our alertness, Brooke and my heads snapped towards the source of the noise; Dr. Miller standing intimidating within the doorway…

Instinctually, my eyes darted towards the clock hanging above the wall… Dr. Miller had given Brooke and I a clearly scheduled 12:30 start time for the surgery designated to give me what was best described as a third arm to carry me through chemotherapy treatments, but there was no way that that time could have actually arrived this quickly…

It was only 12:11 and she had told me 12:30.

Suddenly, I was not feeling as ready as I had previously thought that I was.

"Are you ready to go Sam?" I felt like a little kid again as I attempted to press my body firmer against my mattress in an effort to positively sink into it while simultaneously contorting my face into an expression that I could only hope wouldn't show the fact that I was currently scared shitless.

I didn't remember nodding my head in my response, but I must have, because in an instant, there was a sudden commotion so abrupt I struggled to breathe as what seemed like a small army shuffled into the room, struggling to pull a gurney destined to transport me alongside of them.

Here's a little bit of hospital humor for you: How many doctors does it take to manage a stretcher?

"Can't I just walk there?" I grumbled miserably, not particularly meaning to vent my frustrations out onto the doctor who was merely trying to safe my life. But still, I might have had cancer, but I also had two perfectly good legs.

I couldn't help but get a sense that the only reason they really didn't want me motile was because they knew that once I really got to walking, I probably would have high-tailed my ass straight out of this stupid hospital.

"Sorry kid," My face was laced with disappointment, a feature that must have been quite noticeable to the doctor because she retreated her initial statement with the effort to strike up a deal almost instantly, "I might be able to get you into a wheelchair though."

My head perked up with approval; I knew that I would get her to bend. Hell, at this point, I could probably get away with murder for all that it was worth.

"I'll be right back, alright." I nodded as she about-faced, calling off the troops in her wake as she exited the room in her search for this aforementioned wheelchair.

The second that she was out of the room, Brooke was out of the door, picking up on her previously removed position as head of the hospital room as she began gathering materials up from across the room, evaluating them as things that I might need on my journey as if I were going away on some extended vacation rather than simply going up into a surgery that we were told should last maybe an hour at most.

"Do you want this Sam?" She turned towards me, holding up one of the magazines that I had found myself picking through a little bit earlier this morning… Poor Brooke; I think that she was more nervous than I was.

"I don't think that I've quite acquired the skill of reading while unconscious yet Brooke… you're gonna have to give me at least a few weeks to practice."

She paused in my sarcasm, perhaps realizing exactly what she had just asked of me.

"Right, right," She nodded, throwing the magazine back down onto the floor before she began spinning in exaggerated circles, "How about this?"

My eyes tilted back up towards her; between her hands she gripped my Beowulf book from Haley's English class firmly between each of her hands.

"I'm going to be okay Brooke."I told her, fearing that I had chosen the word string of words when I saw her shoulders sink suddenly, her entire body seemingly drooping in my words as they stopped her dead in tracks.

"Of course you are."Her face set underneath the light suddenly in a manner that exaggerated her exhaustion, the fact that she looked as if she had just aged ten years in twenty four hours…

I knew that her tank was running on empty at this point; surviving by means of mere fumes, generated from the fuel of her unshed tear, but I needed to keep her going; the two of kept each other going so that I knew if we fell, we would fall together.

"Okay Sam, ride's here." She'd returned quicker than I ever would have wanted, maneuvering an empty wheelchair towards my bedside before her and Brooke helped me slowly into a standing position, never releasing my arms as they slowly lowered me into the chair below.

"Stay with me?" I turned up towards Brooke once I was secure, whispering so that only she would be able to hear me.

"I wouldn't have it any other way." She nodded in her assurance, motioning to seal the deal with the extending of her hand which I accepted instantly, holding onto the spaces between her fingers with what would probably be considered much more force than was actually necessary…

But the second we'd become an interchangeable unit, it seemed to be the signal for hitting the fast forward button or something, because before I'd known it, I had been moved from my room, down the length of the hall, and into a brave new world of bright lights and white walls that blended together so that it looked like one of those padded rooms they locked psycho's away in, reinforcing the idea that I'd had in my head for a long time now that I had finally simply gone crazy.

"Okay Sam, do you think that you can just stand up for us real quick and we'll help you onto the bed over here, okay?"I nodded, but the motion became frantic when Brooke's hand temporarily dislodged from my own.

Maybe we can just take a quick detour, give this a quick minute or two… we didn't have to do this right away, did we?

Jesus Christ I'm not ready for this, I can't do this… somebody please come down here and save me. Somebody? Anybody? Please.

It felt as if one hundred pairs of hands were grabbing at me all at once, lifting me with such gentle touches I could have been floating before lowering me gently down onto a bed that felt as if it were made from a solid sheet of metal.

In the journey, I had lost sight of Brooke in her entirety. Where did she go? There was no way in hell that I could do this without her…

"Sam, we're going to give you the anesthetic now, you're not going to feel it at all, it's just going to go straight into your IV line. In a few seconds, you're going to feel a little bit groggy, but that's okay, it's totally normal, okay?"

No, no I didn't want this anymore… No more medicine, no more hospitals, I just wanted… I just want… wait… what the hell was I just talking about?

It was strange, as if somebody had just flipped a light switch making it so that I could no longer so much as string two thoughts together.

My eyelids fell heavily downwards until I could only hold them open about half way, barely distinguishing a blurry finger as it suddenly came into my line of vision, slowly defogging, taking shape right in front of my very eyes – Brooke.

Her mere presence made me physically relax underneath the strain of anesthesia; Brooke always managing to make me feel better no matter what horrors of reality that I was preparing to face, because I knew that if we had to confront them, we would do so together.

"Brooke…" My words slurred over unceremoniously, drunk off of the sedatives flooding through my veins as I attempted desperately to fight my way back into focus, grateful as she complied to my needs by leaning closer into me so that I could make out the soft details of her face, feel the gentle hand clasping around my own, the other reaching up to lace between the stands of my hair.

"You'll be fine." Her voice whispered between my ears, flooding my body, providing it with warmth at every stop.

"I'll be fine."

"I know," She nodded in her confirmation, my eyes focusing just long enough to catch the watery smile that lingered in response, "And I'm going to be right at your side waiting for you when you wake up, I promise."

"K," It was the one thing that my brain could process and simultaneously release from my mouth as my eyelids continued to grow heavier and heavier by the second.

"I'll see you when you get out then."

"Yeah," I muttered back, only vaguely feeling it as she leaned forward and kissed the side of my head gently before ultimately pulling her way, but truly feeling it as her hand tugged gently at my own before releasing; my security blanket gone, the little comfort that I actually had left suddenly replaced by pure fear.

Putting up a vague struggle, I grasped fruitlessly for Brooke, coming up with nothing but air as my hand aimlessly closed around nothing but air until I didn't even have enough energy to put up a fight.

A million different faces, each one as unrecognizable as the last were hovering over me; I struggled to identify them underneath a sea of identical masks and sterile gowns, but to me they all looked exactly the same; strangers.

"You're in good hands Sam. We'll see you in about an hour."

I knew that voice… Why did I know that voice?

"Now just try and count backwards from ten for me Sam." I felt a gentle pressure against my face, over-powered by the infiltrating smell of plastic, the familiar rush of cool air.

I tried to oblige to the wishes of the voice hovering above me so that in my haze of confusion, for a second there I thought it was God himself, but I struggled to reach the number eight in my countdown; just as quickly as the thought had been there, feeling it fade into complete oblivion.

* * *

**HALEY**

I hate Tuesdays…

Wanna know why I hate Tuesdays? Well, I'm gonna tell you why, even if you don't.

The way the class rotation worked here at Tree Hill High School, Tuesdays just so happened to be the day that I was conveniently scheduled to be in class for six straight periods in a row.

And that, just in case you didn't know, was the entire day.

The mere idea of this alone was enough to get my head spinning to the point that I feared its separation from my neck, but it was only made worse due to the fact that I was forced to spend the very last period of the day with a group of highly incompetent freshman who probably wouldn't even know what the word literature meant if it fell from the sky and knocked them straight across their damn heads.

I was sitting with a vague attention at my desk, rapping the eraser of my pencil obnoxiously against the my wooden desk and glancing across my room full of students once only every couple of minutes or so as they embellished deep within their final test on _To Kill A Mockingbird_, an exam I guaranteed you, that at least half of them would fail.

I guess that technically speaking, I should have been watching every last one of those kids like a hawk, prowling for the wandering eyes that they have been previously proven to have, but I couldn't find it in me to do it; the truth was, my heart just wasn't into it; a fact that I was more than certain my students had picked up on throughout the course of the day.

I guess that they should probably just take advantage of the fact that I was giving them a free-bee for today.

As I'd expected, third period English Literature class both came and went without too much of a difference really, unless of course, you counted Sam's absence as just as much as a monumental difference as I did…

I had had the lecture prepared weeks ago; a nice little lesson in which I'd planned to delve into symbolism and metaphor and all of that other crap that seemed completely worthless to me now until their heads positively fell off, but the problem was, every time I actually started to get somewhere with it, my eyes would subconsciously wander over towards Sam's desk, serving to me a vicious reminder as to why it was currently empty.

In the long run, I had ended up given them, as well as nearly every other one of my classes for the day, a period-long study hall..

And honestly, I've heard rumors that _I_ was the hardest teacher in the school…

But besides my own personal struggles, I will tell you this; you would be surprised to see just how fast it was that news managed to spread across this town, especially within the hallways of this particular building…

I'll swear to it, half of Tree Hill High School knew that Sam had been admitted into the hospital while Julian was still carrying her out of the front door and into the car, and of course, being as it wasn't exactly a secret that Sam's mother was my best friend, I had been given the burden that I'd never actually volunteered for to begin with, of confirming the rumors, the prognosis.

And for that, my goal of the day was merely to keep my mouth shut.

It was almost funny, in a crude sort of way I guess, to think about it now; I was willing to bet you that if you had asked around two days ago, half of the people in this school wouldn't have even been able to tell you who Samantha Walker was.

How ironic that she had suddenly become the commodity that they now couldn't stop talking about.

I should lace this into one of my English lessons somewhere… Ugh.

"Mrs. Scott?" My thoughts were abruptly interrupted in a form of a knock at my classroom door, reality sweeping back through me as all of the heads within the room gradually turned over their shoulders towards the source of the disturbance.

It was the new secretary that had recently been hired; an intern, a college kid on break just looking for a bit of extra cash, a girl who had no idea that her hiring had absolutely everything to do with budget cuts and nothing to do with her competency…

Megan, the girl's name was, and I guess that her job description had suddenly lengthened to include carrier pigeon, because she was standing with a determined stance that clearly indicated her intentions of delivering some sort of message.

"Keep taking your tests!" I snapped unnecessarily to my kids, my voice enough to have them at least pretend to go back to their exam papers although I knew that the instant my back was turned, they would gradually lean closer and closer into the door in an effort to hear what this unexpected delivery was all about.

"There's a phone call for you in the office. It's Brooke Davis; she says that it's important." She dropped her voice the second that I arrived within the boundary of the doorframe, but secrecy wasn't a problem that I was particularly focused on at the moment, and neither, apparently, was leaving an entire classroom full of test-taking, notoriously cheating students alone by themselves, because the second that those words had escaped out of that woman's mouth, I was out of the door, embarking on a full-on sprint down the length of the hallway in an effort to get to Brooke faster…

I barged through the door leading into the main office so abruptly and harshly that it bounced off of the concrete wall layered behind it, creating a resounding bang that I noticed through the corner of my eye, gave the attendance woman sitting behind her desk a rather large shock.

Forcing myself to ignore her, I streamlined straight into the teacher's lounge; I did, after all, have my own dilemma to face.

"Brooke!" I blurted, my voice laced with much more urgency than I would have liked, "What happened?"

"Haley…" She chocked so that I could tell in an instant that she had been desperately trying to keep a firm composure, and now, she was positively bursting at the seams.

"Brooke, what's wrong?" I begged for a rapid answer, the volume within my voice slowly elevating as the panic began to settle, "Is it Sam? Brooke, how's Sam? Where's Sam?"

"She's in surgery."

"What?" I blurted uncontrollably, the news coming as more of a shock than I was able to control.

"It's cancer Haley… It's leukemia. The tests all confirmed it; the doctor came in to talk to us this morning."

"Oh my God…" I felt the words bubble off of my lips before I had the opportunity to remember that Brooke needed my support right now, not for me to probably make everything worse with my abrupt, one-worded responses.

I mean, last night when I had been on the phone with Peyton, when she had told me of the possibility… well let's just say that I had been foolish enough to actually manage to convince myself that that couldn't be true, that it was simply impossible…

But now I was starting to think that that just made it all even harder when I found out that it was.

What do I do now? What do I say to her? How the hell am I supposed to comfort this woman, my best friend, as she struggled to comprehend the fact that she was being forced to help her daughter claw her way out of a potential death sentence?

"Brooke, don't move," I settled on, "I'll be right there."

* * *

I transformed from the roll of teacher to that of navigator in a heartbeat, trying to use the vague directions that Brooke had relayed to me via multiple text messages to get to Sam's room, getting lost more times than I would ever care to admit before finally finding my way.

I approached the doorway with caution; the first thing that I noticed was the flurry of motion; Brooke pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…

The second thing that I noticed was that she was alone.

For a brief moment, her endless motions had me hypnotized, transporting me straight back towards a time that wasn't so long ago as we all might think when I had seen her in this exact same position, clutching for information towards an infant that she had hardly known but loved all the same, as she struggled through an open heart surgery that, at the time, I had believed was actually more traumatic to Brooke than it had been to poor Angie.

Unfortunately for us all, this was just one of those déjà vu moments that I only prayed we would never have to have.

"Digging a trench Brooke?" I announced my presence with a forced humor in an effort to lighten the mood, watching as Brooke took an abrupt halt before turning to face me, her face molded into a look of permanent, pure anguish.

I struggled to see such a beautiful, such a strong woman look so broken, so defeated, so in my attempt to turn it around at least as best as I could, I did what I did best; I rushed the rest of the distance into the room, gathered her up into my arms, and gave her a safe place locked inside of my embrace.

For several minutes I said nothing; instead, I chose to merely hold her, to allow her to let it all out and sob into my chest until I was finally convinced that she was at least stable enough to walk a couple of steps forward.

"Here Brooke, sit…" I held her shoulders firmly, strategically moving in an effort to deposit her downwards onto Sam's empty bed.

"Brooke…" I sighed heavily after a brief pause in which I'd invited myself to sit into the chair directly across from Brooke, positioning myself strategically so that we were both eye-level, "What's going on?"

I felt bad interrogating her when really, my only duties were to merely provide comfort, but I was desperate for answers.

The doctor… she came back to see us this morning." Brooke hiccupped, wiping the final tears from underneath her eyes, "She had the results of this… of this test that Sam had done yesterday." She spoke slowly through lingering sobs, her voice heavy with despair, "It's called acute… acute something, it begins with an "M", shit."

Making a small fist, Brooke began pounding the appendage against her own forehead, literally trying to smack the information from her head down out of her mouth so that I immediately felt my heart ache for her.

"Myelogenous," She yelled sharply the instant she'd found the word, "It's called acute myelogenous leukemia… It's a… it's a blood cancer." The word lingered on her tongue, stung like acid in a manner so painful, it radiated onto me.

"Brooke, I…" My sentence faded into nothingness, I had absolutely no idea what to say, "I'm sorry."

My response was mediocre at best, but something told me that Brooke wasn't holding onto specifics too tightly, or even onto my words at all, because she just shook her head continuously back and forth, her heel tapping at double time against the floor as she continued to talk with no indication that she had heard me at all.

"It… it has something to do with her white blood cells, something about how her body isn't making them properly so that they're not maturing or… or something… I don't… I'm not really sure… Jesus, I don't even know!" Tears of frustration stung at the corners of her eyes as she lifted one of the pillows from Sam's empty bed and chucked it clear across the room where it hit the wall before landing with a dull plop motionless across the floor.

That was my cue; opening my arms again, I allowed for Brooke to fall right into them.

"It will be okay Brooke, she will be okay… Everything is going to turn out alright in the end, you'll see." I rubbed circles across her back, whispered to her my words of encouragement even though I wasn't so sure that I actually believed them myself…

There were still so many things to be done, so many uncertainties to be faced, so many questions to be answered…

"Brooke?" I asked into the air, feeling as she pulled away from me and stared delicately into my own; brown matching swollen and red. "Why is Sam in surgery, Brooke?"

I moved forward slowly, watching ass he shrugged, indicative of the fact that she probably knew just about as much about Sam's current condition as I did; but I wasn't sure why I should have been expecting anything more; with all of the information that Brooke had been delivered this morning, I was surprised that it still held the capacity of so much as speech at this point…

Or even tears…

"She's getting this…this catheter thing… um… a Hickman line, I think they called it. I don't know, basically what I got out of it was that it's just this sort of central line that they can leave in during all of her treatments so that she can get all of her medication and stuff without needing to be poked and prodded with needles every time… The doctor told us that it shouldn't take too long, she's already been in there for almost an hour though."

The information was a comfort; a confirmation that Sam hadn't been in surgery because of some dire, life-threatening predicament that she had found herself in as I had previously believed, but at the same time, Brooke's words sparked in me a revelation, one that delivered an entirely different set of problems onto me.

"Brooke, you've been alone for almost an hour now?" I felt suddenly terrible; why the hell hadn't she called me sooner?

Much to my dismay, my words seemed to have been interpreted as an accusation; opening the temperamental floodgates behind Brooke's eyes in an instant so that all of the hard work that I had put into calming her down was rendered useless within seconds.

"Julian… he had to go to a meeting for work, and after Sam and I practically forced him out of the door I couldn't call him back... And then you were at school and Peyton had those parent-teacher conferences at Sawyer's daycare… I just didn't, I didn't want to…"

"Hey, Brooke, listen to me," I spoke forcefully, my hands lingering upon her shoulders as our eyes locked, "I'm going to let you know right now that you can call me for anything whenever you need it… even though you should have already known that, alright? I don't care when, where, why, whatever… Brooke, I'm here for you and I'm here for Sam… I know you Brooke, which is why I'm telling you not to try to do this all by yourself."

"Okay…" She nodded, although still slightly hesitant despite the fact that she straightened her spine and stood in an effort to regain some of that lost composure that lost strength…

"She's a fighter that one," I muttered, more to myself than anybody else, "She'll do good, she'll do real good."

But will she do good enough? I couldn't seem to get that question out of my head, although I would never dare say it out loud.

"I know," Brooke took the words to heart, her voice barely above a whisper indicating to me that we were clearly both thinking the same exact thing; that bold little side-thought that neither of us dared to so much as utter, let alone admit to.

"And you know Brooke, I know that you're going to try to play the modesty card with this one, but Sam really is an amazing kid, and a lot of that has to do with you…" I praised Sam via Brooke, hoping to improve her moral which had just been kicked to the ground and beaten to within an inch of its life…

"Thanks Hales," Her cheeks flushed, allowing the compliment to swoop over her in the most discrete manner she possibly could, "You know, not only for this, but for everything… If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have even met her."

"Eh, I had a feeling that you guys would work out all along," I waved her off, "You two are like freaking book-ends." I laughed cautiously, reaching out in an effort to give her shoulder a playful nudge…

And as it turned out, my efforts to distract Brooke had worked like a charm; I knew they would, any decent mother would have jumped onto an opportunity to gush over her kid to the point that she'd even forget to count the minutes until a doctor was scheduled to come out and update her about how her daughter's surgery went…

In fact, they'd worked so well that by the time the doctor actually had come back into the small hospital room, dressed down in fresh, light blue scrubs and a tightly wound surgical cap, Brooke looked almost surprised to see her.

"Dr. Miller," She wiped the distraction off of her face in an instant, her focus turned in its completeness onto the woman standing in front of her as she jumped to her feet and blew past me, leaving me to linger behind, fighting behind the currents she'd created in her wake she had been moving so quickly.

"This is my friend, Haley Scott," She offered a quick introduction between the two of us, previously unknown to each other, now mentally preparing to get to know one another more than extremely well.

"How'd it go?" Brooke opened her mouth and asked the question before I so much had the opportunity to extend my hand outwards towards the doctor's to shake it.

"She did just fine Brooke, everything ran smoothly." I could literally see the transition in Brooke's body, in her posture, as a thousand pound weight was literally lifted right off of her shoulders in response to the best news that she had heard all day. "We're going to keep her in the Recovery Unit for at least another hour or two though, if you'd like to sit with her while she's up there.

"Can I?" Her face glowed at the mere suggestion.

"Of course," The doctor nodded, practically having to run after Brooke who'd already had one foot out of the door I think before the doctor had so much as made the suggestion, but she retreated, backing off only slightly in order to turn and face me.

I could see that familiar look deep within the pits of her eyes; she was hesitant to leave me alone… One day, Brooke Davis will learn to put her own needs before that of others, but I guess that day was not today… I guess I'll just have to make it easier on her and let her know that I understood that Sam was her number one priority right now, I wasn't about to get offended that she was prepared to ditch me for her daughter who'd just gotten out of surgery.

"Go," I made the decision for her, adding a sense of sternness to my words so that I knew that she knew that I meant what I said, "I'll hold down the fort over here… until you get back anyway." Leaning forward to prove a point, I dug through my bag briefly before pulling out a thick folder from somewhere within its depths, "I've got papers to grade anyway."

Moving inwards from the doorway, she barreled towards me, throwing her arms quickly around my neck, hitting me so hard that it almost felt like I'd just been struck by an 18-Wheeler.

"Thank you Haley,"

She didn't linger, she couldn't linger, instead she pulled away from me just as quickly as she arrived; but I knew just as well as I did that she had somewhere that she needed to be and somebody that she needed to be with.

I followed her only half of the way out the door, my eyes lingering on her until she'd disappeared and I was left staring absentmindedly at the empty hallway for a free brief minutes before I practically forced myself to fall back into my seat, where I opened the folder I'd been clutching, displaying its contents in a clear indication of my beginning playing the notorious waiting game…

A game that I had the slightest feeling, I better start getting used to playing.


	8. Lead Us Through the Night Part 2

Chapter 8: Lead Us Through the Night (Part II)

**Tuesday, November 1****st****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

Making my way down the seemingly endless halls that adorned every corridor and passage of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, I found myself dragging my feet surprisingly slowly across the solid tile so that my sneakers squeaked obnoxiously with every step that I took.

I begged myself to stay occupied, tried desperately to prevent myself to forget about where I was and what I was doing here so that when I went into that back room, and I saw Sam, I wouldn't already be as much as a nervous wreck as I knew I would become the second that I laid eyes on her.

I found myself looking for absolutely everything and anything that could possibly keep my mind straying towards the horrors that I just knew awaited me at the other end of this hall.

My eyes remained pointed downwards throughout the entirety of our journey; the retinas automatically organizing each colorful tile as they danced at even paces underneath my feet, separating the blue from the purple from the green to the pink…

The stupid pattern didn't even match.

Do you remember that old game? The one that absolutely every single person played when they were a little kid, before imagination was a thing of the past, before it was encouraged rather than scorned upon?

Don't step on the blue tiles or else you will be eaten by sharks. Make sure that you jump over the green or risk boiling alive in hot lava…

Each colored floor panel had its own designated horrifically agonizing death awaiting for you should you be unfortunate enough to stumble across it.

Don't step on the purple or you'll be eaten alive from the inside out with guilt as you watched your child fight cancer.

It looks like I must have slipped up somewhere down the road.

A shiver shot involuntarily up the length of my spine, my body's physical indication that our journey was coming to a quick end as we approached a set of automatic double doors with the ominous label "Recovery" written out in dark, bold letters across it.

The doors swung open slowly upon our presence, and I glided onwards, taking only a brief moment of hesitation as my body adjusted to the sudden change in surroundings…

I wasn't really sure why, but before this, I had for some reason been completely convinced that Sam was the only person that would be in this ward, that she was the only person that was in this hospital; stupid, I know, but what can I say?

I know this is going to sound strange, but when I approached rows and rows of beds, each packed with patients and those that they loved, I actually felt relieved… this reminder that Sam wasn't, that I wasn't alone in all of this was nothing short of a comfort.

You can call it instinct, or intuition, or whatever the hell you want, but I'd quickly found myself unconsciously carrying myself forwards without so much as a sense of direction from this doctor towards the exact spot that I knew Sam to be at.

Power-walking up and down the aisles, I peered frantically through every crack in every drawn curtain, just looking for that first glimpse.

I'd found her within the first minute of my search; crammed into a corner wall unit, separated by a cinderblock wall on one side, and a thin divider that looked more like a shower curtain than anything else, on the other…

A quiet lingered through the air as I stepped through, enhanced by Sam's continuous unconsciousness so that although I knew I'd taken a mere step forward, I still felt as if I'd might as well had just run a damn marathon.

"Ms. Davis," The doctor, close at my heels despite my having unexpectedly taken off from her at nothing short of a run, approached me from behind, a cushioned folding chair clutched between her hands that she opened at the head of Sam's bed for my apparent use, "She'll probably be asleep for a little while longer if you'd like to make yourself comfortable."

"Thank you," I choked, hoping she'd understand from the sheer emotion lingering behind such a tiny sentence that my gratitude extended way beyond her opening up a folding chair for me.

"I'll give you two some time; if you need anything, you can just give me or one of the nurses a call, the button is right over here on the side of Sam's bed." She indicated towards the loud, red widget embedded into the guardrails aligning Sam's hospital bed; a small cartoon of a tiny nurse etched within it, indicative of its use.

I mustered what I could; my eyes lingering on the catching red, sticking out against a sea of white, and nodded my head, indicating to her that I had at the very least heard what she'd said before she excused herself; backing out of the room and leaving me alone.

She had done everything that she could for Sam. Now it was my turn.

My eyes slid up the length of Sam's still form, pausing only when my gaze irreversibly latched onto the damage that the surgery that had left her in this predicament to begin with…

Shifting in my seat, I glanced downwards for a better look, my fingers brushing to sweep aside the bright blue hospital johnnie that she wore, eliminating the fabric barrier and exposing the skin underneath.

Scrunching my face, I tried desperately to suppress the churning in my stomach towards the small line of stitches; red and inflamed, a natural reaction of her faulty immune system, as they laced poetically around a small tube, the diameter of a pencil, if that, that forked off at its junction point, sprouting a three-pronged, color-coded branch that hung limply down the length of her chest.

It was strange, but the only thing that I could really think of were those annoying AV wires that always got tangled up around each other that I always used to plug into the back of my television set at home –

The yellow wire is designated for blood draws, red and white for chemo.

Without even truly meaning to do so, I lowered my hand against the slightly raised skin against her chest where the port had ultimately crossed the barrier between external and in. As my fingers dance across the sterile wound, lace the tubing like strands of hair, my palm falls precariously above her heart so that I can feel it beating gently through her thin chest and against my palm.

Her body shifted suddenly against my touch, my prying eyes, and I had been so concentrated on the scene in front of me, that the shift in its constant through me off slightly, forced me to stagger backwards, my hand retreating as Sam fought through her veil of unconsciousness, back towards the open universe.

I edged closer just as her eyelids began fluttering.

"Sam… Hey Sam, it's Brooke. The surgery is all over, it went fine. You did great. I'm so proud of you honey." I praised her back into the world of the living, merciless in my attempt to rip her from a painless existence back to one in which she was sick.

"Come on Sam, wake up for me now." I grabbed at her left hand, cradling it between both of my own as she began to physically claw against it, pulling herself back through the jet-throws of sleep.

"Hey," She finally whispered up towards me although her eyes remained firmly closed, "How does it look?" Her voice was laden with a deadly combination of both pain killers and sedatives so that I had a difficult time distinguishing between even the simplest of questions.

"How does it feel?" I shot back; a question for a question.

Below my gaze, her shoulders gave a miniscule twitch in the form of a shrug as she swallowed hard, my eyes following the bulge of bile that slid slowly down her throat before ultimately resting on the space right below it where a foreign tube hidden underneath several layers of skin and muscles tissue rose and fell in time with the muscular contraction.

"It feels weird." She tilted her chin downwards, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the offending object, ultimately coming up empty as she struggled to so much as lift her shoulder blades off of the cushioned mattress below her.

Desperate, I tried to put myself into her mind, tried to imagine being in her position so that maybe I could understand exactly what she meant when she gave me vague answers such as "it feels weird" the problem was, I couldn't so much as wrap my head around the concept of just what the hell Sam was going through right now.

"Are you in any pain at all?" My number one priority was ultimately this; to find out whether or not Sam was currently hurting, and, if she was, to end that pain by any means possible, as thoroughly impossible as that may seem to somebody who has never been a mother before.

She shook her head gently from side to side, but I would have felt much better about her answer had it been a little bit more convincing.

Taking a deep breath, she sighed against the world as it slowly began to come back into focus again, and I watched, unable to do anything to help as she made a failed attempt to shift into a more comfortable position against her mattress, realizing this mistake for what it was, just a little bit too late.

Her face paled so suddenly, I'd missed the transition, through her lips, a sharp inward hiss escaped in response to the unexpected pain as she let her body simply drop, determining that a bit of discomfort was a wiling alternative to facing that kind of pain again.

My muscles lifted me up and out of my chair before my brain even had time to tell them to so that before I knew it, I was at Sam's side again.

"Hey, are you okay?" But she wouldn't even look up at me. "Hey," I asked her again, my voice unexpectedly sterner the second time around, forcing her chin to tilt up until our eyes met, "You can talk to me you know, Sam."

There was a pregnant pause; an extended period of silence that seemed to have lasted forever; month's worth of days wrapping around a single moment in which her face set with a neutral stone, until slowly but surely, she allowed her solid exterior to crack and dissolve all around her, the features adorning her face literally sliding down the skin as she broke down into extended sobs.

"It hurts,"

I knew that it did, I knew that it had to have, and I also knew this day, this hell that we'd found ourselves suddenly trapped in was bound to have caught up to her eventually.

I wanted nothing more than to pull her into my arms, to hold onto her as tightly as I could, imprint the outline of her body against my own so that should I lose it in its physical presence somewhere down the line, I would always have at least the memory with me…

But the thought of hurting her terrified me, creating an inner conflict that literally ate me alive.

So I resolved it in the only manner that I could think of; I compromised with myself, maneuvering my body into the most uncomfortable position known to man because I knew that it was the only one that would have allowed Sam to bury her face into my shoulder and cry.

But the thing that really got to me was the fact that I knew that I could have stayed in this spot all damn day if that's what I had to do.

"Shh, you're alright now, I'm right here." I held onto her tightly, her face buried so deeply into my shoulder that her tears drenched through the fabric of my shirt, seeping through and drenching the skin below.

"I don't think that I can do this Brooke." She absorbed the feelings between our bodies before ultimately spilling her guts, but once she did all I could think to do was hold onto her even tighter, "What if I can't do this?"

Her tear-filled eyes tilted up towards me, desperate for the answers that I wasn't exactly sure that I had myself.

"You can do this Sam, and you wanna know how I know that?" She nodded amidst a sniffle as tears clogged at the back of her throat, "Because you are strong and you're a fighter, and you're gonna have me and Julian and Peyton and Haley and so many other people with you to remind you that you can, even on those days that you think you can't, okay?"

"Okay," She hiccupped against me, the vibrations reverberating onto my own body as her tears began to settle slowly before stopping completely.

I gave her several minutes to wallow, keeping silent in an effort to allow her the opportunity to ease herself into this brand new lifestyle, her body gradually digging deeper and deeper into my own with each passing second, eager for the contact so that when she finally did pull away and relax once again against her mattress, I couldn't help but wish she'd stayed; I wasn't taking advantage of moments like this between us anymore.

Relaxing against the mattress, I watched as she clutched at her shoulder, desperate to ease the pain through a steep yawn.

"Do you want me to go get the nurse?" She shook her head forcefully the second the question was out of my mouth.

"No, I'll be okay." Leaning further backwards against her pillow, her eyes sliding half-lidded, both of us finally understanding of just how exhausting crying could be now that it was starting to become a habit.

"Sleep Sam, you don't have to stay awake just to keep me entertained." I informed her through a small grin that emerged out of the corner of my mouth as she agreed with me in the form of a compliant nod.

"Wake me up before they come in to bring me back to my room?"

"Of course I will," I promised her, securing my position once again firmly at her hand as her eyelids slowly slid closed; the weight of the world finally forcing them down completely.

Marking my refusal to leave her side, I embedded my feet firmly against the ground, ultimately deciding that I was to be the entity of strength throughout all of this, no matter how hard exhaustion tried to tempt me away, or how much I wanted to fidget nervously underneath the pressure of the wait that I would be expected to, and willing to carry out until all of this finally turned around.

I was never very good at being the type of person that sat around all day in waiting. I had a very strong tendency to get extremely stir crazy extremely quickly upon being caged up like a wild animal.

But times change as much as circumstances do, that much I now knew, and by the looks of things, well the days are going to start getting shorter while the sleepless nights only get longer, and considering that there is not much more I can do other than carry on, well I was going to have to start becoming that person, and I was going to have to become her fast.

* * *

**JULIAN**

When I finally got back to the hospital, out of breath and panting mind you from having just sprinted up six flights of stairs in my eagerness to get back to Sam and Brooke as quickly as hospital, you could imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner into Sam's room only to find Haley instead.

Now don't get me wrong here, I like Haley and all, it's just that there were really only two people in the entire world that I wanted to see right now and no offence, but Haley just wasn't either of them.

I wanted Brooke, and I wanted Sam, but most importantly I wanted to know that they were safe, that they were okay, that while I'd spent the past several hours wasting away in a very boring, very wasteful meeting about a movie that I didn't even care about with a boss that I didn't even like, they had made it.

I should have been here. It should have been me with my ass parked firmly in that seat that Haley currently occupied but it hadn't been; instead, I had been inside of some fancy restaurant that I didn't fit within the atmosphere of, eating horderves and salmon as I listened to a group of corporate money hounds debate economics and politics and other things that I didn't really care about before ultimately delivering me with news that I didn't want to hear.

Remind me to skip November 1st when it comes around next year.

I gave a very awkward greeting as I stepped into the room, waving briefly towards Haley before sitting directly across from her where I managed to scrape up the spark notes version about what was currently happening with Brooke, and most importantly, with Sam.

Of course, she knew only slightly more than I had, so the attempt wasn't as successful as I would have liked, but here's what I got out of our conversation; I knew that Sam had gotten out of surgery smoothly just a little over an hour ago, I also knew that Brooke had gone in to go be with her, and finally, I knew that Haley hadn't seen either one of them since.

Now, we wait… again.

I fell into a heavy silence, twiddling my thumbs and praying silently for a swift return, and I guess that somebody upstairs in the big house was finally listening to me today, because not ten minutes after I had dropped down into the seat below me, I was back on my feet as the door clicked open abruptly.

"Hey," I approached cautiously, Haley right behind me as Brooke and Sam resurfaced through the surface of the door.

"Hey," To my surprise, it was Sam that had picked up my response as opposed to Brooke; tilting her head up towards me, searching for my face through half-closed eyelids.

"How'd it go, kiddo?" I asked, watching cautiously as she mustered up all of the energy that she had in her in order to lift her arm and deliver to me, a half-assed thumb up, which I returned to her enthusiastically as she was ushered right past me in an effort to quickly get her situated back onto her bed.

"Hi," Brooke dragged her feet after Sam, mumbling in her exhaustion as she walked right up into my chest where she allowed me to hold onto her greedily for such an extended length of time that by the time we'd let go, Sam was well in her bed, left with only one lone nurse finalizing everything that she needed.

"Sam honey, I'll be back to check up on you in a little bit. I'll be here all night long so if you need anything, you just ask for Mary, okay?" She identified herself with a smile towards Sam as the poor kid used everything that she had inside of her just to return the gesture, so seemingly simple.

"Okay,"

Performing an about face, this woman turned towards us in an effort to begin her long approach, a bright smile still attached across her face so that I couldn't help but wonder how it was that she managed to keep on smiling all the time when she spent all of her days caring over impossibly sick kids…

It was a feat large enough to make even the biggest optimists miserably pessimistic.

Making a mental note to ask her how it was that she managed to accomplish this a little bit later, she stepped in front of us, locking eyes with Brooke as Haley and I stood side by side besides her, flanking her like bookends.

"Ms. Davis, if you need anything…" She redelivered the initial offer towards Brooke as well who, like Sam, couldn't manage much more than an acknowledging head nod which Mary here effectively returned before ducking back out of the room.

To say that I was surprised when Brooke didn't automatically detach herself from my arms and rush to Sam's side the second that the nurse had stopped catering to her needs would have been an understatement.

To say that I was surprised when ultimately, it had been Haley to initiate the first of the migration rounds over towards Sam's bedside would have been even more of an understatement.

Of course, that was how it all happened. I couldn't help but wonder when life's little surprises were going to start shocking me.

"Don't you have school or something?" I heard Sam's voice without actually watching as her lips moved, but it flooded me with relief, my reasoning being that for now, Sam was okay, because when that sarcasm went, well than that's when I really had to start worrying about her.

"Yeah well, teachers get sick days too you know, but I still fully expect to see you in English Lit tomorrow for third period."

"I'll try my hardest, can't make any promises though." I watched her struggle to manage a smile behind her exhaustion; her voice was plagued with the desire to sleep and I knew in an instant that if I had noticed this, then the expertly trained ears of a mother such as Haley and Brooke would have picked up on it as well.

"What are you tired or something?" They communicated swiftly, a relentless comedy act, never ceasing to entertain as Sam mumbled a sort of a non-English response to Haley's comment that I hadn't managed to pick up on, but neither did Haley or Brooke judging by the looks they shot each other.

Sam's eyes were closed before the words had even fully finished escaping her lips and just like that, she was asleep once again… I wondered if this was something that I would have to get used to, I wondered if, as she progressed through the stages of disease, things like this would become more frequent, more apparent…

I could only hope not.

"Brooke," Haley called to her friend, clear in her concern as Brooke's eyes lingered across Sam's sleeping form for much longer than either of ours had, "Brooke are you okay?"

Being the one standing directly next to her, there was a lot of things that I could have done to comfort Brooke, or at least, there were a lot of things that I perceived that I could do to comfort Brooke although I knew as much as she did that their effectiveness would most likely be minimal.

My touch grazed her shoulder, lingered, but ultimately, could only be the observer as Haley reached out and wrapped her hands delicately around Brooke's upper arms, rubbing them up and down until I could feel the heat of friction between skin and fabric from my position besides them.

Brooke took a minute; a lingering moment in which she wiped her eyes, breathed deeply, and shook slightly where she stood… And finally, once I was thoroughly convinced that she was about to start crying again, she blinked, and her composure had reset itself smoothly leaving her only to straighten up and nod her head towards Haley's question.

"Yeah Hales, I'm fine… But hey, listen, I have a feeling that Sam's gonna be out cold for a while, and I feel bad enough that you've been stuck here all day to begin with…"

Getting the hint instantly, Haley's face set in a manner that told me how unsure she was as to whether or not she should be listening to Brooke and leave her alone right now.

"Brooke… Are you sure?"

"Yeah," She nodded her head confidently, "Anyway, I'm sure that Nathan could probably use some serious saving from Jamie right about now." She attempted to joke, but Haley's face didn't budge, leaving Brooke to change her tune towards one of direct finality – "Seriously Hales, I'll be fine."

"Alright…" She hadn't sounded totally convinced but of course, at the same time, neither did Brooke. "Listen, I want you to call me if you need anything at all, okay? And please Brooke, don't wait an hour after you've been sitting all alone this time to do it."

Stepping forwards, she completed her demand with a strong embrace, gathering Brooke deeply into her arms, allowing the younger woman to nod her head gently against her best friend's shoulder.

"I will,"

I watched the two interact in wonderment towards the ways by which they complemented each other so perfectly, which might have been why I was so shocked when Haley finally separated from Brooke only to throw her arms around my own shoulders.

"Call me in the morning, alright?" She lingered only briefly before pulling away so that she could glance casually between Brooke and I, looking for a response towards her request from either one of us.

"We will," I finally spoke upon realizing that Brooke wasn't going to.

"Okay, I'll see you guys tomorrow then." Leaning forwards, she accepted one more quick hug from Brooke and then, just like that, she was gone.

For a moment, there was absolutely nothing, instead, we watched Haley with a phony sense of attentiveness until she disappeared entirely and beyond, my arm wrapped around Brooke's shoulder, holding her closer and closer into my side until Brooke decided to fill the painfully lingering silence with the first thing that she could come up with.

"How was your meeting?" She asked in desperation for conversation but I couldn't help but wish she'd chosen to go in any other direction other than that one…

"What?" She questioned me when I remained silent, sliding out from underneath my arm so that we were suddenly face to face.

Shifting nervously on my feet, I immediately ripped my gaze away from her own, not wanting to see the look in her eyes when I told her the truth.

"They want me to go back to L.A. for a couple of days." Of course, technically, this was the friendly reenactment of what they'd actually told me; the real version had gone a little something more along the lines of, quote – go back to L.A. or we'll make sure you never work in this town again – unquote.

Yes, people do actually use that line in the movie industry.

"When would you leave?" There was a surprising calm to her voice despite I had spent the majority of the afternoon panicking that her reaction would be anything but.

"Tomorrow afternoon; I'm just gonna fly out there to tell them that I'm not doing this movie anymore and to help assign a new producer, and I should be back by early the next morning at the very latest." I had made this decision the second that they had told me that sticking with this movie would entail spending a lot more time in Los Angeles than it would in Tree Hill; something that I just couldn't do right now; not to Brooke, and certainly not to Sam either.

It hadn't exactly been a difficult choice to be completely honest with you; what it came down to ultimately was this; a $500,000 studio bonus, or me being able to be there to help Brooke and Sam get through this.

Yes, the studio would be pissed, yeah; maybe I would never produce another movie for as long as I lived, but hell, if Sam could face the prospect of losing her life, then I could come face to face with the possibility of losing my job.

It was to my great surprise however, that upon my spilling my guts out to her, Brooke merely laughed.

"What?" I asked her, torn between being amused and being offended as her smile refused to fade, leaving her to merely shake her head slowly towards my direction.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to live with the two most stubborn human beings on this planet?" She asked me, but I wasn't so sure what exactly she was getting at so that I could practically see the reflection of my confused expression bounce off of the amused gleam in her eyes.

At least I'd made her smile.

"What are you talking about?" My voice lightened, unable help but mirror her response.

"I'm talking about how tomorrow, you're going to go back to L.A., you're going to help make an awesome movie, and in a couple of days, you'll come back to Tree Hill and me and Sam will be right here waiting for you in the exact same spot you left us in. Trust me Julian; neither of us is going anywhere anytime soon."

I stood dumbstruck like a total moron, my mouth open my mind swirling with the uncertainty as to how exactly I should respond to that, of course, I was sure that that was exactly what Brooke was going for considering she flashed me one of her quick, all-knowing looks before plopping herself down against her chair.

Lingering for only a moment, I quickly followed her lead, pulling up the spare chair directly next to her so that I easily created a pretty successful makeshift loveseat.

She leaned closer into me, her head rested comfortably against my shoulder allowing me to turn into her and rest my lips against the top of her head where they lingered for much longer than was actually necessary.

"You're really gonna make me fly back and forth between North Carolina and California twice a week?" I muttered into her hair.

"Yup," She nodded, lifting her head up from underneath the comfort of my touch, turning towards me so that I couldn't help but return the smile she flashed me; immediately transferring the exact kiss I'd just placed on her head onto her lips.

"You're evil," I smirked between brief pauses in which I would come up for air underneath Brooke's seemingly magnetic force.

"And you're too good to me."

"Um… Ms. Davis?" It was Mary, the nurse that we had met earlier, knocking harshly against the doorframe in a desperate attempt to catch our attention before we advanced any further in our mere oblivion to her presence, forcing Brooke and I to jump up, untangling ourselves around each other in an effort to make this situation less awkward for everybody.

Rising from her seat, she met the nurse halfway.

"It's Brooke, please," She muttered, her voice clearly projecting the fact that she would rather just pretend as if poor Mary here hadn't seen anything.

"Oh, um… of course," The young girl stumbled awkwardly around her words and I couldn't help but laugh into my sleeve, "I didn't mean to interrupt, I just wanted to change Sam's bandages real quick."

"Oh, right!" Brooke sounded surprised, as if for the briefest of moments she had actually forgotten where she was and why she was there, but the reminder struck her like a ton of bricks, allowing her to slowly step out of the nurse's path in an effort to give the woman space to move towards Sam.

But of course, in stereotypical Brooke fashion, she continued to hover awkwardly over the poor nurse's shoulder, eager to catch each step of the action below her as the nurse quickly began to remove the medical tape pressing the gauze up to the stitches in Sam's chest so gingerly that the girl didn't even flinch in her sleep.

My eyes latched to the surgical wound staring right back into my face. To me it looked bad; actually, to say it looked positively gross would probably be more accurate of a statement.

"It looks good." Mary nodded eagerly; I guess she must have noticed the looks of disgust lingering on both Brooke's and my faces.

"Are you sure?" Brooke pressed, positively refusing to be convinced that anything about any of this could ever possibly be referred to as good.

"Positive." She nodded with a smile, but I still had to force my muscles to relax again as she quickly dabbed at the row of stitches with a topical antiseptic before covering them with a clean gauze once again, turning quickly back towards Brooke.

"Ms. Davis… um, I mean Brooke," She corrected herself quickly par to Brooke's previous request; "If you want I can bring in a cot for the two of you to sleep in?" She delivered her offer in the form of a question, having enough experience with situations like this to know that neither me, nor Brooke had very many plans that involved sleeping tonight anyway.

"Actually," Brooke responded predictably, "I was thinking about staying up with her tonight."

"How about a cup of coffee or two then?" Brooke's face instantly melted from determination to pure appreciation, completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity coming at her from all sides.

"Thanks," She nodded, "That would be great."

"I'll be right back then." She ducked out of the room, returning in record time from the kitchenette conveniently placed right next to Sam's room which always had coffee brewing in the pot twenty four hours a day.

But she hadn't come back with just a cup of coffee or two for Brooke; instead, she balanced expertly in one hand, an entire damn pot, complete with a milk pitcher and some sugar packets, and in the other, an armful of spare blankets and pillows.

"Just in case," She smiled, surrendering the linens to Brooke who grabbed at them gratefully, leaving me to watch the interaction, suddenly feeling much more confident that at least Brooke and Sam would both be left in safe hands while I was gone…

And trust me, I rarely trusted to leave such an important task to other people.

It was only after the nurse had left again that Brooke lost her cool demeanor, proving her desperation for the little the nurse had extended to us as she darted up from her seat over towards the counter that Mary had left the coffee pot resting upon, pouring herself a generous mug of black coffee, dumping about ten sugar packets inside…

Brooke never used to put sugar in her coffee; reminiscent once again, of just how much Sam has rubbed off on her.

She pounded the first cup; chugging the steaming hot beverage in a manner of seconds before going back for more, although the second one, she was more intent on drinking like an actual human being considering the fact that she slowly wandered back over towards her seat; the cup firmly clasped between both of her hands as she returned to her previous spot buried underneath my arms.

We didn't talk, in fact, we barely even moved. Instead, I just held her; wanting to take in the moment, begging for the clock to slow down around us as we evaluated how we had become these people we never thought we'd ever be, how we'd ever gotten here, and how neither of us seemed to come up with a means by which we could ever be happier.

* * *

**HALEY**

My ride back home from the hospital was, if anything, completely and utterly silent.

I couldn't even stand to have the radio on in the minutes it took for me to weave through the familiar streets of Tree Hill, directed from the hospital back towards my home; the noise just seemed to travel directly through me each and every time.

But despite the lack of noise, I had ultimately decided to take the long way home; realizing that I would need the extra couple of miles in order to clear my head again because to me, a car ride was always a sanctuary, and today wasn't any exception.

Right here, well, it was only me, but once I got home; I would have to relay the details to Nathan, I would have to try to explain to Jamie why he wasn't going to be able to play with one of his best friends anymore, I was going to have to play the stable persona while the rest of my family absorbed the news that everything had just changed for us in a heartbeat.

Once I finally did pull back into the driveway, I took several more minutes than was actually necessary shutting down the engine before I dragged my feet through the front door, nervous to see what state my house would be in having just left Jamie and Nathan to their own devices within it all day, surprised by the empty silence that I was ultimately greeted with.

"Nathan? Jamie? Is anybody home?" I shouted through the halls but the only response that I received was that of my own voice echoing off of the walls so that they bounced right back into my own face.

Taking several more steps forward into the house, I finally caught the distant noise of the TV echoing loudly from inside of the living room and I hurried the movements of my feet, eager to round the corner into the living room where, as expected, I'd found my two boys sitting obediently against the couch, calmly watching the latest ESPN highlights in search of the latest NBA updates as they ate a dinner that consisted of chicken nuggets and Ramen noodles.

Of course, I would have totally disapproved of their choice if I wasn't so busy reminding myself of just how good I had it.

"Mommy's home, mommy's home!" Jamie made his loud announcement, jumping up from the couch, flying clear over the coffee table as he rushed directly inside of my arms.

I accepted his greeting eagerly, pulling him closer into my body and holding on just a little bit tighter than I normally would, my mind rushing with appreciation of just how lucky I was to have the opportunity to hold a beautiful, healthy child that was all my own.

"Daddy says that you went to go see Aunt Brooke and Sam, momma." He said, trying to contort his voice as well as a six year old possibly could in order to convey the disappointment that I hadn't brought him along.

Looking over Jamie's small form, I glanced towards Nathan, watching as he staggered slowly, a couple of steps behind the two of us and asked the silent question using only my eyes – does Jamie know?

He caught the message that I had been attempting to deliver through mere facial expressions easily, slowly shaking his head from side to side so that I instantly began scavenging my mind for any possible way that I could let him know that the world was falling apart all around him.

He was so young; there was no way that he could possibly understand… But then my mind wandered, and I was forced to reflect back towards all of those children I had seen today; kids that were just as young as, some even younger than Jamie; kids who had no choice but to understand.

"How'd it go?"Nathan cut between Jamie's question towards me and my answer, trying to be as inconspicuous as humanly possible about his approach.

Subconsciously, I pulled Jamie a little bit closer towards me, forcing his head over my shoulder in a desperate effort to shield him from the reality of this world he lived in before I allowed my face to contort into the most somber expression that I could muster, delivering a small shake of the head directed towards Nathan.

He rubbed his hands together firmly; a traditional nervous habit that I had seen him perform a million times over as I wrapped my arms securely around Jamie and lifted him into the air, only to deposit him safely onto the couch.

"Jamie sweetie, stay here and watch TV alright? Your dad and I have to talk in the kitchen alone for a minute."

"Okay momma," He nodded obediently, seemingly much too occupied with the TV to care enough about what I had to say to his dad anyway.

I directed a quick nod of my head over towards Nathan, indicating for him to follow me into the kitchen where we circled around the island for a minute or two, trying to find solid enough ground to stand on so as to ensure it wouldn't positively fall out from underneath us as we packed on enough bad news to fill a big rig.

"So… what's going on?" Nathan finally asked, leaning against the counter, supporting his upper body with his muscular forearms.

I didn't know how to answer his question, mainly because I was struggling with the answer myself.

"Her test results came back this morning, Nathan."

"So… so it's definite then?"He asked me, his brows sliding back to convey that soft concern that always made my heart melt.

"It's definite." I nodded the confirmation, watching him carefully as he released a steep exhale that lasted for so long that I wasn't even sure that he was going to actually say anything in response.

"How's Brooke taking it?" He finally managed.

"She's taking it as well as she can be, I guess… I don't really know, I didn't see her for too long today, she spent most of her time with Sam." I rambled aloud, struggling to formulate a proper, complete response despite the fact that I held college degrees in English.

"Are you talking about Aunt Brooke, momma?" I heard Jamie yell from the couch before the unmistakable pitter patter of his feet rushing towards me in an effort to figure out just what it was that was going on filled my ears.

The boy had always had selective hearing, sure; he only tended to hear the things that he wanted to, but at the same time, I swear to God he was born with the hearing capacity of a dog.

I panicked, my eyes widening as they matched the very similar expression of Nathan; our head whirring together silently in an effort to come up with a resolution to what exactly it was that we were going to do here, but Jamie appeared without giving us enough time to think.

"Yeah buddy, I am." I sighed defeated; I mean, sure I would have loved to shield him from the horrors of reality for the rest of his life, but I knew just as much as Nathan did that we couldn't keep something like this from him forever.

"Did she do something bad?" Jamie asked me and I shook my head eagerly, not wanting him to get the wrong idea before this conversation even started.

"No honey, your Aunt Brooke didn't do anything wrong."

"Did Sam do something bad again?" My heart clenched momentarily before automatically releasing itself again just as it got too difficult to breathe.

"No Jamie," I sighed, "But there is something about Sam that your daddy and I have to tell you."

"Is she going away again?" He asked, his voice sinking, his face contorted into an expression of utmost confusion.

"No…" I sighed; his added input was forcing me to stall, making the deliverance even harder than it was already going to be, "It's just that… well Jamie, Sam doesn't feel very well buddy. She's pretty sick and your Aunt Brooke is very, very sad about it."

That sounded okay, right? I could only hope so.

"Is she sick like that time I had to stay home from school for a whole week?" I forced myself to smile down towards him as Nathan gently ruffled his spiky hair flat.

"Kind of Jamie," He took over for me, the two of us bouncing off of each other expertly, "Except Sam is a little bit sicker than that even. She has a very, very bad thing inside of her that's making her sick called cancer, and Jamie, Sam is pretty sick and she's gonna have to stay in the hospital for a little while."

How much detail should we be delivering towards him? How much of this would he actually understand?

"Can we go see her?" His face brightened just enough to confirm to me that he really didn't understand the severity of this situation.

"Not right now, Jamie, right now I want you to get your little butt upstairs and into the shower to get ready for bed. Is all of your school work done?" I changed the subject quickly, knowing that his little attention span would never fully manage to tackle this problem all at once.

"Yeah, daddy helped me with it."

"Good, come on then, let's get you back upstairs." He ran ahead of me, charging up the stairs as I lingered behind him, taking my time in following him. Of course, Jamie was well beyond the point of needing help getting into and out of the bathtub, but today, well today I was just more than a little bit hesitant about letting go.

"How about tomorrow, momma; can we see Sam tomorrow?" He called to me just as he began digging through his drawers for a pair of pajamas.

"We'll see Jamie, come on." I indicated for him to follow me, grabbing him his towel, lining up the shampoo, adjusting the water to just the right temperature… things that I don't think I've done in months.

I couldn't help but wonder if he would notice that I was acting so strangely today.

It was only when I'd finally made my move to leave that Jamie had finally called me back.

"Hey momma," His little voice rang out.

"What is it honey?" I turned back towards him but there was something about his appearance that was different. It was the way his bright blue eyes dulled just a little bit, his shoulders hunched, his fingers interlaced between each other.

"Is Sam gonna die?"

My stomach did a back flip… I hadn't expected that, I hadn't expected it at all, but how could I considering the fact that it wasn't five seconds ago that I was still trying to figure out whether or not he understood the fact that Sam was even sick to begin with.

It felt like an absolute slap across the face to be told in such a harsh manner that he in fact did.

"I don't know baby," My voice was choked with an uncertainty that I couldn't help but wish wasn't necessary, "I hope not."

I turned away before I could see his face and register the response towards my uncertainty, meandering back down the stairs and all the while reviewing the brief conversation that I had just had with my son; weighing its successes and failures over and over again in my head, ultimately deciding that it could have indeed gone worse; a lot worse.

Instinctively, I found my way back towards Nathan, who had been sitting in silence on the couch waiting for my return.

With nothing more than a heavy sigh, I slouched downwards and fell besides him, the intensity, the exhaustion surrounding this day finally taking its toll on me.

Reaching up, I pinched at the bridge of my nose, squeezing until it heart in a desperate final attempt to will away this damn headache that I'd seemed to have all day now.

"I can't believe this."

"So what do we do now?" I hadn't even realized that I'd spoken aloud until Nathan responded to me, emphasizing the word _we_ as to make it perfectly clear that we were in this together.

"I don't know." I sighed in my admittance, "I guess the only thing that we can do is be there for them." It seemed like the best plan of action, the only plan of action now that I really thought about it. "I'm just worried about Brooke. You know how she gets; she's gonna work herself to death taking care of Sam… I've gotta find out a way to get to her."

Of course, I've been wracking my brain for immediate solutions to that very problem all day now and so far, I've only came up empty.

With my mind still racing, I leaned against Nathan, burying my head directly into his shoulder, right up against that joint that had molded over the years to become a perfect fit.

"We'll figure it out." His voice rang, almost like a song in an effort to provide comfort but still, I wasn't so sure I believed him, and the thing that scared me so much is that that was the first honest to God time I have ever thought that in my life.

Of course, the way I've been feeling lately, now that I thought about, I was suddenly not so sure if I was sure of much of anything anymore.

* * *

**SAM**

When I finally woke up from the nearly comatose sleep that I had allowed myself to fall into following my surgery some time after midnight, I immediately realized that the only reason that I had done so was because of the stabbing pain that pierced straight up my neck, straight through to the very center of my brain.

For a long time, I couldn't move, could only lay in bed, staring up at the ceilings and trying to distract myself by counting all of the holes that adorned the ceiling tiles, just waiting for the pain to fade away which, thank God, it eventually did.

But even after my body was physically able to move without that heat sliding through my veins like boiling oil, I could only sit there and continuously wonder why the hell it always seemed to be me that draw the short straw in things.

In the end, I actually managed to come up with a conclusion towards my question. I guess that somewhere along the lines before I was born, when I was floating up in outer space, or heaven, or whatever the hell you want to believe, while everybody was busy getting smacked over the head with the magic stick of luck, I must have been hiding out in the corner or something and missed my turn, because I'm certain that nobody would ever argue with me when I told them that I was the single most unlucky human being in the entire world.

Unless of course you counted the fact that I was pretty lucky at being unlucky.

But then I got to thinking about me and Brooke.

I mean, had it been luck that she'd found me, or was it just coincidence, or fate, or whatever they call it these days?

Whatever the name for it was, I guess it was a nice reminder that my life wasn't all that bad after all.

To my right, the flash of a clock striking past yet another minute told me that it was midnight.

With a sigh, I accepted that sleep wasn't going to come for me tonight, and gradually forced myself upwards and into a seated position, moving slowly until I was sitting Indian style in the center of my bed, picking apart an issue of _People_ magazine, using every turn of the page to count down the minutes until Brooke's alarm would go off like it did every day at seven, marking the dreaded beginning of the end; the start of my chemotherapy treatments.

I have already gotten all of the speeches about it, I've heard all of the lectures, had all of the information pounded into the back of my head until they were certain that both me, and everybody who'd ever known me it seemed, knew my chemotherapy schedule like the backs of their hands.

Here's what was going to go down; at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, the morning shift nurses would all come in, and with them, they would carry practically an entire pharmacy's worth of pills for me to take n preparation – anti nausea, iron, blood pressure regulators, eye drops, some crap that made sure that the chemo didn't also destroy the cells inside of my body that were actually supposed to be in there – really, the concept was pretty cool; in order for it to save my life, the medication that I will be taking has to kill a little part of me first.

After that was settled, approximately a half an hour later, she would come back, this time with a clear liquid IV drip of a little drug called Zofran, rumored to be one of the best anti-nausea drugs that they have out there these days, but of course, we'll see about that tomorrow.

Finally, drum roll please, the ball will drop at nine; zero hour in the form of a continuous, twenty four hour cycle of 1 g/m2 of IV Cytarabine given in combination with 0.54 mg/m2 IV Plitidepsin every single day for the next seven…

And seriously, Brooke had thought that I wasn't paying attention when they'd explained this to me. I mean, sure, I had absolutely no idea what it meant, but I could certainly sound impressive when I spit it all out, right?

I had actually gotten a pretty decent flow going on the crossword puzzle in the back of the magazine when my focus was broken, split in half by the sound of the door opening and somebody stepping inside.

"Hey, what are you doing up so late?" It was Dr. Miller, whispering and walking towards me on tip-toes trying to keep from waking Brooke and Julian, who were fast asleep and tangled around each other's bodies on the couch besides me.

"Couldn't sleep," I shrugged. I was starting to wonder if this woman ever actually went home, if she even had a home or just lived at this hospital.

I was willing to bet the latter, I mean, I wasn't judging or anything, but I couldn't help but notice that she didn't wear a wedding wing on any of her fingers.

"Fair enough," She shrugged although I was half expecting a scolding about how I should get to sleep considering the fact that I had such a busy day tomorrow, "I was just coming in to check on you really quick before I went home for the night."

Aha, so she did have a real home outside of this place.

"How are you feeling?"

"Not bad,"

"That's good, that's good." She mumbled, only half paying attention as she reached down and grabbed my wrist, checking for the pulse that some days, I wasn't so sure I had anymore while simultaneously looking across all of the lines and monitors in an effort to ensure that everything was still intact.

She was a multitasker; color me impressed.

"How about that new line of yours, how's that feeling?" She subconsciously pulled against the neck of the gown I wore, peering through in an effort to get a nice strong look at what I have since dubbed my third arm.

"Fine," I'm a kid of many words, I know.

"Are you sure about that?" She questioned watching me wince as she gently pulled away at the tape currently securing the device against me… Damn her and her Brooke-like ability to see right through my lies.

"It's a little bit sore." I finally admitted, although barely letting her see through the cracks of the actual extent of it all.

"Well it looks good," She tried to get me to feel better through complimenting my injury, "We'll probably leave the stitches in for a few more days, and the bruising will go away eventually, you'll just take a couple more days to completely heal to what you're normally used to with your platelets so low and all."

Yes, I was well aware of my depleted healing schedule thanks to the fact that I was only just now finally starting to get the vision back in the eye that Jamie had bashed in on my almost a week ago now.

"We'll give you chemo through an IV for the first few days to let this heal, but after that, you'll be all set."

"I thought the point of this thing was that I didn't need an IV every time I had chemo." I spoke, mostly out of sarcasm considering the fact I'd figured this point out for myself already.

"It's only for a few days," She smiled down at me sympathetically, "But after that you'll be all set. You'll still be able to shower with it in and move around and all that fun stuff. Just do me a favor and don't go around doing a bunch of jumping jacks any time soon." She completed replacing the dressing for me before stepping back in an effort to give me some space.

"I think you'll be safe with that one."I guess that technically speaking that was supposed to be a joke, but that didn't mean that I wasn't totally serious at the same time.

"Yeah well, you just relax and let me do all of the work and you'll be up and doing jumping jacks before you know it." Turning away from her, I chose to take her words to heart; believe it or not, those seemed to be the one group of words that I just needed to hear all along… I think that it was safe to say that I really was starting to develop a genuine liking towards this woman.

"So," She started, finally contorting her face towards one of joking around to one of genuine concern, "Are you really feeling alright?"

I knew exactly what she meant, which is why I knew that she wasn't talking about my physical state of being as much as she was the mental.

"I feel ready." I spoke confidently so that she knew that I meant what I said when I told her that.

"Good for you," She spoke with a stiff nod and a small pause before she dropped her voice and continued, "Listen, I was just wondering if you had any questions… I know that things were moving very quickly before and I know that there may be things that you feel embarrassed to ask in front of your mom, but if you have anything, and I mean anything to ask me, than I want you to know that you can, okay?"

I paused and shrugged slightly trying to wrap my head around it all; sure, I had a couple of lingering thoughts, and by a couple, I meant a million, but she had been right, the only reason that I truly hadn't asked her about them before wasn't only because I had been pushed around these hospital walls so quickly today that I barely knew which way was up anymore, but also because I was afraid that Brooke would hear the answer, which might not be an answer that she particularly wanted to hear.

"I don't know," I began hesitantly, nice delivery Sam, truly, "I mean… alright, so I was sitting around before getting pretty bored and all, you know?"

"Understandable," She answered with a small smile and a soft nod.

"Anyway, I got to thinking… it's just… well… how long exactly am I gonna be here for?"It was a reasonable question I thought, anyway, it was only day two stuck in here for me and I was already starting to lose my damn mind…

Of course, the problem was that I had the slightest feeling that she wasn't about to tell me that I was going to be able to go home anytime soon.

"Well…" She started slowly, which could never be taken as a good sign, "The thing is, us hematologists always have a tendency to get pretty nervous about letting our leukemia patients leave the hospital… It's just that the disease itself, the chemo, well it does a lot to deplete your immune system and makes catching a post-chemo infection not just a possibility, but a certainty… I know that it might seem annoying Sam, especially at such an age when you're so used to being independent, but we do have a tendency of keeping a very, very close eye on you guys."

"So we're talking about…" I egged her for an answer mainly because she was stalling and I did not like where this was going at all.

"Three weeks, maybe four."She answered honestly.

Great, just great… but I tried to shake the disappointment clear out of my mind, desperate to think only in positives today.

"I have one more." I told her.

"Shoot,"

"I heard the rumors," I started slowly, "But how crappy am I actually going to be feeling tomorrow."

At this, she actually laughed, and although I wasn't exactly sure that my question was actually supposed to be meant to be funny, I played along, mainly because I was desperate for a laugh or two at this point.

"It varies," She answered me truthfully, her voice neutralizing, "I've seen kids that go the length of chemotherapy treatments feeling absolutely fine the entire time, but I've also seen kids get so sick that they can't even get out of bed in the morning… The side effects generally vary, but the most common ones include things like nausea, vomiting, dehydration, fatigue… it's almost like having the flue."

Wow, this was sounding better and better with each passing second.

"Is my hair going to fall out?" I forced myself to ask the question that I have been dreading the most, watching as she gave me a quick, sympathetic look.

"Yeah Sam, your hair is going to fall out," She nodded, "Chemotherapy is designed to attack cells that divide the most rapidly and unfortunately, hair cells are included in that category of rapidly dividing cells… But don't worry; it will grow back as soon as your treatment is over."

The biggest problem that I was currently having was that I couldn't help but wonder if it would even have the chance to grow back. But this question merely lingered in the back of my mind, never getting any further than that original inquisition.

"That's it," I stated firmly although it was a blatant lie.

"Are you sure?" She could probably see each and every other question that I had for her lingering deep within the depths of my eyes, but I wasn't ready for those answers quite yet so I left them for myself, the greatest part about that was, I think she sensed it.

"Yeah,"

She nodded, pretending as if that answer had actually satisfied her as she stood upright from her previous position slouched over my bed.

"You're a strong kid Sam, I know that much, but really, if you ever need anybody to talk to, and your mom's not quite cutting it out for you, I'm not just your doctor in all of this, okay?"

"Okay," I nodded in response to her assurance, returning the smile she offered me in support.

"Alright then," She stood from her previous position seating at the edge of my bedside, "Then I will be back to see you bright and early tomorrow morning and we'll get you started on everything."

"Can't wait," I spoke, her smile allowing me to know that she hadn't taken my sarcasm as rude, which was a good thing considering as how that was how I'd intended it to be taken all along.

"Oh, and do me one more favor?" She swiveled around right before she'd disappeared through the door frame entirely, "Let your mother sleep please. I swear, she'll be my next patient in here if you don't stop running her absolutely ragged."

Nodding her head towards Brooke, my eyes followed her own, watching as the older woman continued to remain obliviously asleep in her chair, wrapped uncomfortably around both the chair's cushions as well as Julian's body as they both snored in even intervals.

"Will do," I made the promise, intent on keeping it, determined to keep an eye over Brooke for a change as the doctor finally walked out of the door, ultimately leaving me to both myself as well as my silent vices, anxiously awaiting for seven o'clock to finally roll around, and to finally start the long process of getting this damn thing out of me once and for all.


	9. Just Keep Your Head Above

Chapter 9: Just Keep Your Head Above

**Wednesday, November 2****nd****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

Seven o'clock in the morning, bright and early… a little bit too bright and early if you truly asked me, but despite this, that was ultimately the time that I was launched out of my safe haven of sleep, both abruptly, as well as obnoxiously, wrenched back into reality by my own stupid alarm clock which blasted round after round of _When the Saints Go Marching In_.

And for the record, that was Sam's choice of music, not my own.

I scrambled into a semi-functional state of alertness, digging my elbow deeply into Julian's gut in an effort to gain the momentum that I knew that I would need in an effort to stand on my own two feet again.

With an almighty "ugh" in response to the rude intrusion, Julian indicated that he was now indeed awake, but I forced myself to ignore it alongside the crick in my joints as I straightened myself as much so erect as my crooked spine would allow and desperately bid myself to pull it together in an effort to prove to myself and myself only that I was above weaknesses as petty as sleeping.

"Hey Sam, w…" I spun myself in a full one eighty, making the move to wake Sam from where I stood however my sentence was abruptly cut short just as my eyes deglazed enough to recognize the fact that Sam was already wide awake in front of me, and had been for hours by the looks of things.

"Hey," She nodded towards my general direction, a swift acknowledgement, one that wasn't deemed important enough for her to actually look up from the book that she was currently pouring all of her concentration into.

"Hey?" It came out as more of a question than I would have liked it to have, but even that simple, one-worded response was enough to tell me that she was in a better mood this morning than I could have ever anticipated, or expected of her…

I couldn't help but wonder whether or not I was being overly cynical here, or if Sam truly was acting suspicious.

"You're full of words today, aren't you?" She delivered to me, the life line that I truly needed in order to achieve my aforementioned question… something was up, and the question that roughly sounded like – "well what the hell does she have to be so happy about" – popped into my skull immediately, although I shook it off before I had the opportunity to actually say it aloud.

"What kind of drugs did the nurses give to you this morning?" My question forced her to finally skim her eyes over the upper layer of her book, her expression dancing semi-amused across her face before, and I swear to this, she actually started laughing at me.

"What?" I blurted, determined to get to the bottom of this.

"What, what?" She shot back.

"Nothing, I guess…" I retracted my initial inquiry, shaking my head against her retort, figuring that if she was happy, I wasn't about to complain about it, "You just seem unusually happy today, that's all.

"Yeah well, don't you know? I officially start kicking cancer's ass today; and you know how much I love kicking ass." She spoke of her determination, practically forcing me to respond with an amused grin towards the fact that I suddenly realized exactly where it was that she was coming from with all of this.

"Viva la vie; right?" I questioned with a shrug, her mood immediately starting to rub off on me, lucky for me mostly considering the fact that I had been teetering on the threshold of borderline insanity lately.

"That's what I've been going for." She nodded in her agreement before quickly shifting her gaze back down towards the pages within her book.

"What'ya readin?" I made an unintentional subject change, speaking for the sole purpose of initiating a lingering conversation, determined not to fall into silence. It was after all, a nice change of pace; I missed taking advantage of Sam and my uncanny ability to simply speak to each other without running out of things to say.

"Haley gave it us for school." She shrugged, flashing the cover towards me which I didn't quite make out although it looked boring as sin to me….

"Looks lame…. Oh look, _People_!" Throughout high school, tabloids such as these had provided me with my main source of entertainment, but of course, I'd found my interest in them waver the second I began seeing my own face looking back up towards me through those pages, but at this point, I was desperate for something, anything really.

"Scooch," I demanded, indicating with my hands for Sam to slide down in her bed and make room for me, an action she complied to willingly as I flung myself forwards onto the bed next to her, slowly flipping through the pages in the magazine as she flipped through her book, barely skimming through the words as she went.

"I'm gonna go ahead and guess that I've read that thing at least four times last night," Sam informed me as she observed me skim quickly through the pages, "You're in it." She chimed in, "You too Julian." She raised her voice in an effort to capture the attention of Julian, who was still struggling from within his chair to wipe the exhaustion out of his eyes. "I am too… vaguely." She spoke with a fake hostility, indicating to me that she was more upset about actually being in the magazine than she was about not being in it.

Intrigued, I flipped through the pages at a rapid succession, finally stopping only when I saw the small blurb fit in across the bottom corner of a back page, speaking of the apparent love interest I currently had brewing with big time movie producer Julian Baker, accompanied by a single sentence at the end about how I was currently fostering a teenager.

The whole thing struck a nerve, honestly; I mean, as much as I tried to tell myself that I wasn't gonna let it bother me, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell would happen once the press got wind of the fact that said teenager I was currently harboring had just been diagnosed with cancer.

And of course, as per usual, Sam seemed to be reading my mind.

"You're gonna be _so_ famous now." It was spoken completely out of sarcasm, but she had a point to her statement; with all of this going on, we were bound to be the next big circus act; it was everything that I had feared for Sam ever since day one.

I fell into silence, my thoughts settling nervously all around me until a sudden belting yawn emitting from towards Julian's direction sent both my head, as well as Sam's darting sideways, watching as the man finally managed to jump up to his feet with a tall stretch so exaggerated that his finger tips practically brushed across the ceiling.

"Morning sleeping beauty," He paused mid-stretch, his eyes squinting open and his expression telling me that he was struggling to decide whether or not he had merely imagined Sam's words.

I suppose that this must have been exactly how I looked upon waking up this morning as well.

Silently, Julian's mouth quivered in a continuous stutter for a few brief seconds before ultimately closing again, recognizing the fact that a response simply wasn't coming to him, but luckily, he was spared by an interruption in the form of a quick knock, but really, what else is new around here, right?

"Hey Sam, breakfast," Maria, she was a nice enough lady, she came down to deliver Sam's meals to her three times a day, every day, "And I've been given very specific orders from your doctor that you're supposed to be eating all of it today."

Placing the small tray down directly in front of Sam, she crossed her arms to show that she really did mean business.

"Got it," Sam nodded, putting on her brave face although I could see directly through the exterior, pulling at the lid-covered food, revealing what actually appeared to be a decently made breakfast; eggs, toast, fruit… of course, I think she could have been given a gourmet meal from a five star restaurant and she still would have eyed it up as if it were toxic sludge.

Her response had sounded completely sincere, absolutely meaningful, but the more well trained ears of myself managed to pick up on the lies behind it instantly while poor Maria over here was simply just not good enough yet, or at least, that's what I assumed judging by the fact that she'd had enough confidence in Sam to turn her back and depart from the room without so much as a second warning.

"She's right you know; you should eat something." Julian, understanding shining through him is it was through me, made his faithful contribution, sliding slowly back downward and into his seat, eyeing Sam's meal as if he wished he'd gotten one alongside her.

"You do realize that I'm going to be seriously regretting this in a few hours, right?" She played the pity-card, looking between both Julian and I in an effort to see whether or not her attempts had worked, waiting for a retraction on our insistency, but playing off of each other's strengths, Julian and I balanced each other in perfect harmony and managed to stand our ground, neither one of us saying so much as a damn word, leaving Sam to merely roll her eyes and pick up her fork.

"Whatever, you're the one that'll have to see it later." She looked directly at me as she spoke these words before turning towards the cantaloupe she'd just stabbed at with her fork, raising it upwards to eye level, "See you in a couple of hours, buddy." She talked to the piece of fruit as if it were an old friend before ultimately shoving it directly inside of her mouth.

This general pattern of ease continued for a relatively extended period of time, but of course, I was sure it wasn't quite as extended as Sam would have liked it to be considering the circumstances, but it was only about 8:00 once any of the real action started, and once it did, I found myself experiencing a momentary lapse in judgment, freezing with the idea that this was it…

Holding my breath, I waited for something elaborate and tragic to happen, but when Sam was merely given a cupful of pills that she downed in one sitting, and that was that, I was forced to remind myself that it would be another hour or so before things got really interesting.

The single nurse worked with a professional, unwavering fluidity; a memorized daily routine that guided her forwards as she juggled IV bags like a waitress would dirty dishes, organizing them accordingly above Sam's head in an effort to prepare them for their entry into her body.

"What's that?" Sam asked the woman, her curiosity getting the better of her characteristic coyness.

"This one is antibiotics." She clarified with a soft patience, gently plugging the line into the empty pre-existing port sticking out of the back of Sam's hand, "And this one is the anti-nausea… for later." She added quickly, inserting the thin needle into the crook of Sam's elbow, an action that Sam didn't so much as flinch at anymore, before standing, releasing the clamps on either line, sending their contents flooding through Sam's veins.

"Do they work?" Sam asked quickly, sounding almost hesitant to find out the answer, "The anti-nausea drugs, I mean."

"Better than you'll think they do a little bit later on, I assure you." She nodded, her words meant to produce comfort although they merely silenced Sam in their finality.

"Okay, you're all set up over here; do you need anything at all?" She turned to Sam who responded with a mere shake of her head as she washed a second dosage of pills down her throat with a healthy swig of apple juice.

"Alright, I'll see you in about an hour then." My eyes followed her back directly out of the room, my heart pounding harder and harder with each passing second as the final countdown towards the dreaded start of chemotherapy commenced.

As it had been so accustomed to doing lately, I found my mind wandering, the nerves sinking skin deep and beyond, straight down into the very muscle… Affixing my eyes onto Sam, I developed a theory that maybe if I stared at her for long enough, I would be able to develop x-ray vision and finally gain access to her thoughts.

"Are you okay?"

"Huh?" I muttered stupidly, her voice pulling me out of the haze I'd managed to fall into, reminding me that I had just been blatantly staring right at her.

"Are you okay?" She repeated, speaking slower this time around as if she had been speaking to a toddler, "You just look… I don't know, out of it."

"That's probably because somebody had to go ahead and make me wake up at 7:00 this morning." I filled my words with as much joking accusation as humanly possible, desperate to shift the subject away from myself and onto something else because I absolutely hated being on the spot.

For a brief second, she merely stared blankly, leading me to believe that she was never going to let this one go, but the second that that thought entered my head, she just shrugged, responding to me by extending her arm out the peace offer of her half eaten slice of toast.

"Want some?"

"That's disgusting." I responded, leading her to retract the offer and rip off another bite.

"You know, if I have to eat this morning, then you definitely do to." She lectured… When the hell had she become the parent here and me the kid?

Turning towards Julian, I looked directly at him, my eyes pleading for somebody who would be able to defend me but all he did was shrug and nod his head.

"She's right you know."

Great; I appreciated all of the concern, really I did, but Sam needed to be focusing on herself right now and allow me to worry about me… As for Julian, well let's just say I'll deal with him later.

"When did you become the mother here, huh?" I asked, watching as she eyed me up with that look that told me that she definitely had something up her sleeve for me.

"Can you get me a coffee?" She ultimately asked, "And not that crap from the kitchen over there either, it tastes like shit."

"Language, Samantha!" I scolded her but in the back of my head, I knew exactly what she was trying to do here; her theory was that if I had to go down to the cafeteria or whatever and buy Sam a coffee, than I would also have to buy myself something to eat in the process.

Eh, what can I say, she cares, she really cares.

"I'll get it." Julian piped in, most likely making the suggestion in an effort to ensure that I was actually delivered an appropriate amount of sustenance, not just the cup of coffee and doughnut that I probably would have gotten myself.

"Are you in the mood for anything in particular?" He asked, impressing me with his uncanny ability to both walk and put his shoes on at the same time.

"Anything is fine." I shook my head in an appreciative gesture because to be completely honest, at the point that I was at right now, I would have probably been willing to eat an entire horse had it been offered to me.

"Got it, I'll be right back." He professed his intentions of actually returning to this madness, ducking out of the room so that it was left as just the two of us; me and Sam. It was strange the way things like this worked out sometimes; at one minute we'd be packed like sardines between these walls, at the next, merely scrambling just to find something by which to fill all of these empty gaps.

I eyed Sam closely as she yawned heavily and pushed the tray of half-eaten food away from her.

"How long have you been awake?" I filled the silence in my search for answers.

"A few hours now," She shrugged, her lack of specifics telling me that by this, she probably meant that she never actually went to bed to begin with.

"Are you feeling alright?" It was my not-so-subtle approach towards asking her whether or not it had been her anxiety that had kept her up all night, or if she really just couldn't seem to fall asleep, but of course, she sensed my conspicuous means of prying almost immediately.

"I'm fine… really." She pushed and I had to let it go because I knew as much as she did that the honesty card was split both ways when it came down to Sam and I, and I knew as much as she did that I too just wasn't ready to admit to her that I wasn't at all fine either.

"Are you ready?" I rephrased quickly.

"Yeah," She shrugged simply, "I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?"

I guess that I could see where she was coming from with that, I mean, I was pretty sure that all of the mental and physical preparation in the world couldn't prepare a person for something like this, and I knew that there was a night and day difference between being prepared, and not having much of a choice in the matter.

My cell phone rang from deep within the depths of my bag, the alert taking its form in the sound of an obnoxious doorbell that made absolutely sure that I knew that I indeed had a text message.

"It's Peyton." I announced to nobody in particular, flipping my phone open in an effort to display the message as it was projected across the screen. "She's gonna swing by a little bit later." I read the small font aloud, formulating a vague reply in response before pocketing the mobile device.

"Okay," She shrugged; oh well, I guess we were back to presenting with one word responses, and everybody knew just how much I loved an awkward silence.

"Um… I'm just gonna go wash up real quick," I said, searching for any excuse that I could to duck into privacy for a half second and at least attempt to gather myself again, "Will you be okay over here."

She nodded briskly, probably with the same intentions as myself, begging for my departure in an effort to gain the solitude that I hadn't found it inside of me to grant her since she'd been admitted…

I could practically feel her eyes following me as I ducked into the small corner bathroom, turning on the tap before I'd so much as closed the door behind me, watching as the basin slowly filled to the brim with a layer of freezing cold water while meanwhile, I adjusted to the miniscule bathroom, which I was convinced had been converted from some kind of coat closet, making the squeeze so tight that I could probably pee on the toilet and wash my hands in the sink at the same time if I was so inclined to do so.

Thrusting my head into the small puddle of water below me, I felt the freezing cold pierce the skin all around me so that I could instantly feel the blood rushing back up to my head, coherent thoughts slowly filtering back into my mind as if the sudden stimuli literally flipped an "on" switch somewhere in the back of my brain.

I lingered for several long seconds, the idea in the back of my mind being that maybe if I sat here under this sink long enough, all of my problems would simply slide down the drain, but after a while, when my lungs finally ached with a lack of oxygen and I was forced to emerge with a loud gasp of air that I was sure carried through the thin walls into Sam's ears although she never made so much as a peep in response.

Groping blindly for a spare towel, I located one easily, wrapping it firmly around my head before grasping at the counter top, taking a long, hard look in the wall-sized mirror in front of me, unable to help the frown that produced itself naturally towards the vulgarity of my appearance.

I couldn't help but think back to that magazine that I had been skimming through this morning, the one containing a picture of me dressed at my very best; adorned in the most beautiful of dresses, carrying the most gorgeous of men on my arm as I sauntered across one red carpet event or another…

If only they could see me now.

I forced my eyes away from my reflection, telling my mind to merely shut itself down before I started to get really depressed over here, and carefully averting my eyes towards the direction of the mirror, I actually allowed myself to finish cleaning up, which basically, in these circumstances, meant the bare minimum; brushing my teeth, washing my face, the basics.

But very quickly, I found myself feeling rather claustrophobic, so I made it fast, barely throwing a clean t-shirt over my otherwise exposed form before emerging back into the depths of open space, a little bit surprised to find Sam dressed down in a set of fresh scrub pants and one of her own t-shirts that Julian had been generous enough to bring for her from home yesterday, and taking slow, steady laps around the room.

"Sam, what are you doing?" I rushed in my last couple of steps, arriving at her side in a mere handful of strides, grabbing at her shoulders in an effort to provide her with steadying that she clearly hadn't needed.

I don't know, I guess that I had just done a pretty job of convincing myself that Sam had turned into an invalid overnight, that she would be spending the next couple of months irreversibly constricted to the tiny cage that was her hospital bed, unable to get up to so much as go to the bathroom…

That's probably why it served as such a big shocker to me to be reminded that she wasn't.

"I can stand, Brooke," She spoke harshly, wrenching her arms out of my grasp, moving to take yet another lap in the small circle that she was confined to, "I just wanted to stretch my legs for a second or two, I'm gonna get freaking bed sores laying down all day."

I had to give her that at the very least; after all, I had been very hesitant to so much as let her out of her own bed these past few days, never mind my concern now that she was actually in the hospital with a very definitive, very extreme diagnosis…

Call me paranoid, but to be completely honest, I think that I was mostly terrified that I would have to watch her collapse down to the ground right in front of my eyes… again.

I don't know, maybe I really am just as paranoid as Sam keeps on telling me that I am.

"Wanna take a lap or two around the hallway?" I offered despite my better judgment in an effort to prove to both Sam, as well as myself that I could be open towards giving her the free space that she both wanted and deserved.

"Can I?" She perked up briefly in a combination of both shock and appreciation, watching me closely as I gave her the shortest nod of my head, leaving her to barely take a second before taking full advantage, darting towards the door, forcing me to resist the urge to hold onto her, to guide her through the ranks as she did so.

Of course, I had been hoping that she'd take it easy; praying that she'd take my suggestion to mean for her to move slow, maybe down the other end of the hall and back as I had intended it doing, but she walked fluidly, eventually making the move to escape out of the confines of our comfort zone, out towards the main hallway, the outside world that we were suddenly so unaccustomed to.

"Where are you going?" I called towards her, trudging weakly behind her.

I could come up with, directly off of the top of my head, about a million reasons why she shouldn't be doing this, but here she was, defying me as per usual… Good to know that nothing has really changed around here.

"Nowhere," She replied smartly, "I'm just walking around."

"Yeah well how about you start just walking around right over here," I motioned for her to stay where I, and most importantly, her doctors and nurses could see her just in case something goes horribly, and unpredictably wrong.

"Come on Brooke, I'm starting to get cabin fever over here, I can walk down the hallway you know." I wasn't happy with the idea, but at the same time, I wasn't about to throw what little independence that Sam still had straight into the trash can, so I gave into her, with a deep sigh, and followed.

The environment was strange, a brave new world dare I say; it seemed to us as if this was the real life that we had been so crudely ripped away from, staring as down almost mockingly as we waded back through it, clearly uninvited.

The company was unfamiliar, the sights and sounds foreign. I guess it was just difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that there was still a world outside of this oncology department considering that world simply didn't exist for me anymore.

"Hey Brooke, can I sit down for a minute?" She asked, just as she began hovering so close to the elevators that I feared she was considering escape.

"Why, what's wrong? Are you okay?" I replied, my voice escalating in my immediate panic as I shuffled quickly towards her side only to have her shake her head towards me, indicating for me to stop before I even truly got started.

"Relax," She spoke firmly, "I just want to sit; I have cancer, am I allowed to be tired her not?" Her voice echoed in a manner I couldn't be entirely sure was purposeful, attracting a few brief stares shot quickly from passerby, but she didn't as much as flinch.

"Yeah," I breathed out steeply, "Yeah come on, sit." I wrapped my arm strategically around her shoulders, guiding her towards the nearest set of vacant benches mere steps away where I helped lower her down into a seated position, parking myself next to her and rubbing soft circles across her thin back as she quickly thrust her head straight down between her knees.

"Are you alright?" I asked, immediately realizing how stupid of a question that was; she wasn't alright, of course she wasn't alright… Nothing about this situation was, nor would ever be alright.

"Yeah, I just need a minute." She nodded, slowly raising her head back up to my eye level amidst several organized, deep breaths.

"Hey," A voice from the distance attracted both of our attention, Sam's eyes sliding open just in time to come face to face with Dr. Miller, strolling towards us, looking relatively cheerful, although clouded ominously by her intentions. "I was just coming to get you guys, a nurse told me you'd wandered out here… Are you ready to get started, Sam?"

Turning towards Sam in an effort to read her response, I watched as her face paled slightly, although the words that escaped her mouth sounded much more confident than she actually looked.

"Yeah, I'm ready." She nodded alongside a failed attempt to lift herself off of the bench; her stick-thin legs trembling, whether under the strain of stress or disease I couldn't be so sure, too hard to achieve much success.

She grabbed for me immediately, a silent plea for help that occurred before I even had time to process that she'd need it, and I found myself linking an arm around her own, feeling the entirety of her body weight pressed up against my own for support.

It felt like a death march; Sam dragged her feet at a torturously slow pace, extending a thirty second walk to nearly five minutes with the only thing me being able to do being matching her speed in my refusal to allow her to leave my arms the entire time.

The mood didn't exactly change once we finally did arrive back in her room either; we'd completed the march, only to arrive at the sight of what was feeling more and more like a lethal injection with each passing second…

Across the room, nurses were hanging liquid IV bags along metal poles dangling above Sam's bed, practically forcing me to follow them with my eyes as they swinging ominously back and forth and back and forth, a taunting reminder as to what they were and why they were there.

In fact, the only thing that finally did manage to pull me from my hypnosis was Sam finally releasing her grasp against my arm as she slid slowly and silently back into her own bed.

"Okay Sam, here we go," The doctor went straight down to business although I, as I was sure Sam, wanted nothing more than for her to slow down, "I'm just gonna start a new, temporary line in your arm that'll stay there for the next couple of days until that catheter of yours heals. We'll do the chemo through the IV today and probably tomorrow but hopefully by Friday you won't be bogged down with so many lines anymore."

She explained hastily, inserting the second needle directly above the first that the nurse had put in earlier this morning so that I was quickly starting to understand what the doctor meant; Sam's arms were so loaded with tubing and tape at this point, it was difficult to so much as see the skin underneath.

"Alright, and here… we… go…" She spoke slowly in time with her movements as she released the first drops of poison, taken by gravity from their position above all of our heads, directly down their track leading straight into Sam's veins.

"Brooke," I hadn't even realized that I had been holding my breath until several seconds later when Sam had called up to me from her position, tied down to her bed with a direct infusion of cytotoxic chemicals, "You can breathe now, you now."

The ache in my lungs was only then obvious and I exhaled slowly and powerfully, but to be honest, the brief exertion had been nothing short of dull, mostly considering the fact that I'd been expecting much bigger things; most noticeably category five hurricanes, instant volcanic eruptions, who knew, maybe even the damn apocalypse…

Okay, so maybe that much had been an exaggeration, but really, I had, perhaps stupidly, envisioned the worst case scenario for Sam to happen within seconds of her beginning her chemotherapy treatments; I'm talking about having her become sickly emaciated in a heartbeat, seeing the entirety of her hair flutter to the ground instantaneously, having the vomit begin to flow like rivers before she could so much as register its warning…

But it hadn't; and perhaps that was why, when nothing changed, when everything remained remarkably the same as it had been before, I slowly found myself starting to breathe again, my heart slowing to a more acceptable pulse as I began to believe that maybe, just maybe, there was actually a miracle floating around somewhere within my veins, and more importantly, within Sam's, after all.

* * *

**SAM**

"How are you feeling?"

Officially, I had started chemotherapy a little over three hours ago now, unofficially, Brooke was trying to set a new Guinness World Record for the most times a single person asked another how they were feeling within a one hundred and eight minute time span… and counting.

Striving for success in her endeavor, that had been the eighth time that she'd asked me the famed question in the past twenty minutes and about the eight hundredth time in the exactly three hours, fourteen minutes, and twelve seconds since I'd began chemo.

"Fine, still…" I replied, making sure to emphasize the word _still_ because the truth was, I was indeed feeling fine, in fact, as ironic as this may be, I was starting to think as if this was the best that I'd felt in weeks.

In my wildest of nightmares, conducted in the brief bouts of sleep that I'd actually managed to achieve last night, I'd had visions of this exact moment, and to be completely honest, those visions were much more eventful than the real thing actually turned out to be…

Of course, the fact that those eventful visions mostly involved me hunched up in the corner puking my guts up, I think that it was safe to say that I preferred the simple bout of boredom.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," I apologized for my rudeness instantly, realizing that I had probably just sounded more bitchy than I ever would have liked, "I just… I don't know." I failed to rephrase my initial statement, instead simply choosing to hang my head like a puppy being scolded with the hopes that Brooke would recognize how badly I felt.

"It's okay," Brooke shrugged, flashing me an appreciative half grin, "I get it… But really, do you feel alright?"

Ninth time; are you starting to see what I mean?

"Yeah," I nodded, unable to help but to laugh at her persistency, "I don't know, I guess that I was kind of just expecting to be sick by now but I really do feel alright…" Maybe if I was in the complaining mood I'd actually mention to her the small headache that has begun formulating in the back of my head just a few brief hours ago, but I was getting so used to this feeling at this point, that I simply considered it to be normal.

"Well thank God for that." Julian threw in his expert opinion from the corner of the room and I couldn't help but agree with him…

Just to prove a point, I leaned myself forward as far as I could stretch; grabbing a munchkin out of the box that Julian had bought for us earlier this morning and popping it straight into my mouth as Brooke and Julian watched on with a combination of shock and amusement splayed across their faces; I guess that it was difficult for them to believe that I was actually hungry at a time like this; I think that it was even more difficult for them to believe that my current craving just so happened to be doughnut holes.

"I can't believe you're eating that." Brooke professed her disbelief aloud, shaking her head slowly at me.

"What!" I practically yelled at her, throwing a second glazed into my mouth whole, barely chewing before I swallowed, but regretting that instantly upon nearly choking as Julian's cell phone blared from its position on the bedside table next to me.

A synchronized silence replaced our previous liveliness in an instant; Brooke and I waiting with baited breath for Julian to make his move.

I knew what this call was all about, we all did; it was about a half an hour ago now after all that Julian had placed his hesitant telephone call to have a taxi pick him up at the hospital and drive him to the airport…

And as much as Brooke and I had been the ones to push his final decision to go back to L.A., well that didn't mean that it wasn't still hard to see him go.

He excused himself, clearly eager for neither Brooke nor myself to hear this call although we were both painfully aware of its origins, ducking out of the door quickly into the hallway.

My eyes remained glued to his back, facing us the entire time, my breathing escalating painfully fast so that I felt as if I wasn't sending Julian off to produce a movie, but away to war.

Of course, when he finally did return, the look on his face just made it that much harder to remember that we weren't.

"The taxi's waiting outside." He stated simply, an obvious desperation to keep his voice neutral through this clear upset prominent in his voice.

"Here, I'll walk you down." Brooke stood, surprising me with her willingness to leave my side as Julian quickly threw his jacket around his shoulders, picking up the one small duffle bag he planned on bringing on his journey clear across the country, "Sam, will you be alright up here by yourself for a couple of minutes?"

Both sets of eyes turned towards me in an instant and I nodded despite instantly regretting that decision the second that that lingering pain in the back of my head exploded just a bit stronger alongside the motion.

Subconsciously, I felt myself push the box of munchkins further away from me… Suddenly, I wasn't as hungry as I had been before.

"Hey, I'll be back in five days max," Julian assured me, leaning down quickly, wrapping me up into a hug that lasted so long I feared the cab driver would get bored of waiting and simply leave without him.

"Okay," I spoke as if I didn't already know that five days would probably seem like a lifetime, "Call me when you get in, okay?"

"The second that I land," He assured, squeezing me extra tightly for a brief second before ultimately releasing his grip and stepping away.

"Bye," He waved me out from the doorway.

"See you later," I corrected him instantly; I hated goodbyes, have ever since I was a little kid.

"See you later," He corrected himself with a wave and a nod of his head before ducking out of the room entirely.

"I'll be right back." Brooke assured me, calling over her shoulder, hot on Julian's tail, moving just quickly enough to ensure that I was able to keep my brave face on at the very least until I was completely certain that I was alone. It was only when I couldn't so much as hear Brooke's footsteps stride down the length of the hallway anymore that I allowed my true feelings to slip through the cracks.

It was as if somebody had slipped a light switch.

I'd gone from feeling fine, to absolutely wanting to die so quickly that I struggled to identify the exact moment in which my stomach began performing its summersaults from deep within the depths of my abdominal cavity.

Rolling over onto my side, I pulled my knees slowly into my chest, desperate to find a position that would ease my cramping abdominal muscles, but hesitant to make any sudden movements for fear that they would only make my situation worse; if that was even possible.

I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly alongside several steady, deep breaths that only seemed to make the gurgling within my stomach worse.

At least I was finally starting to understand what they meant when they'd told me earlier that the very most basic law of cancer was that if you don't sick, you don't get better.

So with that notion running back and forth across my mind in double time, I continued to lie in the fetal position, my head pounding, and my stomach searing, desperate to convince myself that this feeling could only be taken as a good thing.

"Sam, are you alright?"

I guess I had lost track of how much time I was actually spending curled up in said ball, because I recognized Brooke's voice instantaneously upon hearing it.

The sound of rapid footsteps quickly became a full-blown run as she approached me, but it was only after the blinding light above was diluted by her shadow that I finally allowed my eyes to squint open so that I made out the blurry outline of Brooke's hovering form.

"Sam?" She spoke again considering the fact that I hadn't responded the first time, bending at the waist in order to meet my eye level so that the instant our eyes locked, I finally felt my stomach muscles completely clench around them leaving me fearful to open my mouth in order to respond to her, terrified that something much more than words would spill out of it.

"I think I'm gonna puke."By the time the words were actually released from my mouth, I could already feel the bolus of bile rise to the base of my throat, leaving me doubtful of Brooke's ability to do much of anything about the inevitable mess that I was about to make, but she managed to impress me just like she always does…

In a strange, almost awkward pirouette, I watched as Brooke managed a quick, clockwise spin on her axis while simultaneously reaching out to grab for the pink emesis basin that the hospital staff had already made damn sure we knew was there well before this moment, tossing it directly under my chin just in time.

I would have been impressed if I hadn't been so busy projectile vomiting into the damn thing… I think that it was safe to say that I was really starting to regret all of those munchkins I'd eaten earlier, especially now that I could practically feel them sliding back up the exact same way that they had just gone down.

After minutes that truly felt like hours, I finally lifted my head in indication of the brief pause I'd managed between rounds; my face dripping with saliva and sweat.

"Are you okay?"Brooke asked, multi-tasking impressively as she brushed stray hairs from my face with one hand and jabbed at the nurse-call button with the other; desperate for somebody to come in here and offer the assistance that she just couldn't provide me with right now.

I wanted to say yes, I wanted to assure her that I was indeed alright, hell, I would have been satisfied simply being able to offer her so much as a head nod, but the only thing I managed was the entire collapse of the entirety of my head as my neck muscles collapsed around each other, sending myself plunging face first, straight back into the bucket below me as all of the food that I had ever consumed since I was five years old, or so it seemed, raced to reemerge from the very pit of my stomach.

Underneath my heavy head and my not-so-quite empty stomach, I could feel the weight of the pink emesis basin compress the surface of the mattress by which I was currently supporting the majority of my body weight on.

Great, as if I didn't already have enough shit to worry about, I now found myself extremely nervous about the potential of overflow; anxious towards the very real possibility that I would very soon be laying in a very big, very disgusting mess.

But for the first time in my life, I got lucky.

I was spared a very brief second of peaceful stillness as my stomach struggled to re-align with the rest of the world and finally took a moment to recuperate before diving into round two; ample time for my nearly over-flowing pink life preserver to be replaced with a brand new, and most importantly clean one, directly underneath my chin.

"Here you go honey." The voice was that of an unidentified nurse, one who I hadn't even heard enter the room, but who I'd immediately classified as a life saver so that had I actually had the capacity to do so, I probably would have leapt straight up into the air and embraced her until my arms fell off merely for her part in preventing me from facing what could have been a very grimy situation.

Of course, before I could so much as consider this possibility, a fresh stream forced itself upwards once again, blocking any and all potential for words as I forced myself forwards once again, grateful for the extra pair of hands available to me as the nurse successfully held my hair back as Brooke was too busy gripping my shoulders so tightly that I was starting to think she was literally trying to transfer some of her health onto me through the very surface of her palms.

"Can I go into the bathroom?" I asked when my stomach finally settled long enough for me to not only emit an entire sentence, but also for me to remain confident that I could actually handle the journey from my bed to the bathroom without my body performing a vicious revolt against me.

Besides, there was something unceremoniously nasty about puking in the same place that I slept.

"Of course you can honey, come on." Brooke pulled at my arms gently from behind as the nurse pushed from the front, the duo moving in synchronized motions in an effort to put in the work that my body simply couldn't at the moment.

Have you ever heard those stories about all of those superhero grandmothers? You know, the ones who found their grandchildren trapped in the back seat of the family minivan as it was attacked by a rapid cougar, or else sinking deep within the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean?

And even though these women are, at the very least, eighty freaking years old, the adrenaline would kick in fast enough for them to fight off the giant cat, or wade into the ocean depths and physically carry the minivan out of it until the kids were out of harm's way…

Well, I wasn't exactly as heavy as a minivan over here, and Brooke wasn't exactly sparing with wild animals to achieve her goal, but still, I was more than impressed when her scrawny ass actually managed to physically lift me out of my bed, simultaneously working to settle my feet onto the ground as she wrapped one of my arms around her own shoulder and the other around the nurse's, formulating a functional triad of support as we began moving at a snail's pace towards the direction of the bathroom.

The absolute second that we began to move, I could feel my stomach protesting rebelliously once again underneath me; I guess when I'd finally decided that I could actually make it all the way to the bathroom, I hadn't considered the fact that it was probably going to take about a hundred times longer than it normally would for me to arrive at my destination.

But we had made it, finally, and with our arrival, I found myself wasting absolutely no time; relying on both gravity, and the lack of resistance that my muscles offered as I fell onto my knees, gripped at my porcelain throne with a white-knuckled intensity, and let a rip.

"Hey Sam, you're okay… you're okay." Brooke muttered continuously into my ear, rubbing the softest of circles across my back as my chest heaved with every breath and my head pounded with every heartbeat.

I couldn't manage a response, instead, released only a handful of strangled breaths before another wave of nausea hit me like freight train, leaving me sputtering and retching even more violently than even before until there was absolutely nothing left for me to push back up.

Sweat glistened across my forehead, lacing across my hairline before dripping the length of my jaw, beading off of my chin where it took the plunge into the concoction already brewing in the toilet below me.

I guess I had to look on the bright side here; at least in a couple more weeks I wouldn't even have a hairline to get me all hot and sweaty…

I sat with my head clutching between the toilet for several more minutes, allowing the dry heaves to consume the back of my throat as I gagged up the last remaining strands of spit and puke until finally, there was nothing left.

Sinking backwards against the counter, I allowed my eyes to slide closed and positively refused to open them back up again until I was certain that I had slid far enough away from the mess that I had just created that I wouldn't have to see it .

"Are you all done honey?" Brooke sunk down next to me, allowing me to fall against her, my head burying naturally into her shoulder where the coolness of her body contrasted against the heat of my own in such a manner that made it feel like absolute heaven.

"I think so." I breathed slowly just in case I was wrong, willing my head to just stop spinning for so much as a single second although it refused.

"Wanna go back into your bed?"

"Yeah," I nodded although I definitely regretted that action the second I'd performed it, but still, nothing sounded better to me right now than to lay in my own bed and just go back to sleep because things never seemed as bad as they actually were in sleep.

The trip back towards my bed turned out to be no way near as difficult as the journey away from it had been as Brooke deposited me down into my bed with perfect timing, just as the nurse had completed changing my soiled sheets.

Curling up into an instinctual ball, I allowed Brooke to pull the blankets high over my shoulders, accepting the nurse's gift of a fresh emesis basin, slipping it immediately underneath the crook of my arm; my own version of a security blanket.

"Here you go honey." The nurse extended towards my general direction, a glass of water, holding the plastic cup gently in support as I cradled it between my shaking hands.

"Trust me, it will help."She responded to the silence, noticing the reluctance written across my face towards putting anything in my stomach right now, but I trusted her, after all, she did have a lot more experience with this kind of thing than I did.

"Thanks," I muttered, sipping at the drink, only hoping that my stomach could actually remain settled long enough for hydration to actually kick in.

"And this," She surrendered to me, a warm, damp towel, allowing me to wipe at my mouth and hair; two unfortunate civilian casualties of this most latest battle as Brooke draped a clean towel against my forehead, desperately attempting to allow the heat to replace the spinning.

"Okay, you just call me if you need anything else, alright?" She spoke more to Brooke than she had to me, figuring that if I were actually to need anything, I probably wouldn't be in any sort of capacity to call for help, leaving my care up to Brooke's devices.

"How are you feeling?" Brooke asked me the second the nurse had disappeared from view and I couldn't help but smirk; tenth time.

"Tired… headache…" I could only manage speech in brief, one-worded sentences; what the hell had I been thinking when I'd convinced myself that I could actually do this? Because if this was the way that I was going to feel every single day for the next God only knew how many, well, let's just say that there was no way in hell…

"I know that it's hard, sweetheart, but you're doing so well so far, you're so strong and we're all so proud of you…" I allowed her words to infiltrate my thoughts, sinking through the surface of my brain as they supported me into a much welcomed unconscious.

"I'm gonna sleep." I muttered through a yawn as the world began to grow fuzzy.

"You sleep, I'll be right here the whole time." I closed my eyes quickly, accepting her advice in my eagerness to sleep into oblivion, my eagerness to be away from sickness, away from cancer, away from this hell hole that I liked to call my life.

And as I slipped faster and faster away from the world of conscious thought and into that of blissful oblivion, I leaned my body subconsciously closer into Brooke's comforting touch, and succumbed to exhaustion with the thought in mind that she would be able to fix all of the things that I knew I could never even dream of fixing myself.

* * *

**PEYTON**

I don't do well with silence.

No, in fact, I don't do very well with silence at all, but here I was; sitting all by myself in my vast house with nothing to occupy me but a sleeping newborn, motionless and in the exact same position that I had found myself trapped within for the past couple of hours now…

Hours… it sounds so long when you put it that way, but of course, that was the amount of time that it took until I finally worked up the courage that I knew it would take to get me through those doors at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital.

I felt ashamed, horrible even, after all, I had indeed anticipated on giving both Brooke and Sam a guest appearance that I could only hope would take their minds off of things for at least a little while anyway, but my plans got wrapped around backwards rather quickly with an unannounced, yet totally welcomed visit from my father where we'd spent the afternoon goggling over his new granddaughter, allowing him to finally put a dash of reality into all of those pictures that I'd been sending him since Sawyer's birth.

Needless to say, I never did make it down to that hospital.

I hadn't even thought to call Brooke yesterday and ask her how she was doing, how Sam was doing, and I know that the fact that I'd simply gotten "caught up" in other things wasn't anywhere even close to an excuse for me doing so, but, and as selfish as it made me sound, yesterday had been a very good break, a nice manner by which I'd actually pretended that I had absolutely no problems in my life…

For a little while, that is.

But that brief period of forgetful bliss was long gone at this point. Today, it was time to return to real life, it was time to face this new reality of disease and hospitals alongside the fact that my best friend was probably a walking, talking, real life portrait of a functioning panic attack at this point.

My best friend needed me, and for all intents and purposes, so did her daughter, and that was exactly how I had managed to get here; sitting in my car with my sleeping daughter carefully nuzzled into her car seat behind me as I drove like a ninety year old woman straight into the hospital parking lot.

There had been plenty of spaces for me to park in straight from the get-go but still, I drove straight to the top of the garage without so much as looking for anything that may have been considered more convenient.

Moving slowly, I unfastened Sawyer, got her settled into her stroller, and aimlessly took off for the elevators within the hospital lobby, practically crawling in the search for my final destination, locating it only to find both Sam and Brooke fast asleep inside.

The scene would have been absolutely beautiful if it wasn't so deceptively heartbreaking.

Sam was practically sitting in Brooke's lap as she slept, her head resting against the older woman's shoulder, her pale face emphasizing the dark circles surrounding her closed eyes.

Taking a deep breath, I allowed myself a few shaky steps inside of the room, begging my nerves to ease.

Needless to say, I had a difficult time dealing with hospitals, particularly this one. I think that it was safe to say that I had a lot of bad memories originate in between these walls, and being reminded of them every single time I stepped between them wasn't something that I particularly appreciated.

My daughter must have noticed the tension, hell, I think even the most inanimate of objects in the room could have picked up on it, because the second we'd gotten close enough, she released a wail that echoed and carried, bouncing off of the walls before traveling in every which direction.

"Shh, Sawyer, you're gonna wake up your Aunt Brooke." I tried to hush the child, but it was already too late; just as I was bending over in an effort to pick her up from her stroller and calm her, I heard a low grunt of confusion originating straight from Brooke's throat.

"Peyton?"

Great, I'd woke her up.

"Hey buddy," I spoke awkwardly in my advance towards Brooke, holding firmly onto my daughter as I watched my best friend slide herself gently out of the arms of her own, standing straight tin an effort to greet me.

She pulled me into a hug, holding tightly so that I couldn't help but feel her limbs shaking slightly underneath my own; it was only when she'd pulled away from me that I noticed how terrible she truly looked.

"Brooke, here, why don't you sit," I spoke with a tone that sounded more like a command then a question, guiding her forcefully into the chair where I busied myself with my determination to take care of her for her, considering it was starting to become blatantly obvious to me that she wasn't about to do that herself.

I settled her in, ensuring her comfort before pulling up my own chair, holding Sawyer firmly against my chest as I lowered by body down into it.

"So… how's Sam doing?" I asked, watching Brooke's face carefully as she managed to keep it in the contortion of a brief calm so that, for a second there, I actually thought that I was going to receive some good news from the woman; an announcement that this had all turned out to be merely one large, terrible mistake, that Sam wasn't sick, that she had in fact, never even had cancer at all.

I was suddenly reminded of this game that I used to play with myself when I was younger on those summer nights that I never wanted to end; I used to find myself placing tiny bets with the master controller of the moon and the sun, whoever he was; telling him that had I managed to hold my breath for an entire minute, if I managed not to blink for so long my eyes practically dried up and shriveled out, if I stood so still on my front lawn that the bugs started crawling on my in their mistaking my body for a blade of grass, he'd have to keep the night from ever coming.

And now, I'm finding myself doing something very similar; except this time, I'm bargaining for Sam's health and for Brooke's sanity, even though I'd learned a long time ago that that's not the way that the world works, it's not how it works at all.

"She started chemotherapy this morning." Brooke's composure faltered, her voice choked so that I knew in an instant that all that praying that I had just done had merely been wishful thinking.

Of course, I had been expecting this, but that didn't mean that it still didn't hit me like a slap across my face.

Tilting my head back dramatically, I shut my eyes, desperately attempting to be discrete in my momentary lapse of strength so that Brooke wouldn't be able to see the overtaking of that emotional barrier… After all, I was here to be strong for Brooke, not the other way around.

"How's she taking it?" I asked, thinking better of my words, rephrasing the original question instantaneously, "How are you taking it?"

"She's doing alright?" Brooke shrugged, managing to completely ignore my inquiry towards her health, leading me to wonder if she had even heard it at all; either way, it was all the answer that I needed, "She was fine for the first couple of hours but she started getting pretty sick a little bit over an hour ago."

Brooke drifted off, practically forcing my eyes to wander onto Sam's still-sleeping form… poor kid.

"What did you do Peyton?" Brooke managed only after a brief hush had fallen across the room, "With Ellie I mean, how did you do it?"

As I'm sure Brooke had already assumed Ellie had been on my mind since I had learned of Sam's initial leukemia diagnosis two days ago now; the outcome of Ellie's brief, unsuccessful battle against cancer still haunting, fresh in the back of my mind as if it had happened yesterday as opposed to years ago.

"I don't know, Brooke… I mean… with Ellie things were kind of different. I mean, I didn't even find out that she was sick until a few weeks before she died and…" I stopped my sentence short, realizing my mistake a little bit too late before I'd managed to stop myself, before I could truly realize that bringing up the topic of dying of cancer had to be a painful one for Brooke to think about right now.

"I'm sorry, Brooke." I apologized instantly in an attempt to rectify my mistake.

"Don't be," She assured me with a soft smile that never quite reached her eyes, "I'm the one that asked, right?"

"Brooke…?" Her eyes snapped themselves away from mine before I even had time to register the voice, and in a split second, she was up and out of her seat, rushing towards the general direction of Sam.

"Hey sweetheart, how are you feeling?" I watched the interaction with a half-broken heart as Sam shook her head miserably, giving Brooke all of the answer that she needed from the girl.

"Hey, I know something that might make you feel better; you've got a visitor." I interpreted Brooke's words as an indication of the safety of approaching, so I stood, taking a couple of cautious steps forward until I was directly in front of Sam's view.

"Hey," The girl initiated.

"Hey Sam," I replied, quickly passing Sawyer into Brooke's arms so that I could lean forward and wrap Sam into as tight of a hug as either of us could muster in our current weakness.

"Funny, I think that the last time we were here I was visiting you right after you had Sawyer… Strange how things turn out sometimes, isn't it?" She broke through the thick barrier of initial conversation with an attempt at humor, and I forced myself to crack a smile and nodded.

"Hey, speaking of, I brought her along with me." I nodded towards Sawyer, still firmly between Brooke's arms.

"Wow," The girls eyes widened in wonderment, "I haven't seen her in a while… she's getting pretty big, isn't she."

"Yeah well, that's because your mother is spoiling her rotten, she always gives her whatever she wants to eat… Wanna hold her?" I suggested, noticing the girl's eyes lingering on the small child between Brooke's arms.

"Can I?" She asked, as if surprised I'd actually made the suggestion.

"Of course," I nodded, lifting the baby out of Brooke's arms and placing her directly into Sam's, watching carefully as Sam rocked her arms gently, watching as the child yawned and rolled over in an effort to get comfortable so that seeing the two of them together forced me to try and put myself in Brooke's position; I tried to imagine that it was my child that I was watching endure this nightmare, but no matter how many times I attempted to do it, I couldn't… not even a little bit.

"She's so little," Sam marveled, her eyes fixed determinedly downwards as little Sawyer clasped the entirety of her hand around Sam's index finger.

"Yeah well, that's what she gets for inheriting Peyton's genes she'll be that way for the rest of her life." Brooke joked, probably just happy to see Sam happy again until the girl's face to a dramatic downwards turn, paling to near translucence so that I swore to it, I could see right through her.

"Can you take her?"

"Why, are you okay?" Brooke's voice dipped instantaneously, shifting into a frenzy as she grabbed at my child still gripped within her own's slackened grasp and passed her back onto me.

"Yeah, I just have to pee." She announced through a blatant lie, trying desperately to push herself into a more upright position, struggling with Brooke's arms continuously wrapped, protectively around her. "I can pee by myself you know." She added, noticing Brooke's obvious reluctance to leave, and I could see where Sam was coming from with all of this, really I could, the thing was, I could see where Brooke was coming from even more.

It killed her, I could tell by the look in her eyes that it did, but Brooke had managed to back herself off slightly as Sam carefully lifted herself upwards and out of bed.

Moving slowly, she eventually managed to lower her feet to the ground, supporting her full body weight against the sides of her bedrails so that she could pull herself upright where she stood for a mere second before ultimately hunching over, her pain obvious.

"Yeah, I don't think so." Brooke insisted, grabbing onto Sam with one arm, expertly tugging at the IV pole plugged into the wall with the other, "Let me at least walk you into the bathroom okay? I'll let you go by yourself." Sam settled for Brooke's plea bargain because, and I was sure of this, she knew better than to waste what little energy that she had left on an obvious lost cause.

The duo formed a productive complex, one that broke only after Brooke had finally had Sam situated securely into the bathroom, but even then, Brooke continued to determinedly park herself outside of the partially closed door as I pretended to be interested in a scene outside in the hallway in an effort to protect Sam's dwindling modesty.

It was only after I heard the sound of what very eerily resembled a hoard of sick striking a solid tile floor that I realized the scene within the bathroom was much more than I had originally anticipated and I turned immediately back around.

Naturally, Brooke had arrived first, and after that, by the time I had securely settled Sawyer back into her carriage and made my way back over towards the bathroom, Sam's head was already buried so deeply into the toilet once again that the only thing that I could properly make out was the back of her head, sticking out against the opening of the porcelain bowl, her messy pony tail pointed towards the ceiling as she wretched continuously into the toilet below.

I didn't know what to do other than just stand there open mouthed and gawking at the scene as Brooke crouched down behind Sam, rubbing her back gently until her head finally shot up from behind the veil of porcelain and she managed to actually loosen her grasp around the toilet seat, gasping for air.

"Breathe Sam, that's it… just breathe honey." Brooke was trying her very hardest to keep her cool as Sam's knuckles once again clenched furiously so that I could physically see all of the muscles along her forearms, straight across her back contract in a forceful gag reflex so that a second round of bile came up so quickly she didn't even have time to lower her head back into the toilet as a stream of what looked to be pure water emitted from her mouth, landing everywhere it seemed, but inside of the toilet.

"Peyton, can you go into the hallway and grab a nurse for me?" Brooke sounded unsettlingly calm; after all, she had experienced all of this before earlier this morning while I, on the other hand, was brand new to it all.

I hesitated for only the briefest of seconds, my mind settling, forcing my feet to back up slowly, moving faster and faster with every step that I took until I found myself practically sprinting into the hallway, directly towards the nurse's station.

"Excuse me, hi, I'm sorry but Samantha Walker in the room down the hall there… she's uh… she's throwing up in there and I was just wondering if you maybe had a clean towel or something…" I spoke stupidly, finding difficulty in procuring the right words as the nurses sprang into instant action, and thank God for them I must say, because I if it were me, I probably would have merely stood in the doorway like an ass all day long instead of actually procuring something useful…

I followed, pointing them towards the right direction into the bathroom although that's where they had been headed for all along anyway. I'd done it because I'd felt useless, after all, Brooke was helping the nurses, the nurses were helping Sam, Sam was busy being sick as a dog, and then… well then there was me, lingering in the corner like a worthless lump, unsure of exactly what it was that I should actually be doing.

But I'd gotten lucky; and even though the results had benefitted Sam much more than myself in the long run, I was just grateful that this episode hadn't lasted particularly long as Sam spit into the toilet with a force that indicated her finality, allowing the two nurses assisting her as well as Brooke to literally pick her up and carry her back into her bed.

Her head dangled lifelessly, drained of energy behind her as they gently placed her onto the mattress where her chalky white face contrasted harshly against the starch colored sheets.

"Sam honey, can you sit up to us for a second or two?" One of the nurses asked Sam although she hadn't waited for a response from the younger girl before she lifted her into a seated position against the raised mattress, causing Sam to groan in protest against the forced abdominal contraction produced within her muscles.

"Here Sam drink up, it's just water." Brooke extended a cup up close to Sam's pursed, chapped lips, but the girl merely shook her head, stubbornly pushing the hard plastic full of clear liquid away from her.

"Come on Sam, you have to keep yourself hydrated." Brooke begged, but her efforts were of no use, but then again, I probably would have been hesitant about putting anything into my system too had I just been kneeling in a pool of my own vomit all day.

"Sam, you have to drink this or we're going to have to put you on an IV to keep up your fluids." I imagined that these nurses had a lot of experience dealing with stubborn children, because the threat had hit the nail on the head, completing its intended job in forcing Sam to accept the straw, where she took a generous gulp before swirling the contents within her mouth in an effort to clear her breath of that lingering taste of vomit.

"Spit?" Brooke asked, extending an empty basin towards Sam who nodded in her thanks before expelling the liquid in her mouth, at the very least, this time on her own terms.

"Just try to finish that cup of water for me, okay Sam?" She nodded towards the nurse, eager to express her independence by taking the cup from Brooke, holding it between shaky hands and dipping casually against the straw until the plastic was completely emptied, leaving Sam to sink against the bed, beginning her attempt at recovering from the exhaustion of recent events.

"I'm just gonna go and get something that can clean up this bathroom Brooke, I'll be right back." The nurse whispered, laying a gentle hand against Brooke's shoulder before turning out of the room with her partner, leaving Brooke solely in charge of caring for her daughter once again.

"Sam are you alright?" Brooke asked the second that we were alone again, rubbing a gentle hand up and down Sam's arms in an effort to do anything that she possibly could to make the girl as comfortable as humanly possible given the circumstances.

"This sucks…" The girl groaned underneath her closed eyes.

"I know it does, honey," Brooke agreed, "But it's gonna be okay… this will all be worth it in the end."

Her voice faded, Sam's response emitted in a low drawl of gibberish, incoherent mutters released from her mouth in streams until her head finally rolled so far to the side that it rested against her own shoulder and she was silenced by sleep.

"She does that sometimes." Brooke explained unnecessarily, rubbing her hands through her hair as she straightened away from Sam's bed only to sink immediately downward into her seat so that my concern shifted immediately from Sam straight onto Brooke, who's head was lowering as if there were a weight attached to her neck, sinking until it was rested firmly between her knees, her narrow back ballooning up and down with each breath she took.

"Brooke, when was the last time you ate something?" I asked her in my attempts to force her to recognize the fact that Sam wasn't the only person who needed to be taken care of… Of course, as I'd expected all she did was shrug; the answer came alongside the fact that she refused to so much as look at me.

"Come on," I beckoned towards her, "I'm taking you down to the cafeteria." I spoke forcefully, knowing full well that she would protest, which was why I was not only unsurprised, but also prepared for when she merely shook her head at me.

"I can't, what if Sam wakes up?"

"She's a big girl Brooke; she'll be okay for a few minutes by herself. Besides, I know for a fact that she wants you to take care of yourself too… Hell, she _needs_ you to take care of yourself Brooke." Needless to say, I have had my fair share of experience with Brooke's tendency towards putting her own needs aside in situations such as this one, which is why I also had my fair share of experience knowing that I would have to spoon feed her if that's what all of this ultimately came down to.

"Sam honey," Just to prove a point, I leaned closely into Sam's ear, unsure as to whether or not she could hear me, but figuring I'd try despite myself, "I'm taking Brooke down to the cafeteria to get some food, okay? We'll be back in a little while."

"Good," I heard Sam mutter softly back to me in her reply, "Send her home for some sleep too."

"Did you hear that?" I turned to address Brooke, "Even Sam wants you out of here, so let's go."

"Go…" Sam pushed weekly, allowing me to gesture for her for Brooke to follow me, beckoning towards her with my hand in an effort to get her moving before she had the opportunity to change her mind, pleased when I found her following my lead obligingly.

She'd begged and pleaded the entire way down, but in the end, I'd wound up purchasing for her, nearly $50 worth of food, mostly non-perishable items, you know, the necessities; chips, candy, anything that I could really think of that would help to keep her blood sugar above 10 during those long periods of self-starvation I'd always known her to be so prone to.

I sat her down at a cafeteria table, transforming myself into the reflection of the true mother within me, forcing her to remain seated across from me until she'd eaten every last bite of the food I'd placed in front of her.

"Brooke…" I initiated conversation hesitantly, not really sure how to begin but knowing that I truly had to somehow… Brooke was hurting, Sam was hurting, I was hurting, and I knew that there was no way in hell that I could merely sit here like an idiot and wait for something to happen.

Brooke had been there for me before, more than once mind you, and I always did feel as if I had never sufficiently been able to return the favors to her; I took this as my chance to do so.

I watched Brooke, staring at her determinedly as she brought her hand upwards to rub across her face, apparently trying to hide from me as much as she possibly could in her blatant exposure.

Reaching over, I grabbed at the hands in front of her face, cradling them within my own, forcing her to face me.

"I'm scared Peyton." She finally admitted, desperate for her eyes never to meet my own.

"I know Brooke… I'm scared too." I admitted, knowing full well that even had I lied to her and told her that I wasn't, it would be blatantly obvious that I was. "But you know Brooke, you have this entire army of people all ready to be here for you, and for Sam…" I tried to be optimistic but her face didn't change at my offer, so I allowed my face to sink, the seriousness, the truth behind my words evident across my expression.

"She'll get through this Brooke, and so will you."

"I just got her back again Peyton," She shook as she spoke, pretending to pick at the last of her food with her fork although she never actually ate any of it, "I just got her and now… what if I lose her again?"

Pulling her hand out of my own, she locked her fingers together, forming a perfect resting place that could act as a sufficient barrier for her to rest her face inside as she shivered and exerted a force against every muscle in her body in an effort to control her already over-worked tear ducts.

"You can't think like that Brooke. We aren't going to lose her. I know that this is hard but we have to stay positive… for Sam." It sounded corny, I knew that it did but it was the truth after all, and as true as it was, I almost felt hypocritical saying it especially now as the what if's continued to flutter endlessly across my brain out of control and apparently unstoppable.

I watched Brooke continuously, watched her speak to me in a manner that was continuously telling me that everything in front of my face was indeed real despite how little I actually wanted to believe it.

I wasn't ready; I wasn't prepared to except this reality despite the fact that it was right here, right in front of my very own eyes…

The thing was, these days, if seeing really is believing, well than I'm starting to believe that I have finally, completely lost my mind.


	10. Forever Bound

Chapter 10: Forever Bound

**Thursday, November 3****rd****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

It's hard to believe, and to be completely honest, after everything that had happened yesterday, I probably wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it with my very own eyes, but the remainder of our evening was spent with relative ease after Peyton's departure, turning what I was certain would be a very long, very sleepless night into a relatively uneventful one.

Now, I won't go into details over here, for fear that they may bore you to death, but the one thing that you truly need to know is this; that when night finally did fall, and I did what I always did these days – sit folded like a contortionist in my chair until the ass crack of dawn watching Sam sleep as I researched everything that the internet could possibly tell me about leukemia until the glow of my laptop gave me too much of a headache to carry on – I finally fell asleep only against the full knowledge that my alarm clock would be waking me up within the next hour or so to begin a day that I hoped desperately would be nowhere near as exhausting as the last.

I'd found it to be a slow habit to formulate, but that internal clock programmed somewhere deep in the back of my mind was finally adapting to Sam's strict schedule.

You see, twelve hours following Sam's official start of chemotherapy, after she'd been successfully knocked out cold, and I was finally recovering from the post-traumatic stress of everything that I had seen yesterday, things finally began to settle down around me just long enough to allow me the opportunity to ask at least some of the millions of questions that I'd had floating around in the back of my head since Sam's diagnosis…

It had been Stacy, a nurse who I had already identified as one of my favorite's who'd come to ravish me in explanations. It was Stacy who had ultimately allowed me to get to know her as she knew me, who was slowly taking the place of all of the friends, of all of the peers I had had in my previous life; that of post diagnosis.

She'd offered me the explanations, taught me the ropes, the basics, including my most notorious struggle; that was, how to distinguish between the five million or so different medications that Sam had to be given; what she took, when she took it, how much of it needed to be given to her, and over night, or so it seemed, I found myself mastering the art of the schedule, all the while refraining from mentioning that organization was never really my thing, which of course, was why I had people like Millie working for me…

At the end of the day, I had received my color-coded Excel spread sheet alongside a hands-on instruction guide of coping with your teenager's cancer, so thick that it could have been teaching me how to put together a car from scratch and an emphasis on just how important all of this really was for me to know so that I would be familiar with what to do when it actually came time for Sam to finally come home…

And as much as I knew that Sam was looking for that day, I couldn't say I reciprocated the feeling.

I was watching infomercials later that night; you know, those sad-looking people dishing out sob stories with an 800 number displayed in flashing bubble letters underneath them for donation purposes when my alarm blared its three a.m. wakeup call – Sam's first dosage of pills for the day.

I groped blindly in the dark for Sam's pill box, still thinking about the starving African children I had just seen displayed against the LED screen in front of me; it was difficult to remember hearing a story like that, it was even more difficult for me to remember how it used to make me feel, my heart cracking down the middle, half sympathetic yet at the same time, half grateful that while there were indeed people out there dying, me, my friends, my family were all safe.

It had been a life that I had never imagined for myself, a life I couldn't imagine living.

Sort of like this one used to be.

I hadn't even realized that I'd started to cry until Jake, the graveyard shift male nurse knelt down in front of me and put a strong hand against my knee, indicative of my failure in completing my task of delivering to Sam her required dosage of medication.

"Here Ms. Davis, let me help you." He'd spoke softly, pushing me to remain in my seat as Sam fought and fussed over being awakened to swallow a grey horse pill designed to prevent her kidneys from failing due to the massive amounts of toxic drugs continuously being pumped into her system.

By the end of the ten second exertion, Sam was out cold once again; the drugs floating through her veins doubling as synthetic sleep as my body performed the exact opposite effect; natural caffeine in the form of adrenaline and cortisol; microscopic assurance that I would be getting absolutely no sleep tonight.

"Ms. Davis," Jake had kneeled back into view the second he was confident that Sam was comfortably asleep, "Can I get you anything?"

I could feel my face blush underneath the veil of my embarrassment as I shook my head towards his request; ashamed that I had allowed myself to break down, even more ashamed that I had allowed myself to be caught doing it.

"I'm fine," I'd insisted.

"Yeah," He muttered sarcastically, "And I'm the highest paid employee in this hospital." I couldn't help but smirk at his intentions, obliging the second time around, as he tugged my arm upright and dragged me towards the door.

"But Sam –" I had insisted, pulling away from him in a measure of resistance.

"Sam will not even miss you, trust me." Jake said; an all-knowing tone behind his voice that told me that whatever he had just given Sam was something that would probably effectively have her knocked out cold until she was to begin chemo earlier that morning.

By the time he'd felt safe enough to release me from his gasp again, he'd already had me cornered in the small kitchenette across the hall from Sam's room, practically forcing me, in his relentlessness, to pour a cup of the twenty-four hour brewing coffee from the industrial sized pot in the corner.

"I'm sorry," I replied softly, sitting at the circular table as Jake prepared a coffee for each of us.

"For what, not being made of stone?" He replied, sitting across from me as I shook my head gently.

"This just doesn't ever end, does it?" I asked, watching as Jake nodded truthfully, confused as to whether or not I was relieved by this honesty, or if it just made me feel worse…

But ultimately, I guess that I couldn't have felt too bad, because immediately after that, I had found myself beginning to talk; and anybody who has ever talked to me can tell you that once I start, I cannot be stopped…

And finally, after I'd finally been forced to close my mouth for a damn second because I had been talking for so long that I needed to pause in order to catch my breath, I realized that I had been talking for an entire hour straight, not a single word interrupting us in between.

"Oh my God," I spoke aloud, mortified that I had allowed this to happen, and more importantly, that Jake had allowed me to take up so much of his time, "I can't believe I kept you here for this long…"

"Don't worry," He smirks at me; a smile that proved to me he could have still looked young had he chosen another occupation, "My shift ended about forty five minutes ago."

"You should go then," I felt my cheeks flush mortified, redden under his stare, "I'm sure you have some place else that you'd rather be than here."

But he never did leave, instead, he stood, folding me into his muscular arms, allowing me to linger there for an extra second or two as he muttered from above –

"Don't we all?"

In the end, I had managed at least some sleep, and by some, I mean the absolute bare minimum without pulling an accidental all-nighter, and ultimately, the alarm that had awoken me was not the usual cell phone alarm blare that I was so used to, but instead, the much more effectively response-initiating sound of Sam gagging and sputtering from her position inside of her bed.

My brain automatically declared the scene as a state of emergency, allowing me to jump up alert and awake as well as completely ready to commit to action without even really thinking about it.

Grabbing at the already-familiar emesis basin resting on the shelf above me, I performed the single fluid motion that I have since perfected since earlier yesterday afternoon and literally threw the plastic container forwards where it landed perfectly positioned directly under Sam's chin, only to receive absolutely nothing in return…

It had been a false alarm.

She sputtered painfully for a couple of additional seconds, but eventually, even that had managed to dissipate into nothing more than a few residual coughs and finally, absolutely nothing at all.

Hocking up the lining of mucus restricting the passages at the back of her throat, she spit gracefully into the basin, apparently determined to put at least something inside of it, feeling badly about having just awoken me for nothing although she knew as well as I did that she shouldn't, that it was after all, my voluntary duty to effectively sit up with her and rub her back, whispering words of comfort and support to her as she got sick no matter what time of day or night that it was or how many false alarms that we encountered in the process.

"Jesus Christ, will this ever stop?" She muttered a question I knew immediately to have been meant to be rhetorical judging by the way her head tilted backwards behind her as she pointed her eyes upwards and towards the ceiling, motioning so that I could tell that she had now resorted towards praying to the very Gods above themselves to exert their powers in reversing the action that they'd so unsparingly created…

The call had registered through my head as a plea, a final act of desperation from the girl; the only thing it seemed that she had yet to try within this nightmare.

The thing was that Sam, as well as myself now that I really thought about it, had never really been the praying type…

Now, I couldn't speak for Sam on this, but my theory was this; that praying, and by default I guess, religion, was completely worthless for people like me. You see, the way I viewed it, religion was nothing more than a crutch carried by those desperate to disguise their grandiose fears of loneliness…

As for the rest of us, well I guess that we had eventually just learned to prefer things that way.

Besides, nobody out there was listening to us.

I guess that even Jesus Christ himself must get tired of listening to everybody else's problems eventually, and the way that I was starting to see it, well he'd already died for all of our sins once before… now it was our turn to accept a little bit of responsibility.

* * *

"Are you feeling any better Sam?"

Noon came and went here at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital relatively quickly considering the fact that I'd spent the majority of my early morning hours trapped within a constant sleep-wake cycle.

Her eyes never left the television screen, an incessant blare of early morning trash TV - you know, the kind you couldn't go five seconds without hearing the bleep of a curse word, or the hum of a thick southern accent – as she shrugged gently in her response.

Of course, I had the darnedest feeling that her avoidance of me had absolute nothing to do with her eagerness to discover the true identity of the father of little baby La'Quanda and everything to do with the fact that she was hiding something from me.

But even so, being spoken to every once in a while would still be nice… Hell, I think that I would even accept her characteristic back talk at this point… maybe a few one word answers; basic cave man English?

Hell, I think I'd be satisfied with a grunt.

"How about you try and eat something before you start chemo?" I made the suggestion, perhaps stupidly so, motioning towards the tray of food resting un-touched against Sam's bedside table.

But still, she did nothing more beyond flashing me a look; one that had the words "are you serious" written all over it…

I sighed, purposefully audible as I fell back against my chair in defeat; the thing was, Sam's brief increments of rebellious teenage angst were a hell of a lot easier for me to deal with when the variable of cancer hadn't been involved.

I know, I know, I've been hearing this since we'd gotten here; patience is a virtue, and I was trying, really, you have to know that I was trying, but it was all of this insurmountable stress, the never ending sleep deprivation, this situation as a complete whole…

Needless to say, it was starting to get to me, and I had the slightest feeling that it was starting to get to Sam too.

"I'm trying here Sam," I'd finally snapped, raising my voice so unexpectedly that she jumped, "But you've gotta give me a little bit of room here too you know."

I'd felt badly for the outburst instantaneously, but by then it had already been too late.

"Fine," She shot back, "You want me to eat something, then I'll eat something." That hadn't exactly been what I'd meant, and I think for all intents and purposes, Sam knew that, but she'd reciprocated my crossness, pulling her tray of food closer towards her, stabbing at the meal a little bit more viciously than was actually necessary.

Silently, I watched her tackle the few miniscule bites that she could actually manage for several minutes, deciding my lack of input would be best in allowing the both of us to cool down before we said or did something we knew that we'd regret later, but the second she'd pushed that plate away from her again, I saw opportunity, and I grabbed it.

"Come on Sam, talk to me. What's going on with you?"

"Nothing," Nothing was a strange word if you thought about it; it was relatively short in terms of some of its competitors, and when used as a singular sentence, it really didn't sound like a lot, but buried deep behind the meaning, well it was huge.

For example, from a strictly scientific standpoint, I knew that indeed, a lot was actually going on with Sam right now.

Thanks to the endless hours provided by sleepless nights that I'd been spending on my computer lately, I knew this much was true, and hell, had I been asked, I could probably even recite to you the facts as if inducted as an honorary M.D. myself…

But of course, the internet had yet to develop a method of depth or perception to tell me everything that Sam was experiencing beyond the physical sense of the word…

Like I said, nothing is a strange word.

I allowed the silence to fall between us; thick like sap as it filled the room.

I had already tried raising my voice, I'd tried pushing her, I'd tried coercing her to high heaven just to speak to me, but none of that had even come close to working…

And although silence was a word that barely fit within my vocabulary, I was willing to try anything once, so I sat in my silence, and I waited with hands crossed gently within my lap for Sam to start speaking herself.

She refuse to look me in the eye but could tell by the way her expression softened that had managed to get somewhere in this; it was only a few tense seconds later that that theory was confirmed.

"I'm just sick, Brooke," She spoke, her voice meek, feeble; releasing as nothing more than a soft mist, "I'm sick and I'm tired and I want to go home."

I froze; now that she'd said what I'd wanted her to all along, I had no response; I didn't want to lie to her, but at the same time, I didn't want to trot over her hopes, her desire by telling her that I couldn't take her home, I couldn't make her feel alive again, I couldn't make her healthy with my mere touch, as much as I may have wanted to.

"And," She sniffled between words, fueling her words through a huge gulp of air, "I guess that this is all just a lot harder than I thought it would be." She shifted her eyes quickly, scanning my features albeit refusing to linger in an effort to read my facial expressions.

"Sam, listen to me." I rose my voice confidently, "I know that this is hard, and I know that you're tired and that you're feeling down like you can't do this, but look… I am here for you to talk about these things with, and do you wanna know why?"

Her eyes flickered over towards me, her head shaking slightly from side to side.

"Because," I finished, "Whenever you start to feel too tired, or too sick… well I'm here to take over for you, okay?" Color flushed into her cheeks, her features glowing with relief as if surprised to hear that I had been prepared to stick with her until the bitter end long before this…

"Come here," I motioned for her to shift sideways with my head, wedging myself into her cramped bed so that I could snake my arms around her upper body and pull her closer into me, feeling each breath she took under my embrace as she sunk into my skin with a comforting fortitude.

I fell willingly into the moment, my arms rocking her unconsciously back and forth, oblivious to the surroundings, oblivious to the world, and definitely oblivious to the fact that my constant motions possessed the capacity to make her already sensitive stomach, rumble with finality.

A warning of course, would have been nice, but Sam's face paled so suddenly and so dramatically that neither one of us had time to react as Sam keeled forwards abruptly and expelled the waffles she had just had for breakfast in a hefty pile directly on top of a brand new pair of jeans.

I guess that it had been my fault for forcing her to eat to begin with.

For a moment, neither me, nor Sam said anything, instead, we just kind of stared at each other, an expression of shock carved seemingly permanently into our stone faces.

"Sorry," She'd finally managed to splutter, but behind the apology, I couldn't help but notice, was the unmistakable sound of laughter, unsuccessfully attempting to be held back.

"Is this funny to you?" In actuality, I hadn't been annoyed; besides, I had passed my threshold for squeamishness a long time ago… Besides, how the hell could I be mad? I mean, despite it being solely at my own demise, I had finally managed to put a smile onto Sam's face…

And really, that was all I had been truly shooting for this entire time.

* * *

**LUCAS**

I don't think very many people would argue with me when I said that it was natural for a person to be nervous about going into a hospital.

I mean, even when the event in question is no more than a brief visit; entering with the guarantee that at the end of the day, you'll still be able to stand up and leave whenever it was that you wanted to, there was still that vibe, that thickness swirling within the air that penetrates every fiber of your brain, forcing you into a constant discomfort.

Or maybe it had just felt that way to me, as I drove down the familiar pathway towards Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, viewing every opportunity I saw to make a U-Turn home as an opportunity that I should have took.

But I never did.

I knew everything that was going to happen today before it actually did, after all, I had been on both the giving, as well as the receiving end of a morose hospital visit more times than I could even count anymore…

Here's how it'll go; we'll arrive, and we'll stand both sympathetically and supportively around Brooke and Sam's side, just like we were supposed to do for a couple of hours, and then, finally, right after Peyton and I silently decide that we'd had enough depression and sorrow to last us for one day, we will go home, and we'll go to bed, just hoping and praying that when we wake up the next morning, we will still be the same people that we had left behind.

But Tree Hill Memorial Hospital was the place where I had been upon learning of Keith's death. It was the building whose walls I'd sat within more than once, praying desperately for a close friend's well being.

It was the place where I had watched my wife almost die, my mom almost die, my best friend almost die… Hell, it was the place where I had almost died myself…

So like I said; a lot of bad memories.

The aforementioned reasoning provided the bulk of which I was hesitant, and more than a little apprehensive about this trip today, and as bad as I felt saying it, I think that the rest had to do with the idea that I was expected to provide comfort to a girl I hardly knew who was currently laying with one foot already through death's door…

I could probably count the amount of times that I had talked to the girl on one hand; all in passing, all mediated by Brooke…

And then I remembered… Brooke…

The woman had poured both her heart and her soul into my daughter since her birth, yet I couldn't seem to find it in me to go ahead and get to know her own.

Scratch everything that I had said before, I didn't feel bad, I felt like a downright ass.

I felt like an ass for virtually ignoring Sam throughout countless opportunities to see inside of her the same thing that Brooke did, I felt like an ass for doing everything but ignoring Brooke in the time that she needed me the most, and I felt like an ass for waiting until now to finally try and fix it.

Yup, it's official; I am the world's biggest dick.

And you have to believe me when I tell you that when I wake up in the morning and am actually able to see the reflection of Dan's gene pool in my own reflection, well those are some of the worst days of my entire life.

It was weird when I truly sat down and thought about how little I really saw of Brooke Davis these days. It's even weirder when I choose to accompany those thoughts alongside a sense of nostalgia and travel back to the days in which the two of us were positively attached at the hip; an impenetrable chain…

We used to come in a pair, Brooke Davis and myself, but now, those days were almost foreign, as if they had been somebody else's life…

And some days, even I had to remind myself that they weren't.

I had lost myself so deeply inside of my own thought processes that I hadn't even noticed that I'd pulled into the parking garage despite the fact that I'd must have stopped at the ticket booth at the front gates in order to accept my stamped time card currently clutched in a death grip between my fingers…

In my expertise, I had gotten us from my childhood home, to the hospital without even paying attention, but of course, that was about where my skills as our own personal GPS system ended.

In the long run, it had been Peyton who'd actually had to lead me up the elevator towards Sam room, across the twits, down the bends and straight through the hallway of the oncology wing; one of the few units in this place that I must say I've never actually been inside of.

Personally, I was shocked that Peyton had even managed to remember how to get up here; there had been so many twists and turns along the way… Simply walking up here, I couldn't help but be reminded of all of the times that I had attempted to navigate the crooked, confusing streets of Boston in my car; you can find a needle in a haystack before you could actually manage to locate your destination.

I walked several paces behind Peyton the entire time, moving slowly, nervous, growing more and more fearful, as I passed the unfamiliar doorways towards Sam's room, of what exactly it had been that I'd gotten myself into…

But as I rounded the corner, what I'd found instead was a pleasant surprise…one which made my eye bulge slightly and my mouth drop open unexpectedly…

The thing was, I hadn't exactly been expecting to walk in on Brooke bouncing up and down on one foot in an old t-shirt and her underwear, a pair of seemingly soiled jeans discarded in the middle of the floor as she ripped through every article of clothing in her bag, apparently in search of a garment that could be used to cover herself up.

For a split second, I merely stood in the frame in an attempt to get my bearings straight, my brain, so expectant of a morose, morbid scene relatable to that experienced at a funeral, scrambling to comprehend the exact opposite.

I felt my shoulder lurch forward; Peyton pushing past me, thrusting Sawyer harshly into my arms in her wake in an attempt to get to Brooke so that she could provide assistance with… with… well, actually, to be completely honest here, I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on…

"Brooke, what the hell are you doing?" Peyton's voice echoed humorously across my head.

"Sam puked on me," Brooke offered the simplest of explanations, "And look, she thinks that it's amusing!" I couldn't help but crack a smile, attempting to hide my face in my shoulder so that the clearly distressed Brooke wouldn't think I was making fun of her or something.

Besides, you had to admire somebody who managed to retain her edge in a time like this.

"Okay Luke, you can turn around now." I hadn't even registered the fact that my legs had subconsciously swiveled me around to face the hallway; my muscles gratefully partaking in a rule my brain clearly had trouble comprehending; safe, not sorry.

I mean, it wasn't like I had never seen Brooke Davis in her underwear before or anything like that, it was just that with my wife and infant child right in front of me, I figured that I'd rather not risk anything.

Deeming the situation safe again, I turned, relieved to find Brooke standing safe on solid ground again; balanced on her two feet, her hands on her hips and most importantly clothed, watching carefully as Peyton leaned into Sam in an effort to embrace her in her greeting.

With Peyton busied with Sam, I turned my attention towards Brooke, figuring at this point, she must have needed the support just as much as Sam had.

"How are you doing?"I dropped my voice low, shifting Sawyer predominantly into my right arm so that I could use the left to wrap Brooke into a tight one-armed hug.

"I'm alright," She nodded, flashing me her famous false smile that I knew so well alongside a small nod, both of which I saw right through. I knew that the reality of her answer was that she was struggling, she was having a difficult time, as anybody would in her scenario, of course, but Brooke Davis was, to date, probably the most stubborn woman that I had ever met; too stubborn to ever admit to anybody when she was hurting.

"Here Luke, let me see my goddaughter." She changed the subject quickly, reaching out her arms in a motion that I complied too as Peyton came up behind me, her arms slinking around my waist so that my head reflected naturally to look over my shoulder at her, my eyes skimming across Sam's in the process, initiating conversation silently between us.

"Hey Lucas," She spoke first even though I knew that it was supposed to be my job to have done so.

"Hey Sam, how're you doing?" Jesus, what a freaking stupid question; I was such an idiot sometimes, really I was.

"Been better," She shrugged, and wasn't that the truth if I've ever heard it; the girl looked like shit, and I knew for a fact that she meant it when she said she felt like shit too, of course, just as Brooke had done before her, she put on a brave sake for all of our sakes.

"How was the basketball game last night?" She flowed into small talk naturally; conversation for conversation's sake, and she hid it well, but I'd still managed to catch behind her voice, a vague tone, one which sounded to me strangely like longing, as if she wished more than anything that she could have had the opportunity to have seen how the basketball game went for herself although now that I thought about it, before she got sick, I don't think she'd ever wished to attend a single Tree Hill High event once in her entire life…

I guess things were just different now that it wasn't even an option.

"We won," I nodded proudly, the weight of what I'd falsely feared to be uncomfortable conversation slowly lifting itself off of my chest as we flowed into casualness. "I didn't think that you were such a fan of Tree Hill basketball, Sam."

"It's something to do." She shrugged, nodding her head towards what I recognized in an instant to be Brooke's laptop resting on the bedside table next to her, a bumper sticker emblazoned across the center that read .

I smiled and nodded in recognition, always pleased to see Mouth and Jimmy's website, launched years ago at this point, still running strong.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Trust me." I added that last bit with a hint of a smile behind my voice, knowing full well that Brooke had probably filled Sam in about our history in between these walls.

"I heard," She confirmed.

"So, um…" I lowered my voice flatly, leaning a bit closer into Sam so that only she could hear me, "Have you gotten any time to yourself lately." I gave the smallest of head nods backwards over my shoulder, indicating towards Brooke in my attempt at being inconspicuous about asking whether or not Brooke had been taking care of herself in between taking care of Sam; I had my suspicions, and something told me that she wasn't.

"Not really," Her tone indicated her understanding of the message that I was trying to indicate, confirming everything that I had already believed, "When Peyton came around yesterday she took her down to the cafeteria to get something to eat, but that's it really."

I exhaled steeply, indicating my frustration towards Brooke's stubbornness, nodding in understanding as Sam diverted her gaze, focusing her glossy eyes absentmindedly towards the television screen as if ashamed by what she'd just admitted.

Her face set familiarly and for a second, I studied it; those pale features emphasizing dark circles across every indent of bone that jutted sharply beneath the skin…

I'd never particularly believed that Sam and Brooke looked anything alike, but today there was something different, something that I'd never noticed before…

Sure, it may not have been in the color of her eyes, or the shaping in her chin, but it was in the way that they set; the determination that shown behind those eyes, the confidence presenting in the shape of her face…

As it was, in a mere handful of months of living with each other, Sam had managed to adopt all of Brooke's tiny mannerisms, the ones I used to, and still do love so much in a manner that made it so the two of them appeared almost identical.

And I swear, if I looked hard enough, I could literally see Brooke's face shining brightly behind Sam's own.

"Are you okay, Lucas?" I hadn't even realized that I was staring until Sam said something to me, and the second she did, I shook my head from my oblivious concentration and nodded, my head clearing back into the task that was in front of me.

"Yeah, yeah…" I answered rather unconvincingly, "So, how about you; how are you doing?" I turned the subject back upon her, not wanting her to think that I had come to visit her strictly to check up on Brooke…

After all, I knew that we were both thinking the same exact thing; I had never truly given myself the opportunity to hang out with or so much as talk to Sam since she'd moved in with Brooke last fall, and right now, well let's just say I was starting to regret that more and more with each passing second.

And if I didn't already feel like a total douche bag before, well I definitely did now.

I'm not exactly sure where this sudden concern was coming from; maybe it was the situation, maybe it was from being put into the correct perspective, having a daughter of my own and all, maybe it was a combination of both, who knew… But I did know one thing before, kids, and even us adults sometimes, we just needed somebody to be there for us, to tell us that everything was going to be alright when everything was screaming in every which direction that it wasn't.

I'd finally decided that it was time to put myself out there in becoming one of Sam's confidents, and now, I had no intentions of letting her down again.

"Okay, I guess," She nodded appreciatively, pulling her eyes away from the TV to latch once again onto mine, "It's just kind of weird, I guess."

I found my eyes wandering unconsciously in response to her comment, up the entirety of the length of the IV pole attaching Sam firmly to the ground despite her desire to fly… The rainbow of liquids adorned across their hooks, swinging in their descent downwards into Sam's body suddenly attracted me like a bug to light.

"I mean… with everything else," Even I was surprised by the words that had just escaped my mouth, "How are you holding up with all of this?"

She didn't answer immediately, and for a second, I feared I'd stepped out of my boundary, that I'd come on too strong towards the kid I'd barely so much as spoken to until today.

"I'm alright," She finally nodded, "Just getting used to things, that's all."Her response was hesitant at best, but I had the slightest feeling that she had been asked that very same question at least a million times today alone… she was probably getting sick of it by now.

"Well we're all here for you," I let her know, placing a strong hand on her knee and giving it a gentle squeeze, "Just remember that, okay?"

"I know," She nodded, and I could tell that it was truthful; that she believed me when I'd said it, "Thanks."

I nodded down towards her, finally releasing the hand that I was continuously cupping strongly in support against her thin joint before I turned once again, to face Peyton and Brooke, huddled in the corner, periodically shooting Sam and I suspicious glances so that I couldn't particularly tell whether or not they approved of Sam and my interaction, or if they were just busy wondering what the hell it was that I was doing…

You see, in my life, I have been known as many things; I have been the nice kid, the sweet teenager, the bastard son, the cheating boyfriend, the star athlete, the brooding author… the list goes on and on, but I'm sure you get the point.

Now, some of these things I am proud of, others I am not, but for right now there was only one thing that truly mattered and that was this; for right now I wanted to be one thing and one thing only; I wanted to be the supportive husband to Peyton, the undyingly loving father to Sawyer, the unconditional best friend to Brooke, and the one that was going to be here up until the bitter end for Sam.

No matter how much blood, sweat and tears that it would take.

My mind lingered without me even particularly meaning for it to, settling on one day in particular, a recollection that repeated on a loop within the deepest of my memory banks.

It had been immediately after the shooting; a day in which I already knew that I had finally shattered Brooke's Davis' heart beyond all hopes of repair, although she was not yet aware, a day where I had made her a promise, despite the fact that I'd never told her about it, to this very day.

That day I had told myself that from that moment forward, I would never again turn my back on Brooke Davis for as long as I lived, and for the most part, I think that I had been generally successful, despite a few stray occasions here and there.

The point was, that nothing about that promise changed; not today, not ever, it was merely extended, modified to include Sam, modified because anybody who knew the two knew that they were, and had always been one in the same.


	11. You're Much Sweeter Then Me By Far

Chapter 11: You're Much Sweeter Then Me By Far…

**Friday, November 4****th****, 2011**

**HALEY**

Every Friday, I was graced with the notion of having the third period of the day free.

9:51 a.m. to 10:46 a.m. every single Friday morning, all to myself.

It was an hour of which contained a plethora of opportunity; an hour I could spend catching up on the massive amounts of work that I knew I had to get done; you know, grading papers, cleaning up, even catching up on some of that desperately needed sleep that I have been so deprived of recently…

Of course, none of that was actually what I'd found myself doing. In fact, it wasn't even close.

I have no idea what made me do it. In fact, if you asked, even as I walked through the halls of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, I still remained completely oblivious towards my reasoning for centering this brief period of free time on straining my time limit to the absolute threshold on placing a visit to Brooke and Sam.

I guess that the two of them have just been on my mind lately… More so than usual, I mean.

It had all started last night after Jamie once again began pestering me, as he had ever since I'd told him the news about Sam, to visit both his Aunt Brooke and Sam in the hospital, and once again, I'd responded to his inquiry by changing the subject and ultimately leaving his question un-answered.

It wasn't that I didn't want him to visit the two people he loved the most, nor that I didn't want them to see him; it was just that I was afraid…

I was afraid of what Jamie seeing Sam in this capacity would do to him. I was afraid of his perspective of his adoring Aunt Brooke would be once he saw her in such a panic…

And you can call me a crazy, over protective parent all you want, but with all of the things that Jamie has already been through in his short life, I think that I have a right to be a crazy over protective parent at this point.

But I was starting to run low on excuses.

I had spent the last several days telling him that I couldn't take him anywhere until his father returned from his basketball game in Florida on Saturday, although that's never stopped us before, and, just to stick to my guns, and ensure his continuous belief of this false notion, I wouldn't even let him have so much of a play date…

But now that I found myself wandering about the now-familiar halls of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital's sixth floor, alone, and very confused, I couldn't help but feel exceptionally bad that Jamie wasn't tagging along besides me…

Even if it was a school day.

It was only after I'd rounded into Sam's room that I forced my thoughts from Jamie and onto the task in front of me.

It was nice to see Sam out of bed, lounging with her feet up within the giant armchair besides it, forcing Brooke to take the shaft in accepting the narrow folding chair that had a tendency to coil your spine up into knots if you sat in it any longer than fifteen minutes; a lesson I had learned from personal experience.

Neither seemed to be paying attention to anything in particular; Sam had Brooke's laptop open on the table in front of her, her earphones plugged into her ears, watching something dully on the screen in front of her while Brooke busied herself adding some hand-drawn clothes onto the nude mannequin drawing on the sketch in front of her…

I guess that it was common knowledge that hospitals tended to be the most boring places in the history of the world, unless of course you allowed your mind to be over-run by all of those action packed sequences they always depicted in those stupid TV shows I never watched like Grey's Anatomy and ER where people are constantly being skewered together by telephone poles or having their limbs ripped off by rabid crocodiles or whatever…

I stepped slowly into the room, hoping that my mere presence would be enough of a distraction to collect either of their attentions, but apparently I had thought wrong.

Sam continued to merely stare into space, looking more as if she was simply looking for something to do with her eyes rather than actually paying attention to anything while meanwhile, Brooke continued to stare seemingly deeper into space, just wishing for the time to fly by faster.

But most strikingly, I noticed was that in my quickest of glances, I struggled to identify which one of the two was actually sick; of course, Sam's less than healthy appearance was obvious, expected even at this stage of the game; Brooke, well she just looked downright crappy.

Making a mental note to ensure that I took Brooke home with me to get some sleep or something when I left, I cleared my throat loudly enough to catch the two's attention.

The motion had worked just as I had anticipated on it doing, their head shooting simultaneously sideways and towards me, the only thing changing in their motions being the torque of their necks as their faces appeared just as empty, just as emotionless as it had before I'd made my entrance, but I understood, I realized that there was no way in hell there could be any more space left inside those heads of theirs in between all of those layers of exhaustion and disease.

"Oh geez, you're back again?" Sam greeted me in her characteristic sarcasm.

"Yeah, I had a free period this morning I figured I might as well stop by." I shrugged in my response.

"A free period; what, did you finally kill those freshman?" I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that it was common knowledge amongst the students at Tree Hill High School that I absolutely despised teaching freshman.

"Now if I told you that, I'd have to kill you." She smirked in appreciation of my at least attempted humor.

"Haley, I never would have guessed that from you." Her face settled into a joking expression of mock disappointment as she shook her head at me…

"You'd be surprised the things you don't know about me, Sam," I joked, unable to help but to smile as I evaluated our brief, thirty second interaction and quickly came up with two conclusions; the first being that for Sam at least, today was looking to be a pretty good day, at least, she looked as if she was feeling well, the second that Brooke's appearance seemed to have the exact opposite effect on me.

Maybe it was the stress, maybe it was the fact that it's probably been days since she'd last slept or ate, hell, maybe she was just in a particularly bad mood, but whatever it was, after the briefest of hello's, she'd barely so much as looked up at me…

"So," Sam opened the conversation, "What's going on at Tree Hill High without me?" She watched me closely for my response, lifting herself upwards and out of her chair, settling into her bed, freeing up the space for me, which I accepted gratefully.

"Nothing too out of the ordinary," I shrugged; I'd almost forgotten that at this point, it's probably been at least a week since Sam had been inside of her high school, and it would probably be a lot longer before she would step inside of it again, "Third period English has been a bit quiet though."

"Yeah, I'd imagine now that you don't have anybody to boss around anymore." Sam laughed, practically forcing me to do the same considering how right she truly was… It was true, after all, that I have been known to take advantage of Sam's potential in my classroom once or twice despite the fact that I knew more than anyone that she would much rather remain silent in the background.

"So, uh… what have all of the rumors about me been?" She had been itching to ask the question, probably since the moment she'd been in here.

"Well, let's see… um… I heard a really good one yesterday that you got gangrene and had to have both of your hands amputated," Yup, that one was actually true, after all, you couldn't make stuff like that up. "I ended that one pretty quickly though."

"Oh man, you should have kept it going! You could have told them that I was getting a sweet robotic arm or something."

"Yeah well, I think that the real word on the streets is starting to catch on… You know Tree Hill High; you can never keep a secret for very long… You can ask your mother all about that one." I smirked, desperate to include Brooke inside of this conversation, identifying instantly the fact that Sam had taken my hint as immediate bait as she glanced up at Brooke with a sadistic grin on her face.

"Don't listen to her Sam; I was class president in high school." Brooke shouted quickly over her shoulder, finally slamming shut, the over-sized folder full of what I was assuming to be clothing sketches and focusing all of her attention on her present company.

Meanwhile, Sam and I merely exchanged looks; I knew that she had done her research on Brooke back in her high school days, and I knew that she was just waiting to latch onto something that would be useful in blackmail.

"How's Jamie been?" Brooke nudged the question between Sam and I, desperate for a change in the subject.

"He's good… He misses his favorite play mate though."

"I miss him too…" Sam sighed, looking downwards towards her hands as she linked her fingers around each other, "Maybe you can bring him around one day? I mean, there's always a ton of kids here, and they have a decent playroom down the hall and stuff…"

She threw up the suggestion, watching as I managed a half-assed smile alongside an even more half-assed nod, launching an internal debate deep within my mind as I struggled to get over my own ridiculous fears involving bringing Jamie to the hospital to visit.

"How about I bring him down over the weekend; maybe tomorrow afternoon, how does that sound?" In my determination to stick it to myself, I felt, a little bit too late, that I may have jumped the gun just a little bit.

"Really… can you?" Sam's face brightened visibly, causing my heart rate to slide down a notch or two out of gratefulness to have at least made her feel better.

"Yeah, yeah definitely… and you know, Nathan's coming home tomorrow from Miami so maybe we can all stop by, how does that sound?" I threw in any suggestion I could think of to help makes Sam's day at least a little bit better than it has been because let's be completely honest, Sam was in some great need of having some bettering added to her days.

"That would be cool." She nodded, siphoning off the flow of the conversation just in time for Brooke's phone to jump in and rejuvenate it; a shrill ring that had her up and on her feet to answer it in a manner of seconds.

"Hello?" She spoke into the phone, flashing us her raised index finger in indication that she would be right back as she retreated downwards into the hallway.

I followed her carefully with my eyes, watching as she closed the door behind her in her wake before parking herself directly in front of the large window separating this room from the hallway.

"She's sending in a new line to her company this afternoon," Sam explained, watching me as I watched Brooke talk extremely animatedly, and by the looks of things, extremely angrily at whoever it was on the other side of the phone line. "She's kind of stressing out over it."

"How is Brooke?" I asked, sighing heavily before swiveling my neck back around to face Sam.

"She's trying." Sam shrugged, her eyes wandering past my shoulder to watch Brooke herself, indicating my allowance to do the same as I watched the older woman talk until she was practically blue in the face due to her struggle to control her volume in the remembrance of where she was.

"I think that maybe I should go out there and talk to her." I offered with a sigh, realizing that it was best if this moment came sooner, rather than later.

"I think that maybe you should too." Sam agreed, her voice allowing me to focus, and I mean really focus, all of my attention onto Sam for the first time since I'd seen her in this hospital…

I had known from the very beginning the type of kid that Sam was; she had, after all, always been the fighter, the kid against the world, and I think that's the reason that she stuck out to me as much as she did…

I guess the thing that I'm trying to get at with all of this is just that it hurts me to know that with Sam, as with so many of the other kids that I had crossed paths with in my journey, she just didn't have a choice but to grow up being this way.

"Wish me luck," I sighed, pulling myself up and out of my chair, walking slowly towards the front lines, opening Sam's hospital room door to an immediate explosion of noise.

"No, Victoria! If you want to finalize this next line with such a damned fine tooth comb then you can do it yourself! There's no way in hell that I can get up to New York right now, and that's just something you'll have to deal with!" She yelled, hesitating for not even a split second before deciding she'd had enough with this conversation, forcefully hanging up the phone, making a move to throw the device down the length of the hallway in her frustration but thinking twice about the motion at just the last second, instead settling on relaxing her muscles as she slunk her arms gently down at her sides, defeated.

"So… that sounded like an interesting conversation." I allowed the question to fill the air, indicating my presence as I slowly slid my hands downwards into my pockets and lined myself up next to Brooke so that we stood shoulder to shoulder.

"Victoria," Brooke sighed, a hint of malice laced behind her voice as she rubbed a hand through her already disheveled hair, frayed and tattered with pure frustration so that it roughly resembled a bird's next, "It's like I can never do anything right with her…"

She threw herself downwards and into one of the chairs lined up within a row against the wall and I followed her lead, settling myself into the empty lot directly adjacent to her.

"Have you told her yet?" I asked after a brief hesitation, just waiting for that red glow of anger to fade from her eyes.

"No," She spoke instantly and forcefully, careful not to allow our eyes to meet… I guess I was going to have to rephrase my question…

"Do you have any intentions on ever telling her?" This time, my question sparked a pause, a second's hesitation as her brain scrambled to formulate the correct response towards my question.

"No," She ultimately settled on, and I understood that she had every right to be a bit hesitant when it came to Victoria and Sam, but honestly, Brooke cutting off her mother from something as big as this? It sounded a little bit extreme to me, even if it was Victoria that we were talking about here.

"I think that maybe you should think this out, Brooke." I pushed, and she didn't say anything, but it was all there, deep within her eyes… "Come on Brooke, you know that you're going to need all of the help that you can get, you know that there's gonna come a time when you need Victoria."

"Yeah, I'll need her like I need water in my lungs." The vast quantity of different metaphors and similes that Brooke was able to produce describing Victoria, each one more clever than the last, really did never cease to amaze me… If fashion doesn't work out for her, maybe she should take up a new career as an English teacher.

"I'm just saying Brooke, I mean, I got the feeling before that Sam and Victoria were… I don't know… kind of close."

"Right, and that was only because she tricked Sam into thinking that she actually cared about her when really all she was doing was trying to make up for being such a crappy mom to me so that she could satisfy her own selfishness. She's deceptive like that Haley, that's what Victoria does, and I don't trust her; not with me, and sure as hell not with Sam… What Sam needs throughout all of this is support; she doesn't need somebody trying to take advantage of the fact that she's fragile right now."

Brooke's opinions against Victoria were strong, and, I was certain of this much, unmovable.

"I just think that Sam would want to have her around, Brooke," I pushed relentlessly, "You know better than any of us that you can never predict what tomorrow's gonna bring… Trust me, you don't want to wait until it's too late… you'll just regret it in the end."

"What are you trying to say?" She settled her jaw firmly, eyes glaring a hole through me so that I knew in an instant that she had taken the meaning behind my words in the wrong way…

"I'm just saying that maybe you should think about this," I rephrased my initial statement in an effort to save my own ass, "Or maybe at the very least, give Sam some sort of say in the matter."

Her face was up so close to my own that I could feel her breath, hot and heavy against my cheeks… We stood that way – still and silent – for several long seconds, but Brooke never said a thing, not a single word, indicating to me that for all intents and purposes, she deemed this conversation over.

Backing up slightly away from her accusing eyes, my attention was gratefully detracted by something in the distance although nothing in particular, my head spontaneously slanting upwards so that I caught a quick glimpse of the overhead clock, the stupid bright red seconds hand ticking relentlessly forwards indicating that I was very near late…

Time… it was a funny thing, I've been noticing, especially in its determination never to slow; never to spare even the most desperate for just a little bit more.

It was about time that I found myself leaving; as it was, I was already cutting it close, and another strike on my record was the absolute last thing that I needed right now.

"Listen Brooke, I have to get going back to school…" I paused for the briefest of seconds, just to ensure that her attention was fully on me so that I could address my final conclusion point, "And I think that maybe you should come with me… I mean, like that I'll drop you off back at your house so that you can take some time to eat, maybe sleep…"

Her eyes darted in response to my question; back and forth like a crazy person until I finally just got the feeling that she was literally trying to roll them over into her skull in an effort to physically screen her brain in search for the energy that she knew she'd need to fight me on this one.

But she just didn't have it in her, and I think we both knew that.

"You'll be no good to Sam when you're in the hospital yourself, Brooke." I presented with my most powerful argument instantaneously, knowing full well that it was the best defense I had in fighting Brooke.

"I could use some new clothes…"

"No Brooke, don't fight with me on this one… wait… what?" I'd been so certain of an impending argument that I hadn't even managed to hear her compliance.

"I said that I could use some new clothes… Me and Sam's that we have here are all dirty…"

"Oh…" I released stupidly, suddenly out of things to say considering the majority of my brain capacity had been so focused on a fight that never happened…

"Can you just give me a minute or two to get some of my things together?"

"Um… yeah, yeah, of course I can." I agreed to her terms and conditions, allowing her to disappear backwards into Sam's room, leading the way into the small box where she immediately busied herself with shoveling dirty laundry into an empty duffle bag, simultaneously question poor Sam who remained blissfully clueless as Brooke struggled to decide whether or not this much needed time apart would even be worth it in the end…

"Hey Sam, you're positive you're still feeling okay, right?"

"Yes Brooke, I swear," The girl was practically laughing in Brooke's face at her concern, warranted, yes, but maybe just a little overbearing at the same time, "Don't worry I'll be fine for a couple of hours by myself, I'm a big girl, you know."

"Okay… so do you have your cell phone on you? Is it all charged and everything?" Brooke all but ignored Sam's sarcasm, continuing in her insistence upon being thorough, paying particular attention to details that would allow her to comfortably leave Sam's side for a little while, at least…

"Yes Brooke," Sam waved the tiny device through the air, directly in front of Brooke's face just to prove that what she was saying was in fact the truth as Brooke looked at her carefully, hands on her hips, face screwed up in thought trying to think of anything else that she might have left out.

"Do you need me to pick you up anything from home?" Sam shook her head towards Brooke.

"I don't think so," She shrugged, "But bring me back a surprise, okay?"

"Of course I will," She made the promise, advancing a couple of cautious steps forwards towards Sam, "Okay, come here…" She beckoned for Sam, watching as the girl lifted herself up and out of her bed, stepping towards Brooke who pulled her into a firm hug, holding onto her in a lengthy, tight embrace.

"You'll be okay," Sam said, immediately noticing Brooke's obvious reluctance towards letting her go.

"I know," Brooke nodded against Sam's shoulder, "You'll be too."

"Well yeah duh," Sam responded, pulling away from Brooke and staring at her as if this had been the most obvious thing in the world despite Brooke's hesitancy to believe so, "Trust me Brooke, you're venturing off into that deep dark outside world over there, where the hell am I gonna go? You have a much bigger risk at kicking the bucket tonight than I do."

I couldn't help but laugh alongside Brooke. Yeah, so I wasn't exactly sure just how accurate Sam's statement was, but I couldn't pretend as if I couldn't see the point that she was trying to make here.

"Okay," Brooke nodded, placing two firm hands on either of Sam's shoulders, staring her square in the eyes as she spoke, "If you need anything, and I mean anything at all, you call me right away, alright? I don't care if it's three o'clock in the freaking morning during a hurricane, I'll be here."

"Okay, I will." Sam nodded her head in agreement towards Brooke's conditions for her departure.

"And make sure you call me tonight before you go to bed."

"I will."

"And make sure you…"

"Brooke, I've got this, don't worry." Sam cut her off mid-sentence, but although Brooke nodded her head in indication of her understanding towards Sam's insistence, but I could tell – one mother to another – that Sam shouldn't have even bothered wasting her breath.

It was the second nature of any parent to lace themselves with concern under normal circumstances, and to exist in a world where those circumstances had been exacerbated so beyond normal made me struggle to comprehend just how it was that Brooke managed to achieve the simple task of remaining upright.

"Okay," She took a deep breath, almost ready to leave… almost being the key word. "I'll see you first thing in the morning then."

"Right," Sam nodded.

"Okay…" Brooke repeated, slowly performing an impressive about face, turning towards the direction of the door.

"Sorry I couldn't stay any longer, Sam." I apologized quickly, pulling her into a smaller, yet less lengthy embrace than that by which Brooke had performed.

"Eh, it's okay, I know you have to fix that reputation you have over at Tree Hill High for being such a rebel, Ms. Scott."

"Yeah," I laughed at the absolute ludicrous of that statement, knowing as well as Sam that my reputation at THHS was probably the exact opposite of rebellious, "I'm such a bad seed, spending my free time visiting sick kids in the hospital."

"Pure evil," Sam nodded her agreement, a smile upon her face.

"I'll stop by tomorrow… And you know what? I think I might just bring Jamie along with me." Her features brightened in response to my revelation, her spine straightening, her face positively glowing with the mere suggestion.

"That would be cool."

"It's a date then?" I asked, although I was sure that neither of our ideal dating locations would be within a hospital room.

"It's a date." She confirmed.

"I'll see you later than." I allowed her to nod me out, being courteous in taking us all the way to the door of her new-found home of sorts, but I think that that was only because she knew she'd have to physically watch Brooke leave in order to believe that it was actually happening.

"Remember to call me later!" Brooke shouted one last reminder towards Sam, who nodded impatiently in response.

"I know, I know, I will… Now just go, get some sleep or something for God's sake!" She practically pushed the two of us out into the hall, ensuring that we were completely clear of the doorframe before she retreated backwards inside, closing the door being her as if in a reinforcement that she wasn't about to give Brooke much of a choice other than to leave.

"Ready, Brooke?" The woman nodded, turning in an effort to make the initial motion to walk down the hall, the hardest part, I knew, but she'd only managed a few sluggish, miniscule steps before she stopped, her head swiveling backwards behind her naturally in an effort to look back towards the closed door behind her, trying to decide whether or not there was still time for her to turn back and change her mind.

For a second, I just stared at Brooke staring at the door, watching as she slowed to a complete stop; her body still pointed forwards down the length of the hallway, but her head remaining uncomfortably behind her as she struggled to fight through this apparent dilemma…

And in that moment, I saw something behind the eyes of Brooke Davis; something that I don't think I'd ever seen before, something that I was certain wasn't about to go away any time soon…

You see, Brooke Davis, well let's just say that she has come a long way since I'd first met her in high school; high on Percocet's and passed out in the backseat of a car. She has come a long way since those days of high school vanity, those of a thoughtless future.

And as I watched her struggle with the idea of taking a personal day over remaining in a hospital room nursing over a sick child, I knew that Brooke Davis had come a very, very long way since those days where she could only visualize herself from the outside in, and not the other way around.

But in a bizarre, almost poetic turn of events, Brooke never managed to find herself in quite the way she'd expected to…

She'd never gone to college; she'd never joined the right sorority, or married the rich doctor and became a housewife before she reached her mid-twenties. She'd never even done it as the face of America's role models, a rising entrepreneur, or a millionaire fashion icon…

No, Brooke Davis had found herself as a mother; and deep down, I think that we both knew that that was all she ever really wanted in her life; right from the very beginning.

* * *

**BROOKE**

It was almost two o'clock…

It was almost two o' clock in the afternoon and so far, I had done absolutely productive with my day unless of course, you count doing absolutely nothing in fact, productive.

The alarm displayed across my digital watch resting against my bedside table gave a loud, single beep as it had with every other hour that had since past, effectively making me feel worse and worse with each passing one… The thing was, since I had gotten home, since I had showered, changed, and thrown myself straight into my bed, I had heard that stupid beep four whole times…

Four hours… It might as well have been four days.

And on the fourth day, God created the stars, the moon, and the sun; the stars to mark the years, the moon to mark the months, and the sun to mark the passing days…

How ironic, right? You're just full of laughs lately aren't you God, you bastard…

But for approximately two of those four lingering hours, I had spent the time wrapped tightly within my bed trying… no, wait, trying wasn't the right word; it was more like _pretending_ to actually sleep.

The thing was, anytime I even got close to achieving this task, I'd receive this mental image of Sam inside of my head and I couldn't help but wonder whether or not this picture was a sign, whether or not she was still alright…

And then of course, after that, I would find myself right back to where I had started in the first place; tired, and bearing the weight of worry across my feeble shoulders.

My mind had been swirling since my arrival back home, and although Haley had practically dragged me kicking and screaming back through these no-longer-familiar front doors, her efforts had yet to perform their desired effect…

I guess that it must have just had something to do with the fact that I had previously been under the assumption that just because I had all but pressed the emergency stop button on my life, that the rest of the world must have done the same.

But I had been proven wrong the second I had stepped back into my living room when I'd found the large pile of bills and junk mail and outdated newspapers weighing down my countertop alongside the landscaper's note stating that he had come to mow the lawn. The garbage cans had been put to the curb to dispose of the week's worth of trash I hadn't been home to accumulate, the cleaning lady swept and vacuumed all of the dust that I had allowed to grow since the last time anybody had stepped inside of this house…

So, to my amazement, the world had managed to - somehow or another - keep spinning despite this tragedy that they were all seemingly oblivious to.

I rolled onto my back with a heavy sigh, tangling myself within the clean sheets, my head naturally rolling towards the nightstand where my phone sat on its charger, literally staring at me, taunting me into picking it up to call Sam.

I shouldn't, I knew that I shouldn't. I had promised Sam that I wouldn't do it, promised Haley, promised myself the exact same thing, but it was teasing me; the blinking green light indicating its full charge winking at me, laughing right in my face.

"You won't do it."

The delusion of my cell phone physically talking to me was sign enough that I was over exhausted and therefore, in no capacity to make informed decisions.

The imagined voice initiated a brief stare down, and needless to say, eventually, I lost.

So I lunged. I extended my arm forwards like lightning, ripping the phone from its chain of a charger in one swoop…

I had broken, I already knew that. Trust me, it happened a long time ago.

Staring into the phones entrancing LCD screen, I typed ferociously the numbers I'd already had permanently stored within my memory banks, directing the inanimate object to become the lifeline between Sam and I before raising it to my ear, waiting…

"What, did your mom tell you to make sure that you called before you went to bed?" Despite my best display of self-convincing towards the fact that something was desperately wrong, that voice, without a doubt in my mind, belonged to Sam, and a seemingly fine Sam at that…

"I'm just checking in." I contorted my voice as successfully as I could manage, desperate for her not to realize that I had caved although our current predicament made that quite obvious…

"Well I'm fine." She assured me, "No puking, no bleeding, no other crazy things… I even ate my lunch today, the whole thing." She provided me with details, giving me at least a little bit of leeway, which I appreciated.

But of course, somewhere in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but find myself feeling a little bit hurt by the fact that Sam didn't seem to be as distraught regarding this brief separation as I had found myself… I mean, this was after all the first night since not just Sam's, but my life as well had changed so dramatically.

"Good!" I'd made my expression with, perhaps, a little bit too much enthusiasm to sound entirely convincing, "So what you up to."

"Nothing," I could hear the boredom in her voice, her unexpressed question regarding just how long I could continue coming up with random questions before I'd be forced to hang up, "A yoga instructor, meditation person stopped by about an hour ago… she just left."

"Really?" I asked, actually semi-interested in this unexpected development.

"Yeah, it was pretty cool actually, she gave me a bunch of visualizations and stuff to do to help take my mind of the chemo and stuff… They come around every Friday apparently so I think I might try it again… Plus, I got this really cool, really, really ghetto CD player out of the deal."

"They still make those?" I asked for the sake of being a smartass.

"Yeah, she gave it to me with some weird meditation music but it kind of sucks… I'll have to go out on the prowl for some CD's a little bit later I guess."

"Good luck with that one." I responded sarcastically, indicating in my voice the fact that the likelihood of Sam locating anything even close to a CD in that hospital was slim to none.

"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing… It's starting to look like I might have to just bust out of here and go hold up a Best Buy or something." I knew that she was joking, or at least… I think that she was joking, you really never could tell when it came to Sam.

"Don't even think about it, Sam." Either way, I figured a little bit of reinforcement in the matter wouldn't hurt…

"I know I know…" She sighed, as if astonished that I hadn't picked up on the joke despite her history of rebellion, "I was kidding Brooke."

"Yeah, not funny," But really, I had literally just gotten a mental image of Sam hitchhiking with her pajamas and IV pole over to the mall, and although it may sound humorous in its description, the fact of it not being as far from a reality as you may think put a slight damper on it…

If I had learned anything, it was that I should never underestimate Sam, not ever.

"So, what are you doing on your day off?" Sam asked although I would hardly refer to this brief bout of freedom as a day off, especially considering the fact that I was probably spending more time worrying here at home than I had been while I was still at the hospital with her.

"I'm sleeping," Yup, that was exactly what I was doing, actively speaking right as we spoke… Smooth Brooke, real smooth.

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, and in that second, I knew instantaneously that I had been caught.

"You're sleeping?" She asked, finally wrapping her head around what I had just said to her, realizing that it had in fact, actually made absolutely no sense at all.

"Well, I was trying to sleep," I tried to rectify my initial statement, "But then I…"

"But then you called me." She finished my sentence for me, using the tone that I always used with her when I'd caught her doing something that she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing.

"No, I was checking up on you." I spluttered out excuses, perhaps worthlessly so; I had been caught, there was no denying that.

"Well I'm fine… still." She emphasized the final word.

"That's good…"

"I am tired though, I think I'm gonna go take a nap, okay?" I screwed up my face instantaneously, struggling to decide whether or not this was a clever rue to get me off of the phone or if she really was just exhausted from her day's events… Probably a little bit of both.

"Okay, make sure you call me when you wake up though, alright?" I reinforced, ensuring the already well known fact that I was to get a phone call no matter what.

"I know, I know Brooke," She said it but still, I couldn't be entirely sure that a phone call would actually come.

"Okay, have a good nap. I love you."

"Yeah, yeah, love you too. See you later." She returned, genuine but hasty as she hung up the phone before I could be given the opportunity to stop her.

And now, at the tail end of a one-way phone line, I couldn't help but find myself back inside of the exact same position that I had left myself off in previously; struggling with the uncanny desire to hit the redial button already.

Looking apprehensively towards the digital clock to my right, I sighed audibly at the 2:06 displayed vibrantly, dancing tauntingly across my vision…

The entirety of that phone call, designed initially to distract me from the night, had lasted a grand total of six minutes… And with that realization, I found myself groaning so loudly that I could literally hear my own voice echoing across the lengths of the otherwise empty house and slamming my pillow firmly across my head in a desperate final attempt to block out the sunlight and force myself to sleep.

Like they always say, eight hundredth time is the charm, right?

I felt as if I were trapped eternally in one of those long, endless nights where no matter how hard you try, and how many Ambien you slip, you just can never seem to fall asleep… I guess I just couldn't get comfortable anymore unless I found myself attempting to sleep fitfully with a rigid back in a lumpy cot within the confines of a hospital room…

I have never felt less at home in my own house before… yet another burden of proof towards the fact that this just wasn't my home anymore, it was merely a safe house, somewhere to escape to…

I could literally feel the passing minutes ticking past me.

An hour passed and I went from being previously wide awake to slipping through that restless in between stage, a limbo of sorts, whose only relief stemmed from the fact that at least the clock seemed to be moving faster here.

An hour and a half passed and I fell into a fitful non-REM nap, just to get myself started.

I don't even know how long afterwards it was that I finally found myself fast asleep, passed out cold, practically comatose and sprawled over my bed, soaring like an eagle through my dream state, grateful that at least here, for the first time all week, things suddenly didn't seem to hurt just as bad as they had hurt before.

* * *

I couldn't tell you exactly how long that I was out for, but at the very least, I could tell you this much, that when I woke up it definitely wasn't as light outside as I had left it. In fact, it wasn't light outside at all.

The absence of the sun, which occurred to me in the blink of a sleep obscured eye, sent me into a panic, forced me awake, scurrying in my worry towards just how late it really was so quickly that it literally made my head spin.

In an attempt to regain my bearings, I turned to my clock, my lifeline, searching desperately in my haze of sleep-filled confusion before finally locating it in exactly the spot which I had left it in…

"Shit!" I'd expressed my alarm to an empty house, my legs practically lifting themselves up and out of my bed the second that luminous 11:45 p.m. signal stamped itself deep into my brain.

I struggled to stand upright, tangled desperately within the sheets so that it took me several minutes to situate my body enough to permit any sort of movement.

My arm extended towards the night stand, reaching so fervently towards the cell phone resting there that I could literally feel all of the bones, joints, and muscles within it stretching to their absolute threshold for results, finally latching onto the tiny device, grabbing at it so viciously, I literally ripped the entirety of the charger directly out of the wall outlet in my endeavors.

6 missed calls.

The first thought that had crossed my mind was that something had happened, that something horribly wrong had befallen Sam and that I wasn't there to help her through it. Worse yet, I'd missed all of the phone calls, all of the desperate pleas for help she had placed in search of my assistance.

My chest was impossibly tight. My heart sped up at a rate so quick that it was physically painful. My fingers were shaking so hard that I couldn't even control them long enough to check the actual source of the phone calls…

Praying for the best but expecting the worst, I slowly regained control of my extremities, punching at the touch screen, my sensitive eyes narrowing in on the screen in front of me…

First missed call; restricted number, second, restricted number, third, Victoria, fourth, some weird 800 number, fifth Victoria, and finally one final call from Peyton.

The adrenaline rush wore down slowly as my body began to register the fact that it was in no immediate danger that, although Sam hadn't called me before she'd gone to bed tonight as she had promised to, she was in fact, okay.

So running a shaking hand through my bed-riddled hair, and without even considering the options this time around, I dialed a familiar number for the second time that night alone, and I waited…

"Hey it's Sam," Her familiar answering machine message greeted me, "I'm not around so leave a message or whatever." I sighed in my disappointment; I couldn't tell if she'd chosen to ignore my phone call because she actually was asleep, or because she hadn't wanted to talk to me at the moment, but whichever it was, I couldn't control that voice in the back of my head telling me that maybe, she wasn't answering her cell phone because she was so sick that she didn't so much as have the capacity to do so…

In fact, I was still debating that question, even after I'd drawn the conclusion not to leave a message and instead, simply hung up the phone…

But this didn't change the fact that I needed somebody to talk to me right now… I needed somebody who could listen to me, I needed somebody who could assure me that I wasn't in fact going as crazy as I thought I was, that I didn't indeed have absolutely anything to worry about even though I knew that I had the world and beyond to worry about…

And just as suddenly as this desire popped into my head, so did a backup plan, a second choice, the one other person that I could stand to talk to right now other than Sam.

We had been lacking recently in the general opportunity to truly talk other than brief, daily updates and I guess that that was a hazard of the trade really but that didn't mean that it didn't suck, that didn't make me miss Julian any less… in fact, if anything, I think that it just made me miss him even more…

But as with Sam's, my phone call to Julian ended abruptly in the form of four rings and an answering machine, and even as I sat at the edge of my bed, my cell phone in one hand, clocking the seconds of a silent conversation, my head hanging so low that my chin physically touched my chest, I was still only vaguely aware of the concern that might spark from a five minute, silent voicemail received to Julian, from me.

Hanging up the phone quickly I suddenly felt something, something different, something uncomfortable… I suddenly felt very, very full… as if the pressure in my head, no, the pressure in my entire body was pressing up against its every internal crevice, just waiting to explode.

And so I ran.

I ran straight out of my bedroom, I ran into the hallway, and, allowing my feet to make the directional decisions that my brain couldn't currently process, I found myself running directly into the bathroom.

I closed the door behind me, locking it tightly although I knew that I was the only person in the house, throwing my back firmly up against the thick wooden panel the second I'd known it to be secure…

I used to know this girl, you see… She was rich, and she was beautiful, elegant and popular, and this girl had pride, she had admirers, she had the life that people would literally kill for…

That was all on the outside, at least…

But one day, not so long ago now, that girl died… It was sudden; a rapid cardiac arrest, the cause of death; a fit of pure vanity that had left nothing but a shell behind in its wake.

And tonight, that girl was finally learning a lesson, a very meaningful, very valuable lesson that she knew she'd take with her everywhere that she went for the rest of her life… She learned that it was the truth, that all of those times she heard it and hadn't believed it, she had been wrong because it was true, what they all said, after all.

Suddenly she knew just how right they were when they'd told her that every single person on the face of this Earth was alone, and that every single person on the face of this Earth would be alone until they were dead and buried, and maybe even beyond that…

But she'd also learned something else that day, something equally as important but with an infinitely increased bout of confidence… She learned that sometimes, growing may require a little bit, or even a lot of bit of pain first…

And I guess that was why, as my knees bent into right angles and my ass sunk so low to the ground the it hit the tile below, I finally allowed the tears to begin pouring from my eyes, I allowed myself to break down in the solitude of loneliness, within the confines of my big empty bathroom in my big, empty house, and I allowed myself to do this until finally, my body was so tired, that I couldn't find it within myself to even do that anymore.


	12. You're Much Stronger Then Me

Chapter 12; …You're Much Stronger Then Me (You Know You Are)

**Saturday, November 5****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

What is it that I can possibly tell you about everything that happened last night?

I mean, do you actually wanna hear all about how I spent a solid hour and a half sprawled out across my bathroom floor like a damn rag doll sobbing my eyes out until my body physically shook and throbbed with the pain of dehydration resultant in the loss of such a significant amount of water via my own tears…

Yeah, I don't blame you, I don't much wanna hear about it either…

Honestly, the one true thing you really need to know about what happened to me last night was that I fell so hard so fast that I didn't even realize gravity could move that quickly until I'd experienced its power first hand…

But of course, no matter how little I would like to recall this significantly drastic moment in my life, the fact of the matter was that it had at the very least managed to take a significant chunk of time out of my night, the subsequent recovery stealing even more as it supported me through near daybreak…

By the time I had shuffled back into my bedroom, it was nearly three in the morning, by the time Julian had finally returned the frantic phone call I'd left hours ago, it was already four…

I guess that he must have just figured that I didn't really sleep that much anymore anyway; time constraints were merely a limitation that I no longer bothered with…

"_Brooke, what's the matter?"_

He'd asked the question almost instantly upon his answering; the choking sobs combined with the strangled breaths I'd released being all he'd heard as I struggled to formulate a comprehensible sentence… And I guess that in that, I had to give him at least some credit, after all, he'd somehow managed to sit damn near silent, nothing more than listening for, a solid hour, as I filtered through my long list of woes and insecurities, forcing him into a tricky corner in which he'd have no choice but to say the right thing in his assurance which, I was happy to say, he did.

But even after that, spending the remainder of my evening, or in this case, my early morning with nothing but a few short words extended over a considerable distance to hold me over wasn't ideal so that as the sun slowly started to raise back upwards, and I began to recover from a night spent in darkness with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide, I struggled to remind myself that light is indeed something that will come back every morning to greet you… a fact of life that I'd damn near forgotten after the night that I'd just had.

But that was merely the spark notes version of things… the real version was just too depressing for even me to recall; and honestly, a little bit of optimism is exactly what I need right about now…

* * *

It has been getting colder down here.

That was the first thing that I'd noticed upon stepping out from behind the heated veil of my car.

The fall air had been gradually fading for days, leaving only the beginnings of winter gale behind it; a stark reminder that the seasons indeed do somehow manage to continuously change, whether or not you're actually around to notice it…

My power walking towards the hospital's main entrance kept me warm, but even after I'd safely crossed the glass doors, sheltered by the indoors, my pace didn't slow; in fact, if anything, it sped up; besides, I was beyond the point of time where I needed to stop somebody and ask to be pointed in the right direction.

Quickly, I made my way through the familiar maze up towards Sam's room, nearly frantic of what I would find when I got there – the ill effects of my absence – only to round the corner and find the scene in a relatively peaceful disposition rather than the calamity that I had expected.

Sam was laying in her bed, flat on her back, eyes firmly closed with a large pair of DJ-style headphones firmly clamped over each one of her ears and what I assumed to be the "pretty ghetto CD player" that she had received yesterday resting at her side, leaving me to assume that she was currently listening to some of the soothing, peaceful music that the woman who had come to visit her last night apparently left her with…

I stepped further into the room, trying my very hardest not to distract her, or even so much as wake her up, but it was only after I'd inched a handful of steps closer towards her that I realized how wrong I had been regarding my assumption of her musical selection because based on the thumping beat and head-pounding bass line that escaped from behind the barrier around Sam's ears, whatever she was listening to most definitely was not designed for relaxation and medication.

_Bitches in the back looking righteous, in a tight dress, I think I might just; hit her with a little Biggie 101, how to tote a gun, and have fun with Jamaican rum. Conversation blunts in rotation my man Big Jacque's got the glock in his waist and now we're smokin', drinkin', got the hookers thinkin' if money smells bad then this nigga Biggie's stinkin'. _

Was she being serious with me right now?

"Sam!" I yelled towards her, trying my very hardest to break her from the embracing of her inner gangsta, but I only got one response in return, and it sure as hell was not the one that I was looking for…

_Is it my charm? I've got the hookers eatin' out my palm, she grabs my arm and says "let's leave calm." I'm hittin' skins again, rolled up another blunt bought a Heineken. Niggaz start to loke out a kid got choked out, blows was thrown and a fuckin' fight broke out._

"SAM!" I raised my voice the second time around, adding a soft punch to her shoulder in an effort to receive an actual response.

"Ow! What the hell, Brooke?" She shouted back at me in return, her eyes shooting open as she lifted herself upwards into a seated position, pulling the headphones down and around the back of her neck and slamming her finger down onto the pause button so that the obnoxious background noise ceased instantly.

And just for the record, I barely touched her.

"Biggie Smalls Sam, are you serious?" I asked her, raising my eyebrow towards her choice in musical selections as she struggled in front of me to settle into my sudden and unannounced interruption.

"Nobody listens to CD's anymore, Brooke," She attempted to explain; "This was all that I could find."

"I thought that you told me that that lady gave you a couple of CD's to listen to last night; you know, to help you relax, focus on your recovery; not to inspire you to go out and join a gang." I retorted, instantly eyeing up the small pile of said CD's that had been stacked neatly atop her bedside table, looking as if they hadn't even been touched, which, now that I thought about it, they probably hadn't been.

Picking up the topmost CD within the pile, I twirled it around my fingers a few times, inspecting the front cover carefully where it showed your stereotypical sunset over an ocean image with a faded Buddha statue superimposed into the background, the words _Inner Peace_ written in soothing script across the bottom…

Okay, maybe I was starting to see where it was that Sam was coming from now.

"Come on Brooke, there's only so much Enya that I can listen to in one day, I'm not Haley you know."

"You've got me there, I guess," I laughed in my agreement, tossing the CD half hazard back onto the nightstand, "But just out of curiosity, where exactly was it that you found a Biggie Smalls CD on a pediatric oncology wing?"

"You know that kid TJ?" She shrugged casually, playing it cool like always.

"Oh I know TJ alright," I responded semi-sarcastically; on our first day here, TJ was the one who had nailed me right smack in the middle of my forehead with a pink Spalding ball while I had been at the vending machine attempting to beat a water bottle out of it… I would forever know him as the kid who procured a lump which roughly resembled a miniature rhinoceros horn on my face. His little brother was staying in the room directly next door to us battling a rare form of kidney cancer that had stopped responding to treatment a couple of weeks ago while his single mother spent her days trying to grapple with having no job, no insurance, and a dying child…

Like I always said, sometimes the tragedies that tend to run through these hallways run more skin deep than anybody can initially perceive…

"He gave it to me." She confirmed quickly.

"Isn't that kid like 10 years old?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, something like that; anyway, he let me borrow it this morning; I told him that it would make up for him almost knocking me over in the hallway this morning."

"Wait, when did you go out this morning?" I asked quickly, unintentionally changing the subject in the process so that I was certain I'd immediately come off as being more overbearing than I had initially intended on.

"Relax Brooke," Sam responded with an eye roll, confirming my previous thoughts, "The nurse took me around the hallway a few times this morning. Here, can you take these from me." Being clever as Sam always was, she didn't hesitate to take my subject change, and change it even further once again, preventing me from grilling her with the details that really were probably more boring than I envisioned them being…

I nodded my head carefully, watching as she unraveled her set of headphones back from around her neck, extending them towards my outreached hand where she pressed them directly into the center of my palm.

I looked downward, immediately noticing a bizarre sensation, a feeling that I hadn't expected so that my face contorted with an initial sense of confusion, only to soften into a remarkably striking observation…

Wrapped strategically across the plastic connector of the two ear buds was a large clump of tangled brown hair.

A rope that strung together reality, laced poetically with pure sorrow tangled right between my very fingers.

* * *

**SAM**

For a few very tense seconds, Brooke and I didn't do much of anything other than go back and forth a couple of times; a staring contest between our eyes and my strangled vat of hair, which had very suddenly, and not so mysteriously traveled from the top of my head straight into Brooke's outstretched hand so suddenly, it was as if it were by magic or something…

Oh yes, how very magical.

But unbeknownst to Brooke, this wasn't the first time I'd experienced the classic hair loss associated with chemotherapy… It just happened to be the first time I had done so with Brooke present to see, which, as strange as this may sound, just kind of made the entire situation even worse than it already had to be.

You see, earlier this morning, immediately following the beginning of my latest chemotherapy session, but before I knew I would begin feeling too sick to so much as move, I'd headed directly for the bathroom to do my thing…

And here's the thing, I have no absolutely who the genius was they'd hired to design the bathrooms in this place, but whoever it was must not have been very smart because they'd made it so that no matter where you are in those stupid little bathrooms, you can always stare directly at your reflection in the mirror… including while you're sitting on the toilet trying to take a piss…

I know, I know, my point exactly.

Anyway, I'd quickly taken up the habit of simply looking down at my feet while I did my business just to ensure to avoid the awkwardness that I'm sure you can imagine occurs between me and my very own reflection but today… well let's just say that today appeared to be just a little bit different.

To be honest, I didn't even truly notice the significant difference at first, the truth being that my hair had honestly been thinning for days, long before I'd started chemotherapy, long before I'd even been officially diagnosed… Just another side effect of the friendly little disease I like to call leukemia, I guess.

But it had never been anything like this before.

Starting yesterday, when I had washed up and performed my daily nighttime rituals to the tee, I had just been preparing to fall asleep when something had caught my eye in the mirror, causing me to stop so suddenly that my back cracked…

All of a sudden, there were dramatic patches, nuisances adorning my hairline fading lighter and lighter so that, in the most extreme of places, my hair could have easily passed as being blonde… It was only when I'd moved closer to inspect the damage further that I'd come to the realization that a handful of those random blonde spots were really just segments of my very own scalp staring right back at me…

This morning, I had spent a solid twenty minutes in the bathroom, just staring in an effort to convince myself that this new look didn't bother me as much as I knew it did, until finally, a nurse shuffled into the small room in search of me so that she could effectively change the bag full of all of the shit flooding through my veins that had gotten me into this tight spot to begin with.

And just as I was starting to believe that maybe getting myself out of this mirror would be for the best, I strolled back over towards my bed, and I found it; all of the hair that I had just spent nearly a half hour looking for in the bathroom, smeared straight across my pillow case right where I had left it this entire time.

And it was from that point on that it had suddenly became very, very official – my hair was definitely starting to fall out.

"Hey, are you okay?"Brooke asked me, finally breaking the silence so that her voice steered me from my deepest of thoughts and back towards everything that was directly in front of me, making me incredibly conscious of the fact that my eyes had suddenly grown just a little bit wetter than they had been a couple of minutes before.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine… it's stupid."I sighed, wiping at my lower eyelids quickly with the back of my hand, trying desperately to hide the fact that I was tearing up, even though I was more than positive that Brooke had already seen the entire thing.

Sitting up just a little bit taller within my own bed, positioning my posture confidently, I faltered by displaying my characteristic nervous habit of running my fingers through the hair layering the top of my head, which, as it turns out, only made things worse as I felt the familiar tug of hair strands coming out loosely between my fingers; a forceful reminder of why I had been feeling this way to begin with.

"It's not stupid Sam, this is big, and I know that it's hard, so come on, talk to me." She sat down gently next to me, pulling my body gently into her own just like she always did when she knew that I didn't seem to know what to do with myself.

There was a moment in my response where all I could do was stutter about aimlessly like a fool, unsure of exactly what it was that I should do or say, unsure of exactly what it was that I _could_ do or say. The problem was, the more I tried to think of the words, the less I managed to come up with.

"It's okay Sam, it's all gonna be okay…" I guess that sometimes, there really wasn't anything to say, there was only me, waiting desperately for Brooke's assurance while I was rendered incapable of assuring myself.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry… I guess that it just kind of… I don't know, surprised me. It's my fault; I should have been expecting it."I mumbled my apology into the crook of Brooke's shoulder as she pulled me even closer; per usual, it seemed, reading my mind for me.

"You look beautiful you know, Sam." I latched onto her words, allowing them to compose me throughout the several minutes that I'd ended up needing before I felt safe enough to pull myself out of Brooke's arms again.

Poor Brooke; she looked at this moment, just about as bad as I felt although I found myself struggling to look at her for too long, embarrassed by her compliment, embarrassed by the fact that I just couldn't help myself but to smirk in my response…

The fact of the matter was, I don't think that I have ever been more grateful in my entire life than I found myself now towards the support that Brooke had continuously offered me; the support that, to her at least, seemed to be completely unconditional.

But even through that, I faced a problem; through all of this uncertainty, this insecurity, this growing fear of the unknown bubbling inside of me, I couldn't help but wonder – as stereotypical of an insecure teenage girl as this may make me sound – how the hell it was possible for Brooke to still be able to look me in the eye and speak those words to me so confidently when I knew how absolutely untrue they must be right about now.

* * *

I'm not sure if it had anything to do with our earlier conversation, or maybe if it was just based off the fact that I had gone into today generally feeling pretty crappy, but as my daily chemotherapy round progressed boringly just as it normally did, I found myself falling into a greater and greater distance between Brooke and I.

Of course, there had been the always eventful fit of puking… twice, and that had been followed by an unexpected, yet equally as exciting nosebleed that didn't seem to want to go away until the nurses had been forced to infuse me with platelets just to keep my counts high, but besides that, I spent the majority of my day with my headphones firmly clamped over my ears, grateful for some of my own music for a change as Brooke had finally brought my old iPod back for me from home.

Sure, I felt bad about shutting her out, especially after all of the things she had done for me this morning, but that familiar, unpleasant bubble just didn't seem to want to stop rising from the very depts. Of my stomach, and for some reason, I had always believed that by keeping quiet and consequently unemotional, maybe I could physically will the sickness right out of my body.

Of course, that theory never quite worked to my advantage. Actually, now that I thought about it, they usually just tended to make things worse; much worse.

But still, my mouth stayed firmly shut, and low and behold, for a while there at least, the contents of my stomach remained exactly where they had belonged…

Meanwhile, to my right, Brooke had been spending the past two hours or so flipping through a magazine so slowly, that at this pace, by the time she got through every last article within the thing, I would probably be completely finished with all of my treatments.

Either that, or I would already be dead, whichever came first, I guess… Joke! I was joking about that one… kind of.

But I guess that it would stand to be that I would never know which scenario would ever play out first, because before I could conjure up the time to actually watch that little, self-created dilemma unfold, Brooke slammed her magazine closed so abruptly, and so firmly, that I jumped a little bit in my surprise, turning my head just in time to watch her stand to her feet.

"I'll be right back." She made her announcement, leaving me even more confused and openmouthed than I had been before she'd spoke.

"What?" I pulled my headphones from my ears, one after the other, still convinced that I had somehow managed to hear her wrong, trying to get her to confirm the fact that I really needed to get up and start cleaning the wax out of my ears, because there was absolutely no way in hell that I'd just heard Brooke Davis willingly volunteer to leave her well guarded fortress, designated in the shape of an armchair besides my bed; especially after these past couple of hours.

"I said I'll be right back."She repeated the same sentence as before, confirming the fact that I had indeed heard her correctly the first time she'd spoken… Well this was weird.

"Where are you going?" I asked, unusually curious considering the fact that no more than ten seconds ago I had wanted absolutely nothing to do with anybody around me, including Brooke.

"Nowhere," She shrugged, "I just have an idea that's all," I raised a skeptical eyebrow up at her suspiciousness, "I'll have my cell if you need anything but I won't be too long. Do you need anything while I'm gone?"

"No…" I spoke uncertainly, my confusion laced heavily within my voice as I watched her throw her jacket up and over her shoulders.

"Alright, I'll see you in a few minutes then." I'd barely registered her goodbye, my mind too busy scrambling with the idea of just what the hell it was that Brooke was up to as I watched her walk quickly over towards the door, turning back to look at me just once, before she'd finally disappeared completely behind it.

* * *

Hospitals have got to be the most boring and depressing places ever created in the history of boring and depressing places.

I'm just saying, it didn't take me very long to come up with the conclusion that it was no wonder that half of the people who walk through these main doors never walk back out of them again; they probably all offed themselves out of pure boredom before they'd ever had the opportunity to leave.

Now, you may think that I'm over-exaggerating here, but as I laid here in my bed, waiting for Brooke and passing the time by counting the number of ceiling tiles splayed out above my head, I realized that it must be true.

And as fun as my chosen activity may sound right now to you, let me tell you this, there are only so many damn times that I could actually count the two hundred thirty one ceiling tiles that I knew to be arranged up there…

And just for the record, I'd already known that to be the exact number long before this particular exertion began.

Jesus, where the hell was Brooke? It's been nearly a half an hour since she'd left now, and the only reason that I really knew that was because on top of counting ceiling tiles, yet another particular specialty of mine was counting seconds.

1,583. That's roughly twenty six minutes for those of you who aren't as quick with your division as I had become.

But just as I'd allowed these thoughts to enter my mind, and just as I truly began to develop a nice, steady flow of initiating casual conversation with myself, I suddenly heard a small scurry scampering on the other side of the closed door, one which distracted me mid-conversation just as me, myself, and I prepared to count all of the floor panels…

"Brooke, what the hell are you doing?" I shouted into the distance, watching as Brooke slowly began to back, ass first into my room, moving as if she were dancing in a club rather than walking through a hospital.

"I was reading this article in that magazine," She explained quickly, finally turning to reveal the source of her awkward gait – an armful of shopping bags, posters, even a stupid, tacky Get Well Soon balloon, laden between her arms. "It was all about Feng Shui and it got me seriously thinking that you could seriously use a little bit of Feng Shui up in here."

She wasted absolutely no time in getting her self-proclaimed Feng Shui on, thrusting her shopping bags out across the dresser before immediately revealing a small, plug-in fountain from within the depths of one of them…

Only Brooke Davis, I swear to God.

"What the hell is Feng Shui, exactly?"I asked, watching her amazedly as she hustled across the room, tacking posters to the wall as she went,,, She even had a freaking throw rug to lay across the floor for God's sake…

"It's some Chinese thing. Come on, I'm trying to make you your own personal little Zen-den over here." She tried her hardest to explain, but I wasn't following along here, "And besides, I got you a present."

Now we're talking here. I perked up at her announcement, watching carefully as she stepped away from her self-assigned interior design project in an effort to dig through her second bag of goodies…

"What is it?" I asked her, suddenly much more curious than I had been a few moments ago as I attempted to peer over her and identify the so-called present still trapped within the depths of the bag.

"Well, first, I took a little pit stop down to Barnes and Noble because I just happen to know that you finished your last book," She motioned towards the _Siddhartha_ book I had been reading for Haley's class, strewn sloppily across the nightstand.

"You got me a new book?"

"Even better," She spoke animatedly, "I got you about a year's supply of magazines, all equally just as likely to thoroughly rot your brain." I raised my eyebrows, slightly skeptical as I watched her unveil a relatively large stack of all of the Cosmo's and Marie Clair's and US Weekly's that I could ever ask for.

"Yeah, I thought you might have that reaction," She laughed at my attempt at looking appreciative, "That's why I also got you this." She delved into the bag once again, this time re-emerging with a second stack that looked to be more in my taste than gossip magazines; a small pile of novels that I immediately sifted through in my attempts to decide which one I wanted to tackle first.

"The magazines are more for me, really," She responded with a smirk as I rolled a brand new copy of _Brave New World_ through my hands.

"Thanks Brooke," I breathed appreciatively.

"Oh wait, there's more."I turned my head immediately upwards in response to her comment; was I a present magnet, or was I a present magnet?

I was positively giddy in my anticipation, straining my eyes to nearly painful proportions in an effort to disclose this grand finale prematurely as Brooke took her sweet ass time digging through her bag, retracting her elbow, and pulling out… a giant roll of Velcro?

"What is it?" I asked, trying not to sound ungrateful as I inspected the device Brooke had just handed over to me.

"I saw it while I was waiting on line at Target… It's a lint roller." She professed proudly, but despite the explanation, I still couldn't help but remain very, very confused.

"A lint roller?" I asked her, repeating her own words back to her… What the hell was I supposed to do with a lint roller; start a collection of the growing proportions of lint that I was accumulating here in my strictly sterile 11' by 11' box?

"Yeah, I mean, technically speaking it's supposed to be used for shedding dogs, but you know, I figured that shedding people ought to count too, right?" She clarified her intentions for the usage of the object, and I couldn't help but laugh at the absolute ludicrous of her statement, shaking my head in a display of mock disappointment towards her stark lack of political correctness.

"Thanks," I laughed, hoping that she would pick up on the fact that my gratitude ran more than skin deep.

"Well come on already, don't keep me waiting over here, how about a test run?"She shuffled me along quickly as I unraveled the device out from within its plastic wrappings and rolled it along my shoulders, the sticky paper collecting a generous amount of my fallen hair; an event that had previously upset me so, suddenly feeling a million times better thanks to Brooke's doing,

That Brooke Davis, I must admit, knows how to get things done, and she knows how to do it with style.

"Here, let me help you out."Brooke extended her hand out to me, silently indicating for me to hand over the merchandise, and I obliged, allowing her to tackle a tricky section of my lower back that I knew I never would have been able to grapple with without her assistance.

I zoned out slightly, allowing her to take over completely, relishing over the comfort of being taken up by somebody else's wings until I was pulled harshly from my thoughts, flinching suddenly as I felt a strong amount of pressure bearing down on the top of my head, followed by an even stronger pull, a slight tug, and a bit of a sting following in its wake.

"Ow! Brooke, what the hell are you doing?" I shouted, ducking out from underneath her apparently painful touch, twisting myself around so that I could face her in an effort to see what exactly it was that she was doing to me up there.

"How cool is that?" She asked me enthusiastically, ignoring my shouting at her as she stared down at the roller in her hand, spinning it strategically between her palm so that I managed a full-on view of the chunk of hair attached to it, one which she'd managed to take directly off of the top of my scalp.

"What that my hair is falling out?" I asked her, rubbing gently at the section of my head still stinging slightly.

"No, that it just comes out like that, it's crazy. Come on, let's do it again!"

"No!" I ducked effectively, covering myself underneath a veil created by my own arms for safety as Brooke swooped down in an effort to locate a clear access point to my head.

"But it's so cool," She insisted, "Come on, just one more time!"

"Ugh, fine," I gave in easily, resurfacing from underneath my cover in an effort to allow Brooke the opportunity to humor herself, laughing like a giddy toddler at my own demise as she continuously ripped the hair, most of which was still firmly attached to my head, might I add, firmly from my scalp.

"Woah, would you look at that?" She marveled so that I was suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that this was going to be one of those things that never got old to Brooke, no matter how many times she did it, and I had to give her some credit here, or better yet, a lot of credit, because it was all due to her that this suddenly wasn't as bad anymore…

I don't know, I guess that Brooke just ahs this uncanny ability of making everything better, no matter how shitty the situation.

Suddenly it was okay that all of my hair had began falling out, suddenly it was okay that I was stuck inside of this hospital for God only knows how much longer, suddenly it was okay that I had gone from being that fiercely independent orphan girl to the brutally dependent sick kid.

I don't know, I guess that it's just that in my entire life, I have never really been apt to allowing anybody, especially not such a large group of people as I was experiencing now, take care of me, and I think honestly, that was one of the biggest reasons that I had been having such a difficult time adapting lately…

But I'm starting to figure that now that I didn't really have any sort of choice in the matter, I was finally learning exactly how to embrace it, and if anything, I have without a doubt began to grow more and more humbled by absolutely everything going on around me; even more than I would even care to admit on most days because let's face it, it never is a particularly easy thing to do – caving in, I mean.

But even I would have to admit this much; with Brooke by my side, this entire situation had just gone from incomprehensibly unbearable, to being that much easier; and that smallest of nodules of comfort, truly did make all of the difference in the world.

* * *

**JAMIE**

When I got out of basketball practice today, I was kind of surprised when I saw that my mom had come to pick me up and take me home, because just before Uncle Skillz had come over to my house to pick me up to come here, she'd told me how sorry she was that she couldn't make it to my game today but she had to go to work just like she always has to do on Saturdays when she's too busy during school to finish her homework.

Now, I still really don't know who would want to go to school on a Saturday, but I guess that it was okay, because since she was going to be at school all day, I would be able to go over to Andre's house and his mom would take us down to the park so that we could hang out with some of the guys from our class.

But after we were finished playing, there she was, standing over on the bleachers between Andre's and Madison's mom, talking about something that was probably really boring like what they do at work or what they'll cook for dinner like they usually did.

"Momma," I yelled, excited to see her as I flung myself over to her, "What are you doing here?" I waited for my answer, trying to be patient like she always told me to be, but I was too excited; maybe daddy had gotten home early from playing basketball in Florida, or maybe we had to go to the airport to pick him up, or even better, maybe she was going to let me go get lunch at McDonald's or something while we waited for his plane to land.

"What, I can't watch my favorite little man play basketball?" She asked me, ruffling my hair down flat.

"I guess that it's okay," I shrugged, following her as she led me out of the gym.

"Momma, can I still go over to Andre's to play?" I asked, noticing that neither Andre, nor his mom was following us as we walked.

"Actually Jamie, I was thinking that maybe you and me could go on a little… field trip." Wow, a field trip? Cool, I loved field trips.

"Like that time that Ms. Lauren took us to the museum with all of the dinosaur bones in it last year?" I asked as she opened the backseat of our car for me and let me climb up into my booster seat.

"Not really, buddy; actually, I was thinking that maybe you'd want to go visit your Aunt Brooke and Sam?"

"Yeah!" I yelled my answer really, really loud because I was really, really excited. After all, I had been waiting for momma to take me to go visit Aunt Brooke and Sam for practically forever now. I hadn't seen them in a really long time now and I was starting to miss them a lot, especially considering how much I had to tell Sam, like about how daddy let me go skateboarding all by myself on Tuesday and I didn't even fall once and how we'd won our basketball game today and I had scored almost twenty whole points all by myself.

"Is Sam still in the hospital momma?" I asked, buckling my seatbelt while my mom started the car.

"Yeah Jamie, Sam still isn't feeling very well so I need you to remember, when you see Sam today, the two of you might not be able to play like you usually do, and I don't want you to bother her too much about it, because she's probably gonna be pretty tired, okay little man?"

"Okay," I nodded, sitting up straighter in my chair so that I could practice being on my best behavior.

"Do you promise?" My mom asked me, and I could see her looking right at me through the rearview mirror so that I knew she was serious.

"Yeah momma, I promise." Maybe if I was really, really good today, Sam would be able to feel better and then we would be able to play again… I hoped so, anyway.

"Okay then," She nodded, pulling the car out of her parking spot, "Let's go."

* * *

I don't think that my mom let go of my hand once the entire time that we were walking except for the time that we were in the elevator and she let me push the number six button that would take us upstairs onto the sixth floor.

And now, I wasn't about to admit this, because if any of the guys ever found out they would make fun of me until high school, but I was kind of glad that I had her holding onto me, because I had never been inside of this place before, except for maybe when I was born, and it was a pretty scary place to be…

We rode up the elevators with a bunch of different people; some of them had some pretty cool stuff with them like big balloons or flowers or baskets full of funny fruits and stuff, and I liked to look at all of the presents, but it made me feel kind of bad that I didn't have any stuff like that to give to Sam although I did have a card that I made her in school the other day so I guess that might count…

We got off of the elevator and walked down a hallway with a bunch of doors, most of which were closed, until finally, my mom pulled me over to the side in front of another door that was closed and stopped, crouching down in front of me without opening it…

"Okay Jamie, now remember, Sam might look a little bit different to you than what you're used to right now, but don't be scared buddy, because it's just her getting a lot of different medicines that will help her not feel so sick anymore, okay?"

"Okay," I nodded, because I didn't want her to think that I was afraid even though I was a little bit, "I won't be scared."

"Alright," She nodded her head, standing back up before knocking gently on the door, not waiting for anybody to answer it though before she opened it.

"Brooke?" She called into the room, walking a few steps inside of it, pulling me along with her by the arm, and as I strained my neck in order to see around my mom, I got a quick glimpse at my Aunt Brooke and Sam, but once I did, I couldn't really tell what it was that they were doing, because whatever it was, it looked pretty weird to me.

Sam was sitting up in her bed but at the same time, she was leaning over this really, really big bucket. It almost sounded as if she was puking or something… at least, she sounded exactly like I do when I got sick, or when I ate too much pizza or something.

My Aunt Brooke was taking care of Sam, but I think she still must have heard my momma calling out to her, because she looked up the second that we walked into the room, and just like momma said they might, Aunt Brooke was looking very sad today, and Sam, very sick.

"Hey Jamie honey, why don't I take you to go over and check out that really cool playroom that we passed on our way over here?" My momma made the offer but I didn't want to go… I may only be six years old but I wasn't a stupid six year old; I knew when somebody was trying to get rid of me.

But at the same time, I think that maybe something really, really bad was happening in here… at the very least, there was definitely something strange going on, and I knew that my mom always tried to distract me with things like food, or a really cool play room when something bad was happening.

But I had promised her before we came here that I would be the best listener that I could possibly be today, so instead of fighting with her, or insisting that I stay here to see my Aunt Brooke and Sam, who I hadn't even gotten the chance to say hi to yet, I allowed her to take my hand and bring me back into the hallway.

Momma took me just a couple of doors down the hall, and when we walked into the room, I realized that she had been right; it was pretty cool in here. First of all, it was humongous; second of all, it was packed with a whole bunch of toys and video games and stuff, third of all, there was a whole bunch of kids, most of them who looked to be about the same age as me sitting in here playing.

I looked around a little bit, standing back nervously as my mom walked up to a lady sitting at a large table in the middle of the room and began talking to her… I couldn't help but notice that while some of the kids in the playroom looked just like I did, some of the others well… didn't.

I wanted to ask my mom about this, I wanted her to tell me why some of the kids looked normal while most of the others looked skinny, with no hair looking so sick that they could have been the ghosts that I always read about in the horror books that my dad let me read when my mom wasn't home to say no…

But I was afraid that she might be mad at me, afraid that she'd yell at me for being rude especially considering the fact that right before we'd came here my mom had told me that the kids that were staying here were very, very sick, just like Sam was, and that I needed to be extra nice to all of them.

"Jamie honey, why don't you come over and play with these kids over here." She took me up to the table where the lady she had just been talking to, who was helping one of the little girls who looked sick like Sam, paint a picture of something.

"Jamie, this is Vanessa," My mom pointed towards the lady in the chair, "And this is Kayla." She then turned to the girl who was sick like Sam, "Do you mind staying here and playing with them for a couple of minutes while I go check on Sam and your Aunt Brooke?"

"Okay," I nodded to her, trying to sound brave even though I was very nervous about my mom leaving me here all by myself with these people that I didn't even know.

"Alright, I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?" She told me, kissing the top of my head in an effort to make me feel at least a little bit better because I had the feeling she knew that I was scared, before leaving.

Falling slowly down into the chair she had pulled out for me, I watched my mom until I couldn't even see her anymore, and after she disappeared entirely, it left me with a strange feeling that I couldn't exactly pinpoint… I don't know, I guess there was just something weird about this place, something I didn't like.

I wanted to go home. Who knows, maybe Sam could even come with us, I mean, she could stay at our house if she couldn't stay at Aunt Brooke's, and then my mom could take care of her and even make her some of her awesome homemade chicken soup that she always made for me when I didn't feel good. I wouldn't even mind helping her out if that's what it took.

"Jamie, do you want to paint a picture with us?" The lady who momma told me's name was Vanessa asked, and I nodded, taking the small paint brush that she handed me, pulling a clean piece of paper in front of me so that I could paint a picture that I could give to Sam later to make her feel better faster.

I didn't talk very much, in fact, I didn't even want to talk very much… Instead, I just painted, I just waited for my mom to come back, I waited for her to take me home…

The thing was, even though I have been asking my mom and dad to bring me over here to see Sam all week long now, I think that I was finally starting to understand why it was that they had waited so long to allow me to come.

* * *

**HALEY**

It was mere minutes after I had gotten back into Sam's room upon leaving it that I officially began to feel even worse about taking Jamie here to begin with, only to hurry him right back out again, abandoning him in a strange place with a pitiful excuse, offering him nothing more than an assurance that I would be back shortly…

I can't believe that I had just left him there… after all, seeing firsthand, the firsthand effects of the disease ravishing Sam's body was a traumatizing experience even to me, a full grown woman. I could only imagine what it must have done to Jamie…

I knew that I shouldn't have taken him here today. How the hell could I have been so stupid, so careless, especially when it came down to my son.

But then I had stepped back into Sam's room, and I realized that whatever problems, whatever internal battles I was currently facing, this poor kid in front of me was going through something much, much worse, something that was even less comprehensible than the prior.

It appeared at first glance, that Sam had finally been gifted with a well deserved break from her rounds of vomiting as she sat up stiffly in her chair, attempting to towel out the vomit that had missed the bucket in front of her and had instead, landed directly on her as Brooke circled the room gracefully attempting to clean the rest of the mess.

"Haley," She'd been the first to notice me as she rotated her head sideways in an effort to clean off her shoulders; it was an open invitation towards the idea that it was once again safe to enter the room, and I took it as motivation to get my feet moving again.

"Hey, sorry to interrupt," I responded meekly, walking slowly further and further into the room.

"No way, you came just in time to pick up on some serious action." Sam assured me that my presence was viewed as nothing close to an intrusion as she began picking a horrible string of puke and saliva out from within the bangs that had clearly gotten in the way of her mouth… I just couldn't help but notice that the mess wasn't the only thing she'd managed to remove, but the entire strand of hair as well.

Her hair had begun falling out.

"Yeah Hales, don't worry about it, really." Brooke assured me that my concern was unwarranted, pulling me into a short hug, "Thanks for coming."

"No problem," I responded, pulling away in an effort to turn towards Sam, virtually ignoring the two of us in delving deep into her own problems at hand.

"How are you doing, Sam?" I asked her, making the attempt to include her although all three of us probably already knew the answer to my question before I'd even asked it.

"I'm doing alright," She spoke after such a long pause that I had half expected her not to say anything back to me. But still, she spoke amidst an exasperated sigh of frustration, the second her mouth closed, her stomach muscles visibly clenching around themselves, forcing her to lean forwards over her bucket once more in a desperate attempt for her body to loosen up once more.

There was an incredibly tense moment, one in which we all held our breaths, waiting to see what would come, but thankfully, we were met with nothing in return…

Sam resurfaced from the depths of her bucket clean, despite being slightly red-eyed and puffy faced in a manner that I couldn't distinguish between being from the pressure build up associated with her non-delivering gagging or being from sheer exhaustion, or maybe even both…

"I'm gonna go get you a clean pair of pants to change into, okay Sam?" Brooke prepared her for the brief absence, trying her damn hardest not to be deterred by Sam's silent pleas for her to stay.

"Yeah, okay," Sam muttered, facing downwards towards the soiled scrub pants that she was currently sporting; colorful and decorated with just about everything that used to be inside of her stomach.

"Hey, you need any help there?" I asked Sam as Brooke disappeared around the corner into the hallway, trying to think of anything that I could possibly do to contribute as Sam pulled herself shakily to her feet, stepping away from the chair slowly before steadying herself within the center of the room.

"No… no, I'm okay… I'm better." Sam rephrased her initial sentence, knowing clear well that she was nothing even close to okay as she carefully pulled the pair of dirty socks off of her feet, shuffling through a large pile of clothes I couldn't be sure were clean or dirty for an at least fresher pair.

And as she moved in circles around me, doing what she could to clean herself off, I immediately noticed everything that I had suspected earlier, ultimately confirming it to be the truth; Sam's hairline, beginning at her forehead, looping across the area behind her ears was unmistakably thinner, some parts even missing completely as if it had literally shot backwards back into her skull since last I'd seen her.

She disposed of her filthy t-shirt immediately, throwing it off around her head so that she was left standing directly in front of me wearing nothing more than some loose-fitting pajama bottoms and her bra, but I knew that her previously unwavering teenage modesty must have faltered days ago now, privacy being a word completely removed from her vocabulary in her post-diagnosis state.

And as rude as I knew it to be, I couldn't help myself but to stare; it was the protruding ribs, the pointy collarbones, they stuck out at me, capturing my attention as vigilantly as if a sudden firework show had erupted throughout the room.

Ultimately, I found my eyes lingering outwards onto the three-pronged device hanging limply from the area by which it stuck out from her chest, contrasting horribly against her pale skin and the swollen mass of bruising surrounding it.

And as crazy as this may sound, in my head, I actually found myself able to envision an elaborate picture of those little droplets of chemotherapy drugs dripping across the tubing and into her body, literally waging war against the miniscule cancer cells… And when I say literally, I truly do mean literally; like with swords, knights, horses, the whole nine yards, galloping valiantly throughout the entirety of Sam's blood stream.

"Franz." Sam spoke suddenly, tossing a fresh t-shirt over her head, blocking my piercing gaze away from an entirely imagined medieval battle, forcing myself to come back into grips with the real life scenario, which, as it was, was much less exciting, and much, much more tragic.

"What?" I'd asked her to repeat herself, convinced I'd heard wrong as I snapped my attention upwards towards where she stared at me with a humored expression dancing across her face.

"My port, I named him Franz… Sorry, I couldn't help but notice that you'd taken a liking to him." She pointed casually to her chest as if it were normal to be existing with a tube sticking out of it, which I guess, in Sam's life these days, it was.

I returned the look of satisfied humor, yet struggled with the appropriate words to say in this manner, although luckily for me, I was spared the opportunity to comment back by Brooke, who'd sauntered quickly into the room with an armful of sheets and a fresh pair of pants at exactly the right moment.

"What are you doing up, Sam?" She asked, tossing the scrub pants over towards Sam who wasted no time in changing as Brooke hurriedly moved to change the sheets surrounding Sam's messy bed.

"You know, I didn't really feel like hanging around in clothes covered with my own puke anymore," Sam explained, as if this had been the most obvious explanation in the entire world, "So I decided to change."

"Are you feeling better at least?" Brooke asked, multi-tasking in tucking the blankets corners underneath the mattress while simultaneously swiveling her head around in order to watch Sam carefully in her response.

"My head kind of hurts," Sam shrugged, dropping her body slowly back into her chair the second that her pants were securely tied around her slim waist.

"Do you want me to go get the nurse? She might be able to give you something; it's been a few hours since your last dose of Zofran." Brooke questioned Sam, one foot already halfway out the door before the girl so much as had the opportunity to respond.

"No, I'll be okay. I don't need any more of that crap floating around inside of me anyway." She waved Brooke off, emphasizing her gesture by sinking further into the chair. "Hey, by the way, was that Jamie I saw in my room before?" She'd asked the question I knew she'd been dying to release probably since she'd seen him, desperate to steer the topic of conversation far away from herself.

"Yep, that was him." I answered, surprised, no, impressed that she'd actually managed to spot the boy from the less than attentive position that she had been in when the two of us had initially arrived, "He's over in the playroom with a couple of kids. I can go get him if you want."

"Do you think I can come with you?" Sam asked tentatively, despite her previous admittance of suffering from what I was sure was a pretty severe headache, her desperation to just get the hell out of this damned room for a few minutes even more severe… In fact, she was already half way up and out of her seat before she paused, looking nervously towards Brooke, silently asking the woman for permission, watching as, despite her better judgment, Brooke forced her head to perform a shallow nod.

"Cool," Sam stood, shaking off Brooke's offer to provide her with assistance immediately as she took a slightly instable step forwards towards the door.

What would normally be about a thirty second walk, maybe even less, ended up taking us a good five minutes, Sam struggling like a one hundred year old woman with every step that she took.

I found my shoulder acting for her, as her own temporary support beam, the saving grace that kept her upright throughout the entirety of the journey as Brooke doubled back slightly behind us, dragging Sam's IV pump behind her which, with all of the crap hanging off of it at this point, probably weighed more than poor Brooke did.

We meandered through to the playroom, spotting Jamie easily as he helped another boy who looked to be just about the same age as him, construct an ever-going skyscraper of Jenga blocks… until that is, he'd managed to spot the three of us standing in the doorway.

"SAM!" He'd shouted so loudly that nearly every head in the room turned, watching as Jamie abandoned both his game as well as his newfound friend for the girl, bounding so quickly over towards her that I couldn't help but notice Sam instinctively slinking backwards, her body tensing in anticipation of the blow of the six year olds attack, which, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, can indeed be pretty powerful.

I shot the boy a death glare, silently communicating with him to behave himself just as we'd talked about earlier, and lucky for all of us, but mostly for Sam, he'd caught me before actually making contact with the girl, skidding to a halt just in time to prevent the havoc that I knew would have ensued had the two actually collided.

"Hey," I scolded Jamie, maybe a little bit harsher than I actually had to, "What did I tell you before?"

"Sorry momma," He apologized instantly, turning his gaze downwards towards his feet.

"It's okay Jamie," I sighed, immediately feeling bad for having yelled at him, "Now how about you go and say hi to Sam like a normal human being, huh?"

"Hey Jamie," Sam spoke enthusiastically, clearly noticing Jamie's prominent disappointment towards being yelled at, "It's no problem, you see, I'm just fine." She assured him in a manner to boost his spirits, leaning downwards to provide him with her own, much gentler embrace.

"What are you playing over here?" She asked him, easing the subject away from the fiasco of their greeting, allowing Jamie to grab her by the hand and pull her towards the table that he had just come from.

"Jenga, do you wanna play?" He sat down in his same chair as before, allowing Sam to take the abandoned adjacent seat although she looked uncomfortable within it, her knees pressed up against her chest, squished into the table and chair set that had been designed for kids no taller than four feet.

"Sure I do." She answered Jamie's question, ensuring him as enthusiastically as she possibly could, and I watched, as Jamie leaned into the already teetering tower, surveying it carefully in an effort to plan his next move.

"How are you feeling today, Brooke?" I asked the older woman quietly, so that nobody else could hear, watching as she took a handful of small, additional steps until she was standing directly next to me, her arms crossed, staring straight ahead towards Jamie and Sam.

"I don't know… Sam was okay this morning but then she started to get pretty sick just a few minutes before you got here." I couldn't help but notice that nowhere in that sentence had she answered my question by telling me how _she_ was doing…

"What about you, Brooke?" I rephrased, watching from the corner of my eye as Jamie successfully removed his wooden plank from within the Jenga tower, "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine." She answered quickly, and might I add, completely unbelievably.

I wasn't sure how it was that I was supposed to respond to her lie, so instead of doing so like any good friend would, I merely watched Sam as she lifted an arm, shaky from the combination of all of the drugs built up inside of her system as well as the dehydration and electrolyte imbalance that's always par for the course when you'd spent the better part of your week doing nothing but vomiting.

She picked her block, made her move, and…

"Shit," The sound of Sam's exploitative preceded the actual sound of the tower crashing down against the table and we both watched Sam as, realization spreading across her eyes like fire, she clasped her hands firmly over her mouth, upset with herself for making the mistake of uttering a profanity across a roomful of small children, as Jamie, who could pick up on a curse from a mile away, tried to pretend as if he hadn't heard anything for Sam's sake although the way by which the corners of his mouth downturned into a frown indicated that he had.

"I'm sorry Jamie," Sam apologized immediately to the boy, her voice fading so that I was suddenly very much so aware of the silence that infiltrated my ears despite being in a room filled to the brim with loud, bustling small children.

"Hey Sam," Brooke approached the girl carefully, placing a hand on her back just as the girl rested her elbows against the table and pinched the bridge of her nose firmly between the thumb and index finger of her right hand, "Do you wanna go back to your room?"

"Yeah," Sam sighed in an immediate response, wasting no time in getting back up to her feet, walking towards the door with the assistance of Brooke by her side.

Our little tetrad made its way back down the hallway equally as slowly as we had done when we'd been arriving as Jamie, not appreciative or understanding of the reasoning behind our snail's pace, leapt ahead of us, over-shooting Sam's room by about five doors, watching as a little girl, who couldn't be any older than four or five, whizzed around the corner, standing on the base of the IV pump that she was attached to, her mother pulling her along as the girl giggled with delight, a nice reminder that not everything around here always had to be bad.

"I wanna try! Momma, can I try?" Jamie yelled enthusiastically, pointing towards the mother and daughter duo so that I had half the mind to yell at him, to remind him that he should be so lucky as to not have the opportunity to take a ride through the hospital's hallways on his own IV pole but luckily, Sam interjected before I'd had the opportunity to turn his innocent question into a huge deal.

"Yeah Jamster, here, you can borrow mine." She indicated towards her own metal rod dragging behind her, helping him carefully onto the base, making sure that he had a firm grip on the thing before making the attempt to wrap her own hand around it to pull him along and… nothing.

The poor kid didn't even have the strength to pull a fifty pound kid a couple of feet…

"What's wrong Sam?" Jamie asked, looking around for a possible cause of the delay, mesmerized when he couldn't seem to find a physical source of the problem.

"Nothing, Jamie…uh, Brooke?" She pleaded to the woman for assistance without actually speaking the words and I watched as Brooke grasped the meaning behind the message instantaneously, walking past the girl with a quick, gentle touch to her shoulder.

Silent communication; I swear, those two had mastered their very own language in the past couple of months, and as it turned out, it was a language that didn't even involve speaking half the time… I don't know, it was just clear as day to me that they had something, and whatever it was, that something was special.

"Are you ready, Jamie?" Brooke asked the child, who, judging by the look of giddy anticipation splayed out across his face was more than ready.

"Yeah!" He yelled up to Brooke, so loudly that his voice echoed throughout the length of the hallway. "Okay, here we go." Brooke gave Jamie a firm push, the boy laughing with pure delight despite the fact that he probably could have crawled faster than Brooke was pushing him.

The ride managed to last a grand total of about thirty feet, maybe a little bit more, ending only when Sam was safely back within her room, comfortable inside of her own bed, immediately grabbing at the remote attached to the edge of the bed so that she could adjust herself into a seated position while simultaneously turning on the television.

And if there was one thing that I knew could ever attract a man's attention, it was a remote control that could adjust the angle of your back while simultaneously turning on the television set in front of you.

"What's that Sam?" Jamie asked, bouncing over towards her. Are you starting to see what I mean?

I watched my son as he crawled into Sam's bed, not even waiting for an invite before climbing on top in his effort to further investigate this strange new device.

"It's a remote control for pretty much everything in here." She explained, making the mistake of handing the thing over to him considering the fact that now, she would probably never get it back again.

"Momma, can I get one of these for my room?" He asked, experimenting with a few of the buttons as he lowered both himself and Sam down into a completely seated position.

"No Jamie, you're perfectly capable of getting up to turn on the TV yourself." He sighed at my answer, clearly frustrated.

"I wish that I could stay here all the time like Sam can." He grumbled to himself, and although we all knew that he truly had no idea exactly the depth of what he was saying, Brooke, Sam and I couldn't help but exchange awkward looks… If only he did.

"Trust me Jamie, it gets old fast." Sam assured the boy easily, patting him on the back as he raised the legs of the bed into a comfortable lounging position, changing the channel on the television dangling above their heads to Cartoon Network.

"Oh, Sam, I made you a card yesterday at school!" Jamie shouted suddenly, forgetting all previous woes as he rolled off the bed and ran towards me, looking for me to retrieve his get well card stored safely away within the confines of my bag.

I extended what was probably the cutest get well soon card ever created in the history of get well soon cards, allowing him to grab it from me with a distinct pride before he'd headed back over towards Sam, curling up underneath her shoulder, revealing the card towards her with a quick "ta-da" sound, immediately explaining the elaborate picture he had painted across the front of it of him and Sam doing various activities such as playing basketball and skateboarding and eating ice cream and of course, my favorite drawing; him and Sam deep-sea fishing together for hammer head sharks… I have absolutely no idea where the hell the kid had gotten that from, he had an imagination all his own sometimes, I swear.

I watched the two interacting carefully, and through Jamie's explanations, and Sam's careful listening, if I blocked my surroundings out well enough, I was almost able to imagine that we were sitting back in my living room or something, a normal place, a normal occasion, a normal life…

As bad as I knew that it was for me to do this though, I couldn't help myself; after all, I had always been the one who had thought I'd had a firm grip on my life. I had always been the one who had known what I truly wanted, and more importantly, knew that I was going to get it.

Recent moments in time, so miniscule in comparison, so monumental in perception had shook these ideas to their very foundations, forced me to reconsider my agenda on life until I'd found myself holding onto the little moments, such as this one right here, right now between Sam and Jamie, to keep me sturdy on my feet.

My main point is this; my beliefs, my very faith in humanity, well they'd been knocked down flat as a whole in just about the amount of time it took to say the word cancer, but as I watched Jamie sit here and read Sam his card, expressing his desire for her to get better quickly so that they could play again, and as Sam smiled and laughed in her response towards the distinct six year old scribbles, I finally began to feel some of those broken pieces pulling themselves back together –

A nice reminder that maybe there would actually still be some hope left inside of us after tonight, and hopefully, for all of the nights that followed us too.


	13. Make Me Strong Like You

Chapter 13: Make Me Strong like You

**Monday, November 7****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

I had this really weird dream last night.

Actually, I'm not really sure if it was a dream or else it was just me super drugged out on one of those extra long pills they always gave me in order to help me fall asleep after a particularly long day of being sick and miserable….

Anyway, whatever this thing was, a dream, a hallucination or… whatever, I almost felt as if I were having a memory; I mean, like some kind of déjà vu experience or something.

At the very least, I knew that this place that I was in was familiar; it was warm, inviting, that sort of thing.

And in the middle of it, there stood this guy, I don't think that I'd ever seen him before but I could be wrong. He was tall, pretty good looking, dressed down in a black suit and standing completely still and repeating the same words over and over again – that I was going to be alright, that eventually, I was going to find a way out of here.

So naturally, I began walking over towards him; I mean, I knew he was safe and that it would be okay to go over, so I did except that with every single step that I took, he would just grow further and further away while meanwhile, around me, my surroundings began to grow less and less familiar until suddenly, wham, I had absolutely no idea where the hell I was anymore.

So now I'm lost, right? I mean, I'm so lost that I don't even know which way is up anymore, and I'm just walking around trying to find something, anything really until eventually, I wind up in the same exact place that I started out in to begin with, except this time when I got there, it wasn't so inviting anymore, and now, I was totally, and utterly alone.

The next thing that I know, I'm sitting straight up inside of my bed panting and sweating, completely panicking over this crazy dream that I'd just had until suddenly, it seemed that the only thing that made being alone inside of my dreams worse was waking up and finding myself back inside of the real world, just as alone as I had been in sleep…

But this time, I didn't even have the option of waking up and making everything better again.

"Brooke?"I called out to her as my nerves literally began creeping slowly up my spine. I didn't like this feeling, I didn't like it one bit.

"Brooke!" I shouted, a little bit louder the second time considering I hadn't gotten a response the first, and I held my breath and crossed my fingers, just waiting for a reply.

I heard an abrupt scurry coming out from the direction of the bathroom, and allowed myself to release the heavy breath that I had been holding as Brooke practically fell out of the small room, dressed down in an old t-shirt and her underwear with a razor in one hand and shaving cream steadily dripping a messy trail off of the back of the heel of her half-shaven leg.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?" She asked, clearly panicked.

"Yeah…" I sighed; I felt like a little kid again, shouting for my mom after having a nightmare about a monster living in my closet, and then, when she actually did run in and turn all of the lights on, revealing the existence of no such entity, I felt plain foolish.

"I was just wondering where you were, that's all." I came up with a lame explanation on the spot, trying not to sound as pitiful as I knew I did.

"Oh…" She responded, clearly surprised by my reaction, "Well, I'm just getting cleaned up."

"Sponge bath?" I asked, trying to throw a joke within the mix of this increasingly awkward interaction, commenting on both our lack of shower access within this fine facility, which I knew for a fact drove Brooke positively up a damn wall, as well as our limited space to perform our daily hygienic rituals.

"Sponge bath," She confirmed, nodding through the mounting silence. "So… do you need anything?"

"No," I shook my head, "I'm good."

"Okay…" She spoke skeptically, raising yet another eyebrow up towards me, too confused about the origin of this whole interaction to really have any idea what she should be doing about it. "Well I'll be in the bathroom if you need anything." She added her final note, probably just to have something to say before she turned back into the bathroom, ultimately confirming the idea that I had merely been being paranoid this entire time.

Leaning back against my bed, I crossed my arms firmly against my chest, tapping my fingers along the skin merely looking for something that I could do to pass the time.

There's a funny sort of trend that seems to be universal amongst hospitals; an indirect relationship between the amount of time that you spend inside of them and the number of resources that become available to you to occupy that time.

To paraphrase, what I mean is that my options have been stretched to the very limit very, very quickly, and once you have finally outsourced them all, which honestly, doesn't take as many days as you may think, well then everything is just as boring to you as it had been in the first place.

I flipped on the TV, merely to provide myself with a source sound, but honestly, it was almost like beating a dead horse at this point… I have seen it all already.

Reaching over towards my night stand, I extended my arm and grabbed at my cell phone, resorting to plan B as a means of entertainment; that is, I basically just dicked around with my phone for a few hours, pretending as if I actually had friends to talk to, but really, it was more like a double-edged sword than anything, because the only thing this really did, was subsequently remind me about just how lame I actually was.

I think that was why I was so surprised to find that I'd actually had a text message awaiting me.

Jack.

Jack… the two of us were… well, to be completely honest with you, I wasn't really sure what exactly it was that the two of us were.

I mean, I know that after Jack had left for Charlotte, we had been all gun-ho about being in this established relationship, ideas in our heads leaving us to believe that we would be visiting each other every other weekend… But honestly, I think that at the time, that was only because we were both so full of determination not to split apart, that we hadn't managed to leave any space behind for the reality of it all.

So here's a little picture of that reality for you; there is a solid four hours between Tree Hill and Charlotte; four hours too far for a pair of naïve teenagers who don't even have their damn licensees yet.

Bonarro? Yeah, it never happened.

Cochella? That was a no go.

Burning Man? Well let's just put it this way, after that day we'd discussed it at the diner, it was never heard of again.

Now don't get me wrong here, I still care about jack, and I still care about him a lot, and trust me, I would have blown this damn popsicle stand a long time ago and driven hours to the west if I could have…

But you know the saying; absence makes the heart grow fonder, while distance, well distance just makes it grow absent… or whatever that stupid proverb is.

_Hey, I'm bored in math. Entertain me._

I read his cry for help, one which I had missed by about two hours meaning that more likely than not, the school bell to end his math class had saved him long before I'd had the opportunity to… how typical.

_Sorry I missed you, just woke up. Still need saving?_

I typed furiously with my thumbs, sending the message quickly before closing my phone and rubbing my palms deep into my eyes, literally trying to beat the stupidity out of my head.

I had blown it… again.

I waited, only semi-patiently really, until my phone vibrated against my stomach and I lunched to grab it, eager to read Jack's response to me.

_Nah, I'm in study hall now. What are you doing still asleep? Skipping class?"_ His fake accusatory text sent my stomach into a fistful of knots. I guess that sometimes I'd just forgotten that not everybody knows about me yet, which kind of sucks considering bringing the topic into casual conversation was bound to ensure some awkwardness.

And just like that, an inner debate rang inside of my mind; should I tell him, or shouldn't I tell him?

Oh yeah, that would be great, let me just send him a quick text message; nah, not skipping class, I just have cancer that's all… great Sam, real personal.

This thought inside of my own head was just enough to convince myself that now probably wasn't the best time to let him know… I mean, I couldn't just display this most horrific bit of news towards him via a mere text message, right? And I mean, I couldn't call him right now because he was in school…

But even a phone call seemed like a pretty lame way to break the news.

_Yeah, something like that.._

That was what I had finally chosen to respond with, and that my friends, is a little something I like to call cowardice.

Pissed at myself and pissed at the world in general, I threw my phone back across the table, perhaps more than a little bit harder than what I actually should have, judging by the fact that it slid firmly across the wooden plank before tipping straight off the side, landing on the solid floor with an ominous crunch that left me certain that it most likely wasn't going to be in as pristine a condition as it had been before this particular incident occurred.

Exhaling forcefully, I pushed myself backwards and into my pillow, silence settling around me until the only thing that I could hear was the sound of the running tap water coming from behind the closed bathroom doors as Brooke continued to struggle against her special limitations in her effort to shave her legs.

Below me, my stomach began to rumble; slowly, threateningly… Ugh, come on, not now… please not now. I wasn't in the mood today, more so than I usually was not in the mood, which honestly, is truly saying something.

In an effort to stupidly convince myself that this feeling was nothing, I became suddenly very interested in counting the number of fibers that had been stitched into the blanket draped across my legs, the theory being that if maybe I counted high enough, this feeling would merely fade away…

Of course, I had enough experience with this sort of thing at this point to know that it wouldn't, that it never does, which is why I wasn't surprised when instead of fading, the churning merely got stronger.

By the time I was finally finished denying the fact that today, puking was inevitable, I had already moved onto the next phase of this solo operation; trying to find something, anything that I could use as a temporary replacement for Brooke that would be strong enough to carry me from Point A, my bed to Point B, the bathroom, without killing myself.

My eyes landed strategically on the wheeling bedside tray at my side; you know, the one by which my phone was still laying underneath in two distinct pieces on the floor… It would have to do.

With miniscule movements, I rolled over onto my side, inching my legs towards the edge of the bed until I was a mere arms length away from the table, stretching my shoulders out to their maximum extension until I'd caught a handful of the corner, using my grip to fuel the moment that I needed to pull myself upward, my stomach protesting violently against every movement that I made.

Groaning loudly, I dislodged the bedrails preventing me from pitching myself off the sides of the bed and lowered my feet down against the floor, doubling over the second that I'd done so until my head was directly between my knees.

Yeah, I had the slightest feeling that I wasn't going to make this one.

Determined, I used all of the muscle power that I had left inside of me in order to stand up, throwing my body against the makeshift walker and beginning my journey, creeping towards the bathroom inch by painful inch.

I had gotten pretty damn close too until, of course, Brooke strolled out from amidst the confines of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around the back of her neck and her large bag of toiletries clamped firmly in her right hand.

She stopped short in her tracks, simply staring at what I was certain must have been a very odd scene in front of her before she threw both her bag and her towel down against the ground, reassuring me silently that she was about to swoop in and save me from my failed attempt at a solo expedition.

"Sam, what the hell are you doing?" She rushed towards me, eager to replace this inanimate object that I had chosen over her as my own personal support mechanism.

"My legs were cramping, I needed to go for a walk." It was a lie. I knew that it was a lie, and I was more than certain that Brooke had picked up on that small fact as well. She was just as familiar with the clockwork of chemotherapy as I was which is why I knew that she knew that this was just about the average time for the rivers to start flowing.

"Then you should have called for a nurse." She scolded me, resisting my motions as I tried to walk around her. I wasn't trying to be rude over here or anything, but I was on a very strict time limitation over here, and the bile that was continuously floating around within my stomach was serving as a good replacement of a clock, reminding me that I probably had mere seconds left until total self destruction.

"I _really_ needed to go for a walk." I insisted, allowing Brooke to grab onto my upper arms, lifting me up and off of the tray, providing me with a much more stable commute than what I'd previously endured.

About mid-stride, my abdominal muscles contracted around me all at once, sending a reverberation across my body that ran the width of my midriff straight up through my spine, so powerful that my legs physically began to shake against our forwards march.

"Okay honey, we're almost there, hold on." Brooke coached me professionally, but I had known long before this moment that I wasn't going to make it to the bathroom, and as we continued to move along at a snail's pace, that idea was only emphasized.

My back heaved with another even more powerful contraction, lifting upwards my stomach, as well as all of its contents in a motion so powerful that even gravity had been defied by its strength in t hat moment.

The burn of my own stomach acid raising up within my throat hit me well before anything else did, but either way, the result was the same, and before I'd even known what hit me, a projectile bullet had shot clear out of my mouth and onto the floor, splattering as if I had just spilled an entire gallon of paint

There was an incredibly silent pause, one which was surprisingly long enough for Brooke to hurriedly carry me the remainder of the steps into the bathroom and deposit me forwards, lowering me down onto my knees directly in front of the all too familiar toilet bowl.

I had a moment to catch my breath, a moment to grip the edges of the bowl tightly in my preparation, a moment of deepest reflection in which I decided that I understood, really I did; this had to be some kind of cruel and unusual punishment for all of the bad things that I had ever done in my life… But okay, even if it was, don't you think it's starting to get a little bit extreme?

I got the answer to my question quickly; a firm no that took the shape of my shoulders hunching over each other once again as I found the contents of my stomach laid out in front of me rather than remaining firmly on the inside as they should have been.

I was seriously starting to regret last night's ziti and tomato sauce that I had eaten for dinner because as it came right back up in the opposite manner by which it had gone down, it literally made it appear as if I were puking up my very own insides; which, more times than not these days, I couldn't be so sure that I wasn't.

Quicker than I had anticipated on, I found a healthy break, perhaps the ending of what would turn out to be a relatively uneventful round of sickness compared to some of the better days that I'd had between me and this here toilet in front of me.

Wiping my mouth clean, I remained hunched for several more seconds to be safe because if there was one thing that I've learned throughout all of this, it was to always be prepared for a surprise attack…

But thankfully, that surprise attack never came, so I took the chance. Breathing heavily and attempting to regain voluntary control over my muscle function, I leaned backwards, releasing my body into a flaccid state against the wall, closing my eyes and breathing heavily; in through the nose, out through the mouth.

"Hey, it's gonna be okay, Sam. You're okay now." Brooke reassured me as best she could as I rubbed my eyes and continued in my unmoving stability against the back wall. "Do you feel like you're gonna puke again?"

I shrugged in response to Brooke's inquiry; I wasn't expecting on puking again, but then again, the key to survival in a place like this was to expect the unexpected. But even though what I should have said was something along the lines of "I don't know," what I actually said, of course, was –

"No, I think I'm done."

"Alright, then just stay here for a second for me, I'm gonna call for a nurse to come help me bring you back over to your bed real quick." She delivered to me, her strictest of instructions before leaving the room rapidly, and I followed them diligently, because let's be honest here; where the hell else was I gonna go?

Absolutely nowhere, right; so instead I just sat here, folded up like an uncomfortable pretzel on an uncomfortable floor as Brooke smacked her hand so violently across the nurse call button that I could hear the echo of flesh against plastic from all the way over here.

"Can I help you?" Remind me to lower the volume on the intercom when I got back over there, because even from within the bathroom the damn thing was giving me a headache.

"Yes, I'm sorry but my daughter, she just threw up a little bit on the floor," That was an understatement if I'd ever heard one, "I was just wondering if we can get somebody in here to clean it up?"

"We'll be right there."The woman sounded cheery enough, a feat that I was actually impressed with considering the fact that I was sure that nobody could be that particularly delighted about having to clean a puddle of vomit.

"Hey, I got this for you." Brooke reappeared within the doorframe, arms full with my three deliverances from Brooke – a fresh towel, a water bottle, and my fast-acting anti-nausea medication that always came in the form of a horse pill – the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of any cancer patient.

"Feeling any better?" She asked, carefully assisting me as I downed about half of that bottle of water in one go.

"A bit," I replied honestly, using the towel she'd extended towards me to wipe the sweat from my forehead as well as the excess saliva from around the corners of my mouth. The truth was that my stomach was indeed finally settling down, now the problem was that my head was now choosing to swarm in circles around the room.

"Okay, well just sit still, the nurse will be here in a second and…"

"Hey Brooke?" I cut off her reassurances, her frantic movements between trying to busy herself with my needs while simultaneously running circles around the room to see if the nurse had arrived yet beginning to make my head spin even more than it already was.

"What is it honey?"

"I'm sorry," That wasn't exactly what I'd meant to say, but those words just kind of, I don't know, slipped out… I guess that it's true what they say, things just have a strange tendency to happen that way in situations like this.

But still, Brooke looked startled by my words; I guess she just hadn't really been expecting them, and I couldn't blame her much, because to be completely honest, I'm not really sure that I had expected them either.

"For what?"

"For putting you through all of this crap, I guess." I spoke as I went along, having absolutely not a clue what it was that I was talking about but just kind of hoping that inspiration would somehow strike along the way.

But Brooke's next move startled me just about as much as my initial move had startled her. She reached upwards, grabbing me by the face, positioning it as to make sure that I was staring directly into her eyes the entire time.

"Sam, don't you dare be sorry," She told me, her tone harsh as to really get the point across, "This is not your fault. You got sick, Sam and I know that it sucks and I know that it's hard, but you have to know that whatever you do from this point on, you do with me, okay?"

"Yeah…" I spoke, but my tone was anything but assuring, I knew that.

"What is it, Sam?" Brooke asked, always able to see directly through me, even in those moments where I couldn't even see through myself.

"I guess…" I started, not really knowing where I was headed, "I guess that I just knew that you've always wanted to have a baby, you know… I just feel bad that instead you just got stuck having a sick teenager."

For a second or two, Brooke didn't say anything in response, but then, after a period of time so lengthy that I'd been half expecting her never to reply to me at all, she just let out a quick laugh; one that I probably would have been mad at had I not been so assured that she didn't seem to view this problem as heavily as I clearly had.

"Sam, when are you going to get that fact inside of that head of yours that I am not going to leave you?" A shadow of a smile glistened across her face, one which I couldn't help but to reciprocate.

"Then thanks," I rephrased after some careful thought, "For sticking around."

"Trust me," She returned to me an even heavier smile, "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"Hello, is anybody here?" Our briefest moment of bonding was broken by the distant sound of a third party entering the room.

"The nurse," Brooke stated simply, more towards herself than towards me as she pushed herself up and off of the ground into a standing position, "Stay here for a minute, and don't move, okay?" She delivered to me her firm direction, ensuring that I knew that she meant business before she shifted out of the bathroom in an effort to greet the nurse.

"Hi Shelia, I'm sorry about all of this, it's just… we didn't exactly make it to the bathroom."I listened to Brooke taper off in her explanation before ultimately deciding to block out all of the other noises surrounding me, instead, focusing on everything that was directly ahead.

My legs had begun falling asleep due to the position that I was sprawled out in against the floor, and despite how much I shifted in an effort to get circulation back into my lower extremities, I couldn't seem to find it anywhere…

And I mean, I know that Brooke told me to sit still, but there was really only so much that I could take before I started going insane, and I had reached that threshold.

Using the toilet as absolute leverage, I shakily raised myself upright so that I was ultimately standing, taking a couple of shaky steps forwards until I'd thrown myself against the countertop for support.

Yeah sure, maybe this wasn't the best idea that I'd ever had, but I was still an independent person over here, and considering how much of that had been questioned lately, I was determined to show everybody that I still had it.

The second that I was absolutely certain that I had safely regained my sense of balance, I decided to push forward, immediately making the mistake of lifting my head up so that I allowed myself to catch a quick glimpse of my own pitiful reflection staring back at me from within the mirror.

I had to look over my shoulder behind me, had to ensure that I really was the only person here inside of this room, because whoever I was looking at here in this mirror, there was no way in hell that it was me.

But there was nobody else there, nobody else that this could be, and in the time it takes to realize how much truly had changed, I understood that those sunken bones, the pale skin stretched out to nearly skeletal proportions, the bald patches along my scalp, the sunken eyes… well they were all mine.

You see, this is why I have been trying to avoid all of this all along. Now I had gotten myself caught up inside of a trap, a very distinct trap in which once you'd fallen inside, it's nearly impossible to get yourself back out again.

I could have probably sat here all day if that's what I had to do and stare straight ahead at myself, trying desperately to convince my senses that this wasn't me, but failing in that task more with each passing round so that even after the image of my own body slowly faded into that of a smoking gun attached to a ticking bomb, I still couldn't bring it in me to ever look away.

* * *

**BROOKE**

It was day six.

How the hell was it even possible that we had already been at this for six damn days and still, there was nothing even close to an ending anywhere in sight?

It was a growing cycle six days in the making, and by the looks of things, about six hundred days into the future.

I tried to look back at a different point of my life; seven, eight, even nine days ago. Had life even existed before this; because if it did, I sure as hell didn't remember any of it?

"I'm just going to go get a janitor to clean this all up, okay?" Shelia, the nurse with whom I'd practically spent the past six days mopping vomit on the floor with assured me, passing me with a gentle hand against my shoulder before sauntering out and into the hallway.

"Thanks Shelia," I breathed, but she was already long gone before I'd managed to actually get the words out.

For several long moments, I just stood there, staring straight ahead, my eyes following Shelia as she walked rapidly towards the nurse's station a slight distance ahead of Sam's doorway, making the move for the phone line that I knew to connect automatically downstairs towards the janitor's offices.

At the moment, it seemed, there could be only one thing and one thing only in this entire world that would be capable of throwing my attention, and of course, that thing happened as a strange, unexpected sound emanated from somewhere behind me, causing me to swivel rapidly around only to find Sam, completely ignoring everything that I had previously told her about staying still as she stumbled out from behind the bathroom, eyes glazed and face pale, groping along the walls for any form of support.

"Sam, I thought I told you to wait for me to come get you!" My natural instinct was to yell at her; that part of me clearly still stuck in the past when Sam would do something stupid leading to a lot of yelling and a lot of crying until finally, everything faded back to normal… I'd almost forgotten how much times have changed, or else, maybe I merely _wanted_ to forget how much the times have changed.

But although I knew that Sam would probably be able to get away with murder at this point, that didn't mean that her defiance wasn't starting to get frustrating, especially when it posed a risk to her health; you know, kind of like right now.

She looked up towards me, trying to flash me her characteristic glare telling me silently that she can do this by herself, but before she'd so much as had the opportunity to do so, her face began to grow into that familiar shade of green, her knees wobbly underneath the strain of her own body weight.

I launched myself from my resting position in a matter of seconds, recognizing her imminent collapse, somehow managing to get an arm underneath her before she'd actually had the opportunity to hit the ground completely.

"Sam, are you okay? Are you feeling alright? Come on, look at me!" I rambled in my panic, building all of the strength that I had into my arm muscles in an effort to boost Sam back upwards and onto her feet where she stared at me, her eyes dazed and glassy, glistening directly through me.

"Yeah," She finally answered after a couple of incredibly tense seconds, "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, I just got a little bit dizzy for a second there." She attempted to merely brush off the incident, acting as if it were no big deal as she continued to struggle against gravity and pull herself even taller upwards. But I wasn't buying a word of it, and apparently, neither was my heart, which continued to beat so unbelievably rapidly that I was worried it would literally pound a hole right through my chest.

"Is everything okay in here?" It was Shelia, returning with her respective janitor in tow; a man carrying a mop and bucket alongside him, looking utterly miserable about the prospects of his duties ahead but I did have to give that much to him; I have had my fair share of shitty jobs over the years, but I don't think that I could possibly even come close to matching this one.

"Yeah, I just got a little bit dizzy, that's all." Sam answered, the frustration evident in her voice as Shelia got on the other side of her, opposite of me, wrapping Sam's free arm around her own shoulder, allowing the two of us to help effectively boost Sam back into her bed.

"How are you feeling now?" Shelia asked, missing Sam's distinct eye roll, too busy wrapping her finger's around Sam's lanky wrist, evaluating the normalcy of her pulse; the only mechanism regurgitating the truth of Sam's health as lies continuously expelled from behind the girl's mouth.

"Fine, I feel fine," She insisted, flushing underneath her embarrassment as she vaguely struggled against the nurse wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her bicep, allowing the automatic machines to do the work for her as she shuffled expertly, adjusting the rates of the medications flooding her veins.

"Okay," The nurse finally stated after several tense seconds, the numbers reflecting off of the machine in front of her apparently telling her everything she needed to know although I still struggled to make heads or tails out of them, "Well everything looks fine, but I'm gonna page Dr. Miller to come up here and take a look at you just in case."

"Great…" Sam replied, impatience laced within every singular letter that she spoke as Shelia turned towards the door, leaving the room in an effort to complete her self-assigned task until it was just me, Sam, and this apparently silent-type janitor mopping the floor in the room, making me more than painfully aware of the fact that the swishing of his mop back and forth and back and forth was the only sound that filled the room for quite some time until ultimately, the floor was clean, the man was gone, and the true silence fell even more painful across my ears than even the pseudo-silence had been.

"Sam…" I tried desperately to lead us off.

"Can we not right now, please?" Her recent tendencies towards the bipolar never ceased to amaze me. No more than fifteen minutes ago she was being heartfelt, deep and honest with me from her position on the bathroom floor and now… well now she was turned sideways against her bed, back facing me in a silent expression that now was simply not a good time for her.

But, as per usual, what Sam perceived to be the worst time imaginable, seemed like the perfect opportunity for me.

"Sam, listen please. I know that it has been a long day… week," I corrected myself instantly, "But do you remember that whole we're in this together shpeel I just laid out for you… This isn't like it was back at home, Sam. You have to start listening to me, please!"

My speech had emanated as more of a plea than I would have liked, but as I felt the heat rise up and into my face, I knew instantly that things could have had the potential of getting really ugly if I didn't start controlling myself now.

"Please Brooke, not now." She sniffled as she spoke the second time around, burying her face into her pillow so that I knew that she was trying desperately to hide the fact that tears had sprung up against the surface of her eyes; a common occurrence lately, I couldn't help but notice.

"It's just that, Sam… I know how much you feel like you need to do things on your own, but you need help and I'm here to give it to you so don't be afraid to use it." Her muscles tensed underneath the blankets towards my words but still, she refused to face me, and now, she wasn't even responding. "It kills me to see you like this, Sam."

I hadn't particularly meant for her to hear the last bit; in fact, I'd spoken the words under my breath to ensure that she wouldn't, but as Sam shuffled underneath the safety of her blankets and flipped over, staring me straight through eyes, I couldn't help but get the feeling that she had indeed heard me.

The worst part was that seeing her as broken as she looked right now was even worse than not being able to see her at all.

"If you don't like being hurt so much, then why do you stick around with me?"

I just stood my ground, mouth agape and wide-eyed as if Sam's response had physically punched all of the words right out of me, as if they had never even existed in the first place.

A thousand different responses jumbled through the very centers of my brain, all of which fell responsible for speech, but none ever seemed to manage to string together to form a comprehensible sentence, which is why what actually did fall from mouth, sounded more like this –

"Sam… I…" In the end, I managed nothing more than that, but honestly, I hadn't really been expecting to anyway.

"Sam?" A knock on the door forced the impenetrable link that had seemed to form between me and Sam's eyes to break. Sam stared directly past my shoulder, responding to the intrusion first before my head turned in as much of a 180° spin as it could possibly muster towards where Dr. Miller was entering cautiously into the room. "I heard you got a little bit dizzy coming out of the bathroom."

"It was nothing." Sam persisted in her defiance of the fact that anything was wrong but I continued to be unconvinced and, judging by the look on Dr. Miller's face, so did she.

"Okay, how about we just make sure to be safe, okay? I'm gonna draw some blood." Sam nodded in her compliance as the doctor swiftly and expertly drew a handful of vials of blood out from the center line of Sam's currently fully occupied catheter.

She sat docile, passively, and I'm not gonna lie here, it hurt me just a little bit when I saw the uncanny ability of all of these doctors and nurses to simply come in here and take charge immediately, to handle situations between Sam and I that I couldn't deal with myself.

To their advantage of course, they did have a lot more experience dealing with this kind of thing than the mere six days that I had, and of course, there was also that added luxury of the idea that should things not go exactly as planned, they could just walk away, move on; an idea that even in my wildest of dreams, I couldn't imagine.

"Okay Sam, I'll be back in a little bit with the results alright? Until then, do me a favor and try not to run any more marathons."

"No problem," Sam sighed, clearly un-amused by the doctor's attempted humor as she once again rolled back onto her side so that she didn't have to face me.

"It shouldn't be more than a few hours Brooke. Until then, try and keep your head up, huh?" My mouth turned upwards as much as it possibly could and I nodded stiffly as she walked past me and back through to the hall.

Was it that obvious that Sam and I had run into a little bit of a snarl over here?

I turned towards the girl, identifying instantly her unwavering commitment to avoid having to face me which told me yeah, it was that obvious.

"Sam, I'm going over to the vending machines for a soda, do you want anything?" I called out to her, my volume slightly exaggerated as I found myself sick of the silence before it had even truly started.

"No," She replied firmly, and through a sigh, I turned away from her just as she was turned me, sauntered through the doorframe and into the hallway, leaving Sam alone like the coward that I truly knew myself to be.

I dragged my feet with a purposeful sense of slowness down the hall, in absolute no rush to get back so that I bypassed the first set of vending machines I saw, instead, heading further towards the small congregate of chairs designed for families to sit and wait for devastating news all the way in the far corner of the hall, where I was certain there would be silence, and nobody to bother me on my quest to locate a peaceful quiet.

Digging through my pockets, I managed to find a handful of loose change; nickels and dimes and even a few stray quarters that I was lucky enough to have added up to the ridiculous $2.00 that I needed to buy myself a freaking soda.

I inserted the change rather viciously, allowing it to plunge to the bottom of the machine as I rested my forehead against the oversized refrigerator and closed my eyes, selecting my beverage blindly with the hopes that I would at least pick something that I liked as I listened to the rumbling emanate from the inside of the machine as my over priced beverage was dropped downwards and into the dispenser; my cue to head back into Sam's room instantly, but like I said, I was in no rush.

Instead, I kept my eyes shut and my head pressed firmly against the cool plastic so that the Coca Cola logo was bound to be imprinted directly into my forehead, turning me into a walking billboard by the time that this whole fiasco was said and done with.

I just couldn't seem to find the strength or the motivation inside of me to actually move right now.

When I would, who the hell knew? Whether or not Sam would be talking to me again by the time I got back, who the hell would know even more?

But as I sat here leaning against this stupid soda machine looking for all of the answers to all of the questions that I just didn't have, I assumed that there had to be somebody out there, maybe even somebody close by who could tell me what they were.

In fact, the only thing that was preventing me from breaking of the chains of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, running through the streets begging random strangers to provide with answers was a fact that I already knew, one that told me that most of the time, it was just easier to believe that there are just some question out there in this wide world whose answers were never meant to be found.

* * *

"Brooke?"

It was much later in the night that the voice called out to me, but still, it wasn't yet too late in the idea that I've seen much later times displayed across our clock than this.

But Sam was already asleep, and I was already sitting awake stubbornly, waiting for all of this primetime TV garbage to end so that I could watch the news and stay consistent with at least a part of my life I'd already forgotten about, gathering my daily dose of tragedy and pessimism simply to stay consistent with my own tragedies and pessimisms.

I was grateful for the distraction although they weren't very unusual around here; frequent interruptions, people constantly coming and going at random in an effort to check up on Sam and I, it was normal, but this time it hadn't been a nurse coming in to adjust Sam's medication rates or an orderly arriving to ensure that we'd had fresh linens, but Dr. Miller herself, several hours since I'd seen her last, sparking in my mind two distinct mysteries; the first one being, what was it that Sam's blood work managed to reveal, the second being, does this lady every leave this place, or what?

"I'm sorry to bother you so late Brooke, I just wanted to let you know that Sam's blood work came back and everything checked out just fine. What happened today was most likely just a combination of all of the stress and exhaustion that she's been going through lately."

"Well that's good, right?" I faked a smile and pretended as if this news assured me although it did nothing more than make me feel even worse about my overreacting before, consequently igniting this whole major tiff to spark between Sam and I.

"It's good," The doctor confirmed with a stout nod, "Everything is exactly where it should be, Brooke. Sam is doing just fine. I just wanted to make sure you had the update before I left for the night."

I couldn't help but wonder to myself what her leaving for the night actually meant. I mean, did she have a house somewhere? Or did she just have a secret underground bedroom buried somewhere deep within the hospital's basement.

Personally, I was going for the latter on this one, but I didn't think that we were quite at the stage in our relationship where I could be asking those sorts of questions without offending her.

"I'll stop by to check up on Sam in the morning, okay?"

"Yeah," I nodded, "Thanks," I bid to her my farewell, waving her off before once again turning in my pretending to be immersed behind the television screen ahead of me, but peering down every couple of minutes or so in order to check up on Sam just to ensure that she was still breathing from her position next to me.

Okay, so of course I knew that she was, and of course I knew that for now, she was just fine, or else, as just fine as she possibly could be given her situation, but that didn't mean that I couldn't still worry about her, right?

I mean, what the hell was I here for anyway if it wasn't to worry?

I was trying my very hardest not to be so judgmental about all of this, you know, the fact that Sam's treatments had recently began to make her more sick than the actual disease was, I mean, who was I to criticize something that I couldn't even understand myself, but as hard as I tried, I was starting to grow impatient.

The bottom line was that I was tired… but then again, so was Sam.

Underneath my watchful eye, the girl shuddered violently in her sleep, curling up into a tight ball in an effort to unconsciously generate some natural warmth.

Instinctively, I jumped to my feet, determined to do absolutely anything that I possibly could do to help her; shifting through the closet where I grabbed for the extra blanket that was meant to be for me and threw it over her body, tucking it tightly underneath her shoulders in an effort to keep her as warm as humanly possible.

Still deeply unconscious, she pressed herself gratefully against the extra head; a silent thank you directed towards me despite the fact that she didn't wake up, an event that I was thankful for, because I knew just how much the poor kid needed her sleep.

Exhaling heavily, I reached down and grasped onto Sam's hand, desperate for the contact that I had been deprived of in our arguing. Even in sleep, her fingers momentarily responded my motions, clasping tightly around me own for several long seconds before gradually, one by one, those fingers wrapped around my hand began to loosen until finally, she let go entirely, her hand slipping from my own, falling back down, protectively at her side.

Smiling softly at her unconscious actions, I rubbed a hand through Sam's hair gently before retaking my previous seat, cringing slightly upon noticing the small stands of brunette hair tangled around my fingers.

In all of today's excitement, I think that we had both almost forgotten that with every day that was passing, Sam was growing steadily balder and balder so that at the rate she was going, I would give her hair about another week or so to see the light of day.

Now I couldn't tell if the distraction of our argument could be perceived as a good thing or a bad.

Still debating that question viciously within my own mind, I wiped my hand clear on my pant leg, sinking deeper and deeper into my seat.

Desperate for something to bypass the time and to distract myself from my growing exhaustion, I dove into the small pile of magazines that I had bought for Sam yesterday, randomly plucking the latest issue of US Weekly out of the deck, skimming through it aimlessly, flipping through the pages only half assed, not even really looking at what it was in front of me.

Crap, flip the page. Crap, flip the page. Crap, flip the… wait, what was that last one?

I turned backwards frantically, hoping that I had merely imagined everything I thought I'd just seen, but landing on the offending page, I was upset beyond upset to find out that I hadn't.

Staring directly up at me, right in front of my very own face was me as if I were currently looking inside of a mirror or something… Of course, in retrospect, the award show ready Brooke Davis probably looked a lot more glamorous than the staying up all night to care for your sick child Brooke Davis did…

My eyes scanning downwards, they immediately latched to the bold-lettered title as it popped in three dimensions right out from underneath the waistline of my picture – _**Inside Brooke Davis' Secret Nightmare**_.

Great, just what I needed right now, yet another secret nightmare designed by paparazzi and scumbag reporters who weren't good enough at what they did to right about real news in an effort to fill up their ad space.

As if I didn't already have enough trouble dealing with my real life nightmares.

Everything inside of me was screaming at me to simply turn the page, to ignore whatever vicious rumors were being started about me this time around, but my eyes suddenly, and totally accidentally, I swear, landed upon the first paragraph, my mind processing the words before I'd so much as had time to throw the magazine into the trash can.

"_Fashion guru Brooke Davis, CEO of the clothing giant Clothes Over Bro's was reportedly seen rushing her new-found foster daughter, Samantha Walker (see insert) to Tree Hill Memorial Hospital in Davis' hometown of Tree Hill, North Carolina late Monday morning."_

My eyes practically popped straight out of their sockets towards the words; how the hell had they found this out?

"_Sixteen year old Samantha Walker, who, as we reported, has been being fostered by Brooke Davis since last October, was reportedly driven to the Emergency Room by Davis as well as executive movie producer Julian Baker, who is currently working on the pre-productions of his latest unannounced project in Los Angeles, California. Hospital staff has refused to disclose a reason for the hospitalization or announce an update on Walker's condition, nor has either Davis or Baker returned phone calls for comment."_

Phone calls for comment my ass. What the hell was the matter with these people?

I slammed the magazine shut in my wake, not even bothering to read the remaining paragraphs, instead depositing the paper trash straight into the recycling bin, hoping to God that Sam hadn't yet had the opportunity to read it.

I took a minute, exercising those deep breathing remedies that has been known to work for me so well as I allowed my face to cool off and my breathing to steady, slowly beginning to realize that I couldn't really blame these people too much for partaking in the lowest form of entertainment; gossip.

After all, I had heard a rumor not too long ago that this world had a very high demand towards the people who suffered the most, so that based on the basic principles of supply and demand, people like me and Sam were born into the lives by which we were born in.

But still, I was infuriated; it was stupid and petty, Sam's attack by the public eye in her most desperate fragility, and I couldn't help but sink with defeat because I knew that there was absolutely nothing that I could do to stop it.

The worst part was that that stupid magazine had proven to be a completely incompetent distraction as I had initially planned on it being… Okay, so what now?

I guess that sleeping was an option, in theory, but the funny thing about hospital rooms was this; they were never really entirely dark; there was always that obnoxious overhead light, the machines surrounding Sam providing a distinct electric glow…

For the first couple of days that we were in here, Sam did absolutely nothing other than complain about how she could never fall asleep because it was always either too bright or too noisy in here. Of course, it didn't take very long for her complaints to ultimately fall victim to her exhaustion.

I was still trying to figure out which one was worse; nagging Sam, or submissive Sam.

But my thoughts were interrupted, infiltrated by the unfortunately very familiar sound that originated from the general direction of Sam's bed; her coughing and spluttering herself rudely out of her sleeping state as her automatic reflexes waged war between her horizontal position and the fluid that was suddenly trying very hard to raise itself out of her stomach.

I responded naturally in my attack mode that was almost habit at this point; darting upright and walking over towards her bed, bucket in hand, fully prepared to get done what I knew needed to get done.

She extended her arms gratefully, accepting my gift of a pink emesis basin, simultaneously choking out a small thank you before depositing the miniscule contents of her stomach into the pink repository.

I reached out in an effort to offer my support in the form of a comforting touch, the only useful thing, I had since learned, I was ever capable of actually doing in situations such as this one.

She leaned into my touch, in her weakened state, seemingly forgetting all about the fact that she had gone to bed before still pissed off at me… Of course, this was me actively not complaining.

"Sorry about this Brooke." She murmured, her neck creaking upwards as she wiped at the corners of my mouth and I began my skilled duties of multi-tasking; one hand rubbing natural circles into her narrow back, the other reaching outwards to grab a towel from the adjacent shelf next to me to hand to her. "I feel bad when I keep you up all night with all of this crap."

I couldn't help but notice that this was the second time today that she was apologizing for something that we both knew she shouldn't be apologizing for.

"Hey, don't be sorry Sam," I assured her, her eyes tilting up towards me so that the second that they met with my own, I steadied the hand that I had against her back. "You know that you're the only reason I love losing sleep."

Pulling her head closer into my own, I felt her nestle herself closely into my shoulder socket, making sure that I knew that she knew that what I spoke was the truth, and that I had meant, and would always mean, absolutely every word of it.


	14. Under Water, Not Alone

Chapter 14: Under Water, Not Alone

**Tuesday, November 8****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

I woke up the next morning with a strange, unfamiliar sensation floating through the confines of my entire body.

It was vaguely indescribable, and now that I thought about it, I was unsure that my vocabulary was even broad enough anymore to actually find a word synonymous with exactly how I was feeling.

What was the word, I knew that it had to be floating around in there somewhere… it was… good; yeah, that was it, I felt good. There was just no other possible way to describe it.

Okay, but seriously though, there had to be some kind of crazy, logical explanation for this anomaly, because at first thought upon waking up, I was completely convinced that this was all just some kind of huge, insurmountable mistake. I mean, it was after all impossible, right?

Maybe I was dreaming… No, maybe I had woken up in somebody else's body… Hell, maybe I was dead and my own personal form of the fiery underworld was me being forced to sit here in this hospital for the rest of eternity.

But no, as the settings in front of my eyes finally began to focus from their blurry sleep, and as I slowly became more and more aware of my surroundings, it suddenly became clear; this was real and for the first time in I didn't even know how long anymore, I felt genuinely good.

Finally, my stomach wasn't performing a circus act composed of numerous back flips and trapeze stunts. Finally my head wasn't buzzing and spinning as if there had been a rabid bee trapped within the confines of my skull. Finally I felt as if I could actually sit up in my bed without having to worry about throwing up all of my insides…

This was nice.

Smirking at absolutely nothing or nobody in particular, I folded my arms carefully behind my head, leaning backwards against the pillow, satisfied towards how this day was looking to be already. I mean, I didn't want to jinx it or anything, but I was starting to get the feeling that this was the beginning of what could actually turn out to be a pretty good day, or at the very least, the beginning of some sort of a break, which, personally, I think I more than deserved.

I yawned and stretched out my arms, still just a tiny bit on the tired side from last night's exertions, but I knew from personal experience that once I was awake, there would be no going back to bad for at least another two hours or so until, like clockwork, my internal desire to nap would kick in and the vicious cycle would repeat itself all over again.

My head turned, my eyes focusing on Brooke fast asleep in her cot and I couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit bad just looking at her. I had given her so much shit yesterday simply for her trying to take care me, and even after all of that, she had sat up with me last night well past midnight just so that I could puke on her until a nurse finally came in and gave me another sleeping pill that knocked me out flat and finally gave Brooke a bit of a break.

I guess that it was safe to say that I had simply snapped yesterday. I wasn't pissed at Brooke, I was more pissed at myself for allowing me to get into this situation… Brooke just happened to be in the middle of it all.

I don't know, I tried desperately to come up with a logical explanation for it all in those long hours I'd spent not talking yesterday but still, the closest that I got to a philosophical reasoning was that I just got scared, and the weirdest part about it was that I wasn't scared because I was sick or because I was continuously stuck in these ever-closing hospital room walls, but because the second that Brooke had left me on that bathroom floor, I'd been struck with a realization…

Once she was gone, I couldn't help but think about what happen if Brooke had suddenly decided that she couldn't do this anymore, and ultimately, packed up and left me.

Of course I knew that she would never do that, but I think the one thing that scared me the most, even more than I had ever been scared in my entire life, was the fact that for the first time in my life, I actually had something to lose, and I had mixed feelings about this.

This was something that I couldn't lose. This… well, let me put it this way, this was something that I have travelled pretty damn far for, although technically speaking, I've barely ever even been out of the state of North Carolina before…

But you see, not all journeys are measured strictly in terms of miles; in fact, most aren't, instead they're measured in terms of all of the things seen and the things you'd rather not talk about, but with Brooke, well with Brooke it seemed as if there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel, shining brightly amidst all of this madness so that to allow that light to fade out again would without a doubt, do things to me that I don't want to even think about, let alone experience.

I need Brooke, I know that, and honestly, I have a feeling that she does too; it's just that, sometimes when I get scared, I have this strange habit of pushing away the things that I truly need the most…

So there you have it, my absolute heart and soul poured out to the very brink; the only problem is, I'm still sitting here merely telling it to myself… I would never be able to tell all of that to Brooke; I mean, sure, I love Brooke, and I know that I can talk to her about absolutely anything, but I still couldn't help but be more than slightly resistant towards letting her know just how dependent I truly was on her.

Damn me and my unwavering stubborn pride.

Shifting slightly from my position in bed, I squinted against intrusion as the natural light just beginning to peak wholly through the blinds pierced my eyes; a fine example of the approaching daylight savings at work, the sun effectively telling me that it was very near seven o'clock in the morning…

It was crazy to think that it had merely been a little over a week ago now when I would literally kick, scream, bit, punch, do whatever it was that I had to do in order to have to avoid getting out of bed this early in the morning, and now look at us; here I was wide awake with Brooke passed out cold right at my side…

For a long while, I simply just sat around silently, but then of course, once seven rolled around, I couldn't help but toy with the idea of waking Brooke up loudly with the announcement that breakfast was sitting on the counter getting cold just to be an ass, but she was lucky; I was feeling generous today, instead choosing to exercise the cease fire currently existing between me and my recently rebellious stomach by getting up, stretching out my legs, who knew, maybe even taking a walk before nausea and dizziness and pure exhaustion had an opportunity to swoop in and take over once again, rendering me completely incapable of performing such activities.

Slowly, silently as to not wake up Brooke who would undoubtedly have stopped me before I even started, I stood to my feet, casually checking over my shoulder every couple of seconds or so just to ensure Brooke remained firmly asleep – which, I was proud to say, she did.

I'd made it all the way to the bathroom without incident - a feat I could rarely boast about now-a-days – scowling instantaneously towards the mess that the two of us had somehow managed to accumulate within this past week.

Towels were strewn carelessly across the floor, crap littering the counter tops so that the surface was barely visible, most of which included Brooke's hair care supplies, Brooke's shaving cream, Brooke's toothpaste, Brooke's lotion…

Are you starting to recognize a pattern here?

I shuffled quickly through the clutter, finally locating my face wash underneath a bulging makeup bag that sure as hell didn't belong to me, so that I could toss a generous handful of freezing cold water across my sensitive skin, scrubbing gently before pat drying with a dirty towel that I had found on the floor, an act that I'm sure will work wonders on my immune system… or lack thereof I guess I should say these days.

I trucked quickly through my makeshift shower, instantly turning towards my hair, desperately trying to find something that I could actually do with it.

Considering I hadn't found the opportunity to take a shower or even so much as perform an act close to it, the thinning locks were tangled, greasy, just plan nasty to the point that a part of me was actually glad that it was starting to all come out…

Of course, that idea was tested the second I began dabbing the wet towel at my hairline; a bit of it receding with every swipe that I performed.

"Sam?" My own name rang against the walls in the form of a slightly elevated whisper at the level of a distinct mezzo-forte.

With a sigh, I threw the already dirty, now only dirtier towel back against the floor where – and lets be completely honest with each other here – I would probably only use it again later, and popped my head out into the open to investigate the source of the noise.

"How are we doing today?" It had stemmed from Maria, the woman who came to deliver the majority of my meals to me and also who, more times than not, came to remove the majority of my untouched trays back away.

"Pretty good," I replied casually, throwing myself downwards into the comfy chair in the corner, accepting her gift of breakfast as she slid the tray directly in front of me.

"That's good," She nodded genuinely, "Are we eating today then?" I evaluated my answer, surveying the scattered fruit and yogurt platter in front of me, struggling to decide whether or not I was willing to test it coming back up a little bit later.

"I'll take a stab at it." I told her, jabbing at a piece of honey dew with my fork simply to prove a point, shoving the entire thing into my mouth all in one bite.

"Good for you." Maria nodded, praising me like a toddler who had finally completed eating all of her vegetables although to be fair, even a toddler's eating habits probably far exceeded mine at this point. "Well, I have some more breakfasts to deliver Sam; I'll see you for lunch, huh?"

"Yeah, I'll see ya." I waved her out, speaking with a full mouth so that I nearly choked on my melon, but honestly, that didn't surprise me to much; it would be me to choke to death on my food the very first time that sustenance actually managed to travel the right way down my digestive system.

I multi-tasked through the majority of breakfast, shoving cantaloupe down my throat while simultaneously flipping through the grand total of thirteen television stations that Tree Hill Memorial's lousy cable plan actually received, finally settling vaguely on an image of Sam Champion rotating through the Good Morning America's national weather report, talking all about how it was bound to be yet another beautiful, uncharacteristically warm day all across the southeast today.

Great, as if I hadn't already been self conscious about the fact that I haven't had the opportunity to see natural sunlight in over a week, now I had TV personnel rubbing it in my face too.

"And up next, we'll show you the key to a healthy diet scientifically proven to lower your risk of cancer."

Okay, enough of that; fuck you Sam Champion, you dick.

I jabbed at the remote control, switching the channel quickly, at this point not even caring what I landed on as long as it wasn't some blonde haired male Barbie wearing more makeup than Brooke during Fashion Week telling me about beautiful weather and how to not get cancer…

Almost immediately, the new picture dissolved into view, outlining some big-boobed blonde wearing a skimpy red bathing suit and jogging rapidly down the shore line towards a bunch of kids sitting on an inflatable raft and being tailed by an ominous, clearly fake shark fin.

"Oh, Dios mío; hay un tiburón!"

Great, Baywatch in Spanish; oh well, sounds good enough to me.

Surprisingly, the show actually somehow managed to keep me occupied for the entirety of its half an hour running time despite the fact that I could barely keep up with my French class in school let alone grapple with an entire other language entirely…

But even still, I'd managed to assess the situation rather well, in my opinion and what happened was this; poor Jill had gone into the ocean to save all of those darling little kids from that big, bad shark but alas just wound up getting pwn'd by the thing herself despite all of David Hasselhoff's most valiant efforts to safe her.

How sad…

"Hey Sam," I was so enthralled by the program in front of me that I jumped a solid two feet in the air upon hearing my name being called so that my knees knocked painfully against the underside of the table I was sitting under, nearly knocking the entirety of my breakfast out across my lap and most definitely leaving a nice bruise behind.

"Woah, sorry there, didn't mean to scare you." Dr. Miller laughed at my jumpy display, taking a step backwards jokingly before regaining her step, tip-toeing past the sleeping Brooke and over towards me.

"Nah it's fine… I was just… uh… distracted." I tried my hardest to play it cool, but as the doctor in front of me looked down at me, and then up towards the TV, and then once again down at me, I had known that I had failed in my best attempts.

"Ah… Vigilantes de la Playa; mi programa favorite. Muy bien." I had absolutely not the slightest clue what the hell she'd just said to me; I mean, after an entire half hour of watching Baywatch in Spanish, you would think that I would have more of a grapple on the language but apparently that's not how it worked.

"Mind staying over here to work as my part time translator?" I extended the semi-serious offer to her merely laughing at me, turning towards her actual job as she reached over my head and began the tedious task of unraveling all of the tubes and wires that hung above my head in replacement of framed pictures and home décor.

"Well you've got me for the next few minutes so I'll do what I can to help you out. Come on, you know what time it is."That, she was right about; after all, it hadn't taken me very long to procure a steady internal clock that coincided precisely with my daily activities, which followed a very stringent schedule that rarely deviated.

I stuck out my arm automatically in preparation for morning vitals without so much as waiting to be asked, allowing Dr. Miller to wrap the blood pressure cuff firmly around my upper bicep.

"You know, I don't know if you got the chance to talk to Brooke last night at all, but I came in at around ten to let her know that your blood work came back clean." I was impressed with her ability to manually check my blood pressure while simultaneously initiating small talk but I couldn't help but sigh alongside her news… I mean, hadn't I spent half of yesterday telling everybody freaking out all around me exactly that?

"I knew it would be…" Of course, the second that the words were out of my mouth I kind of felt like a pompous douche handing out I told you so's, so instead, I chose to revise my statement, "I mean, that's good I guess."

"Yeah well, I just thought you'd like to know since today is such a big day for you and all." I raised an eyebrow confused by her statement, "Oh come on, don't tell me that you forgot! It's your first, last day of a chemotherapy cycle. That's gotta feel pretty good, huh?"

"Oh…" My eyes contorted in realization, "yeah!" I couldn't believe that I had been stupid enough to actually temporarily forget all about the day the day that I had been counting down for in my head for the past seven.

Yup, congratulations Sam, one phase down about a million more to go; so in that mindset, I knew that this wasn't particularly something to get too giddy about over here, but the fact of the matter was that this was my first major milestone, so I figured I might as well take a minute or two to gloat over the fact that if I could make it through number one, who's to say I can't make it through number one million as well, right?

And besides, I have been told by a few very reliable sources that the first part is the hardest… But seriously, I totally would have made Brooke by me a cake for the occasion if I wasn't so afraid of puking it up on the spot, subsequently ruining what has thus far turned out to be a pretty perfect morning.

"How does it feel?"

"It's pretty cool, I guess." I shrugged in my agreement, watching her carefully as she peeled the Velcro strap off of my arm and reached out to grab my obliging wrist.

"The beginning of the end…" She drifted off, once again impressing me with her brilliant ability to talk, keep track of the time, and count my heartbeats all at the same time.

"Okay, it all sounds good." She surrendered my arm back to me, this time, infiltrating my mouth and by default, my ability to procure speech as she handed me a thermometer alongside the silent indication that I should put it in my mouth in an effort to generate a reading.

"Oh, and by the way, you're getting a roommate." The news shocked me to the point that I nearly swallowed the damn thermometer, choking back against my gag reflex produced in response to my gasp of surprise.

"Really?" I sputtered; mouth wide so that the device fell right from my mouth.

"Really; now don't talk for two seconds, okay?" She instructed repositioning the metal rod underneath my tongue as I sat, fidgeting underneath my desire to speak for an agonizing ten seconds or so until finally, freedom rang through my ears in the form of a soft beep, indicating to me that t was safe to begin my game of twenty questions.

"Who is she?"I asked first when in reality, my preferred initial question probably would have been; what's wrong with her? Of course, I had the damndest feeling that something like that might come off as rude or something…

"Her name is Logan McGinnis." Dr. Miller spoke absentmindedly, jotting down some quick notes within the manila folder of my life before looking back over towards me. "She's downstairs getting an MRI right now but she'll be coming around in the next few minutes or so… Okay Sam, I've got a few more aimless teenagers to distract from learning how to speak Spanish but I'll be back down to check up on you in a little bit, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," I nodded her out, before lounging back backwards into my chair, falling into deep thought as I attempted to assess what it might be like for me to have a roommate…

Of course, I was probably just being over-analytical over here; I mean, the dividing curtain between us would more likely than not be drawn the entire time, and I was willing to venture a guess towards the fact that the biggest difference would be the fact that my spacial borders would suddenly be cut in half while poor Julian would no longer have that extra bed to sleep in for when he finally came back around…

My thoughts drifted off and I forced my head to turn back towards the television set where Baywatch had, unfortunately, ended, replaced instead with some lame soap opera.

Suddenly, I'd found myself much less interested in what entertainment the television had to offer me. Flipping backwards subconsciously through the channels, I landed automatically on the news – a safe substitute – only to be instantly bombarded by the headlines blaring ahead of me; wars and financial crisis, body counts of casualties splicing sharply across the screen, writing themselves permanently across my face…

I guess it's true what they always say; misery does love company, doesn't it.

So I embraced such company, distracted myself within it, allowing myself to go so far as to relax against it; so much so in fact, that it took me a little while before I even noticed the commotion brewing right outside of my front door…

At first, I'd managed to convince myself that maybe I was just particularly popular today or something, considering all of the people that kept sweeping by for visits, but as I watched an orderly backing up slowly into the room, dragging what looked suspiciously like a full gurney, I quickly realized that these people were not in fact, here for me at all.

My new roommate had arrived.

I stared rudely yet uncontrollably, intrigued curiously as Logan McGinnis entered my line of vision for the very first time.

I marveled at the extent of her sunken eyes, her pale skin stretched tightly over a rigid bone structure so that her appearance rivaled even that of my own – impressive, considering I was thus far pretty successful at resembling a new-aged zombie invader.

Her smooth scalp adorned several rigid scars, so abundant and so prominent that they looked like all of those maps I saw on TV of the New York City subway system, complex and intricate, scanning the length of her skull with such rigid detail that I was half expecting miniature subway cars to slide across them.

Of course, that imagery quickly vanished; replaced instead with a much more realistic approach to this entire scenario – brain cancer.

Her neck flexed towards my direction, eyes wide and darting within their sockets as she frantically attempted to adjust to each of her surroundings all at once.

It was mere seconds until our lines of vision collided, leaving us to sit, studiously analyzing each other brutally in our eye contact for a brief moment until she offered me a short nod, an acknowledging greeting, which I returned politely before she was suddenly whisked away by the orderlies, behind the curtain separating our sides of the room.

Listening to the buildup of the commotion behind the screen, my blindness towards the situation enhanced my sense of audio acuity, capturing my attention until yet another small group of people stumbled into the room, this time in the form of a duo; a young woman looking much older beyond her years attached firmly to a small child nearly identical to the teen that had just been carried in on a stretcher except much younger and with a full face adorned with a head of dark brown hair so long, it reached to the backs of her knees.

The child pulled, strained, and yanked her hand from her mother's grasp, running ahead towards my new cell mate, as I'd come to know her, who was undoubtedly this girl's older sister.

The older of the McGinnis family trailed slowly behind, a slightly frazzled look glazed behind her eyes, quite similar to that depicted by a deer following its capture within the headlights of an oncoming car… She took several slow, hesitant paces forwards, gaining speed with ever step before it happened…

With an earsplitting crash, her journey was cut off abruptly, shattered by her collision against the cot occupying a peacefully sleeping Brooke… until now, that is.

I watched the boisterous crash wide-eyed as my brain seemingly slowed in an effort to capture and appreciate its every moment…

The woman fell forwards, arms outstretched in an effort to break her fall as she bridged her relatively tall frame over Brooke's sleeping one, her coffee flying from her hand, spilling rivers across the otherwise spotless floor as Brooke gave an almighty grunt in response to her relatively violent arousal…

Brooke jolted upwards abruptly, throwing this stranger off of her still half asleep as she tried to comprehend what the hell had just happened to warrant such an angry awakening…

Poor Brooke, she probably thought that the damn world was coming to an end or something…

Well, I wasn't so sure about that, but I could at least tell you this much; this lady had just awoken a sleeping bear; some major shit was about to go down, and I was lucky enough to have captured a front row seat.

* * *

**BROOKE**

The first time I met Cathy McGinnis, she was sprawled across my torso as I struggled to recover from just having the wind knocked out of me upon being awoken in a matter that roughly resembled a football player being tackled flat on the ground.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" My hearing was the first of my many glazed-over senses to defog, my eyes still struggling to clear from the sting of sleep and my lungs still heaved against forced contractions as I struggled to once again catch my breath.

"It's fine, it's fine," I waved off the unknown source of the apology, blindly swinging my legs across my remarkably comfortable cot, searching with my feet quickly until I finally struck solid ground.

"Mommy what are you doing?" My ears perked up instantly upon hearing this, a little bit confused as to who had spoken considering it sure as hell hadn't been Sam… unless of course Sam had suddenly mastered the impersonation of a toddler and had decided to start calling me mommy…

My neck rotated slowly, turning my head towards the sound that had escaped from behind the closed curtain divider just as it was pulled back by… a four or five year old girl?

And wait; was that a teenager laying in the bed next to Sam's?

Okay, I was officially confused.

I turned towards Sam, looking for any possible source of clarification towards this manner, but as our eyes met, the only thing she provided me with was a small upwards twitch of the shoulders; an inconspicuous shrug that told me none of the answers that I had been trying to get out of her.

"Hi, I'm sorry, but I'm Cathy McGinnis." The perpetrating older woman scrambled over her own words slightly before ultimately landing on the safest bet; a brief introduction accompanied by the motion of her extending her hand towards me; an action which I accepted although I was still buried knee deep in confusion, "I guess that my daughter Logan is your daughter's new roommate."

Her briefest of explanations seemed to clarify effectively so that I felt as if I'd just solved the deepest puzzles of the universe.

"Um… these are my daughters, Lachlan and Logan." She rambled endlessly, leaving no room for a word edgewise as she pointed towards her two girls respectively; trying to carry along conversation in an effort to be conspicuous about mopping off all of the coffee she had just spilled all over the floor.

"Uh… Brooke Davis." I finally managed to stutter as she took a brief pause between words in an effort to actually inhale for a change.

"_The_ Brooke Davis," My face flushed instantaneously red with embarrassment as I turned towards the source of the noise, which had emanated from the teenager within the bed just across from me, "The fashion designer from Clothes over Bros?"

"Yeah," I shrugged alongside a nod, trying to sound modest about having just been called out for constantly being in the spotlight, "That's me."

"Oh my God, that is so cool! You know, I read in some magazine last week that you were in here but I didn't believe it. I love your store and I have just about every single piece of clothing from your last line…" Apparently rambling incoherently was a genetic trait passed dominantly down the McGinnis family line, because this girl was barely breathing between her words as she sifted through each excruciating detail of each piece of my clothing that she owned, "You're so awesome!"

After approximately five minutes, and that's not an exaggeration by the way, she finished, panting out of breath from the race that her mouth had just ran on her.

"Aw, thanks!" I responded with a tone of enthusiastic awkwardness hidden behind my voice… You would think that after all of this time and experience, I would have gotten a bit better at responding to such compliments but nope, it's been a solid five years and still, I struggle with the task of coming up with a response to praise that would allow me to express just how much I appreciated the words of encouragement while simultaneously trying to stay humble, all the time desperately trying to not sound like a huge bitch.

It was a difficult task; you can trust me on that one.

"So," Sam's apparently talkative young roommate turned her head from my direction, focusing directly towards Sam, "What are you in for?"

"Logan!" Cathy McGinnis' strong scold masked Sam's confusion

"What?" Logan turned towards her mother, completely oblivious towards the fact that under normal circumstances her inquiry may be interpreted as rude… Of course, these circumstances were anything but normal so that I was more than certain that no offense had been taking, "It was just a question…"

"It's okay," Sam shrugged, scrunching her face in silent thought for a brief second before ultimately addressing Logan's previous question, "I'm here for happy hour." Nodding upwards, Sam silently indicated towards the numerous bags of clear fluid dangling above her own head, pumping her full with said cocktails that she was referring to.

I couldn't help but smirk up towards Sam's casualness; it was nice to see her respond to a healthy dose of human interaction that was not supplied by either me or a doctor.

"Right," The new girl laughed generously with her mutual understanding of Sam's well placed inside joke, nodding in agreement as Sam leaned forwards towards her, extending her hand towards her new roommate.

"Sam Walker," She offered, the girl next to her clasping her own hand weakly around Sam's fingers for a brief moment before retreating, "AML."

"Not bad, not bad," Logan nodded in response to the revelation of Sam's diagnosis. "Logan McGinnis," She returned, shifting slightly upright in her bed, "RPA Class III Glioblastoma Multiforme."

Shit and I thought that I'd had it bad in my struggle to remember the name of the type of cancer that Sam had… That one was harder, much harder, and in more ways than one mind you…

I knew a little bit about glioblastoma multiforme, and by a little bit, I mean that all I could tell you was the absolute basics… I'd come across it during one of my many long, endless nights spent researching various different forms of cancer and their associated prognoses just to see where Sam ranked in the grand scheme of things.

As far as leukemias were concerned, I remember that they all – to my general approval – ranked pretty high up there on the scale of patients who ultimately reach remission; ALL being number one amongst pediatric patients, AML number four…

I could vividly remember scrolling downwards along the seemingly endless list, my heart growing heavier and heavier the further down I reached, and as much as I didn't want to know the information at the bottom, my curiosity ultimately got the better of me.

I needed to know who the kids that had it worse than Sam were, the parents that had it worse than me, the individuals who didn't have a prayers chance of seeing their loved ones make it longer than a year or two at most, the people – and I hated myself for even thinking this – I was glad that I was not one of.

It was last. And when I say last, I meant that it was _dead last_.

Basically, if you're gonna get cancer; glioblastoma multiforme was not the type that you wanted.

It was a brain tumor, and a very aggressive one at that. I remembered the statistics on it slapping me so hard across my face that they were permanently embedded into my mind as if I were reading them straight off a piece of paper.

One in twenty would survive the first twelve months.

One in five thousand would survive the first five years.

One in two million would survive all together…

For children under the age of twenty, the average prognosis was a little over seventeen months, and now that I was seeing her, I couldn't help but wonder where Logan's marker on that deadly timeline currently stood, how much longer she had until she reached that dreaded anniversary.

Besides me, Sam merely smiled and nodded, unsure of what else to do upon being delivered with such intense news. Quickly, she fell into silence, and I could see it in her eyes; suddenly, she wasn't feeling so badly about all of the things that she had to deal with over here.

I looked between the two girls, curious and anticipating what was to come out of this companionship; something about them just seemed to click, even in their brief initial interaction, and I could only take this as a good thing.

Directly behind me, my cell phone blared with a sudden violence and I jumped upwards, cursing myself for being stupid enough to forget to put the thing on vibrate, especially now that I had two people inside of this room to consider rather than just one.

"I'll be right back Sam," I waved to her, reacting to the ringing quickly before it became even more of a nuisance than it already had to be, stepping out into the hallway.

"Hello?" I asked abruptly, my voice panting and out of breath from my recent sprint.

"Is this a bad time?" Immediately, my breath hitched upwards in my throat, my heart racing even harder than it already was, just like it always did in response to the sound of that voice.

"Julian… I mean no, not at all, what's up?"

"I'm just calling to check up on my girls; how are you and Sam holding up over there without me?" He asked, trying his hardest to sound inconspicuous about his desire to be hasty in his need to run immediately back to work; after all, he was a busy man who also just so happened to be in high demand so as much as I could pretend that it didn't make me feel jealous and needy, it did… it really did.

"We're fine, Sam's just over in her room getting to know her new roommate." I prompted small talk despite the fact that the only thing I wanted to do right now was ask him when it was that he was coming home.

"A new roommate; when did that happen?" He emphasized his best expression of surprised concern because I knew just how determined he was to keep up with this minute-by-minute update on Sam while subsequently trying to something about new news from more than three thousand miles away and trust me, this was one of the millions of reasons that I loved him so much, but at the same time, it also had a tendency to make the distance that much more difficult.

"About five seconds ago," I kept the mood light, laughing as I absentmindedly peaked my head through the window leading into Sam's bedroom where, contraire to what I'd just been telling Julian, Sam wasn't getting to know her new roommate at all but instead, was trying to resist the urge to fall asleep; her head nodding up and down ever couple of seconds in her expression of resistance towards the exhaustion that I knew as well as she did, wasn't about to give up on her.

"So… what are you up to right now? You sound busy." I eased into my attack gently but instantly recognized the fact that he picked up on exactly where I was trying to steer this conversation; responding to it in the form of a heavy sigh.

"Yeah, I've been pretty busy lately… This studio has me pinned up against a wall; things have been insane around here." His blunt indication towards the fact that there was no way in hell that I was going to be seeing him any time soon made the ache already deep inside of my chest twinge even harder as an incessant longing for the chance to see him once again swept through my brain before I had the time to control it.

"Brooke… Are you okay?" I guess that I had held in my silence for just a little bit longer than I had intended to, but just as I prepared myself to deliver towards him one of the biggest lies that I had ever told and emphasize the fact that I was just fine, I stopped, extending my already lengthy pause as I looked back towards Sam, open-mouthed and eyes shut, her chest rising and falling with the synchronized breathing of restless sleep…

I guess that it was safe to say that I couldn't find it inside of me to let go of the pressure of doing all of this alone.

"Julian…" His name breathed from the tip of my tongue, "I need you to tell me that you're coming home tonight."

It was one of the most selfish things that I could have possibly said to him, I knew that it was, but that was just the way I was, had always been since the dawn of time; selfish Brooke Davis… I guess they're right; some things never do change.

"Brooke…" The mere disappointment seeping from his voice forced me to turn the entirety of my body into the corner wall in an effort to block from sight the tears that had managed to escape the stable front that I was attempting to put up… "I can see what I can do in a few days, it's just… well the movie is getting ready to start filming and things are getting pretty hectic over here… I just don't know when I'm gonna find time to break loose."

"Please Julian?" Begging of course, is not my normal forte, especially considering the fact that I had been the one who'd convinced him to fly off to L.A. in the first place…

I guess that you can just add "filthy hypocrite" to my growing list of flaws.

He paused so that for a brief second, all I could here was his heavy, torn breathing from the other end of the line, but before he'd so much as had the opportunity to answer my plea, a distant beep originated from somewhere within the depths of my phone; my call waiting acting as the saving grace raining down upon me in an effort to cut this rapidly derailing conversation shot.

"Listen Julian, I have to go, somebody's on the other line…"

"Brooke, are you sure you're alright…?" He asked, confusion laced heavily within his voice as he struggled for a solution towards the problem that I had inadvertently created for him.

"Yeah Julian," I lied to him again, feeling my heart bursting at the seams as I did so, "Yeah I'm sorry, I guess I'm just a little over tired, that's all… I'll call you back later, love you." And with that, I hung up on him, ending the conversation before he even had so much as time to respond…

"Hello?" I transferred the call to the second line, trying my hardest to sound normal, to sound stable as I initiated a second conversation that would hopefully go much better than the first one had.

"Hey," I breathed an immediate sigh of relief in response to the voice on the other line; it was familiar, deep, soothing…

"Nathan, what's up?"

"Um… well here's the thing, I had the day off today and so I made up this whole big, elaborate plan to surprise you but, well… I kind of got lost." His unintentional comedic relief was exactly what I needed right now, allowing me to laugh off the weight against my shoulders from the particularly painful ending to my last phone call.

"Where are you Nate?" I asked, one foot already directed towards the elevators as I began to use the back of my hands to erase any physical indication of the tears I had allowed to fall.

"Um…" I could practically see the look on his face through the connection between our phones; his identifying wrinkles of confusion accompanying his spinning in circles in search for a distinguishing landmark that he could relay to me.

"Okay, well… I think that I may have just walked through an Authorized Personnel Only door so hang on one second… Okay, I'm back in the hall."

"You're a mess Nate. Sit still; I'm coming to get you right now." I appreciated his distraction in what was bound to be a lengthy walk to go and search for him because if there was one thing that Nathan was good at, other than basketball of course, it was getting lost.

"Oh wait!" His exclamation of potential success stopped me in my tracks, "I see a sign… It says Farley 10 North West. What does that mean?"

"It means you're in the wrong building, Nathan." I laughed, my head shaking from side to side on its own accord, "Stay put, I'm on my way." Turning my head, I checked on Sam once more, confirming the fact that she remained firmly asleep, before taking off, walking swiftly and accurately through the hallways that I had since become so accustomed to.

Surprisingly enough however, I didn't have to search for very long. A few floors up in the elevator and a couple of useful shortcuts later, I'd found Nathan, sticking out like a sore thumb in the crowd right where I'd left him no more than five minutes ago.

"Hey, sorry to make you wander around like this. I'm kind of, well… dumb at directions if you haven't noticed." He approached me slowly, meeting me halfway but I just ignored his apology in its entirety, choosing instead to respond by wrapping my body around his broad waist, pulling into him so tightly that he staggered backwards slightly in response to the force.

There was a moment by which he hesitated, quickly trying to decipher what exactly it was that had sparked this uncharacteristic greeting before finally realizing that that wasn't what was important right now, leading him to simply return my embrace, squeezing his muscular arms a little bit tighter around my own than he normally would have…

"It's good to see you, Nate. I missed you while you were away." I spoke gently, pulling myself out of his embrace, watching as he looked down at me so that his eyes practically pierced through my skull in an effort to read my mind.

"It's good to see you too Brooke… How are you holding up?" He asked, finding a clever means by which to escape my attempts at avoidance, his direct, unavoidable question combined with his narrowing eyes pointed right towards me intimidating the truth right out of me.

"I'm okay," I lied, and to my general surprise, he nodded in acceptance of the fib… for now, anyway.

"How about Sam, how's she doing?"

"She's hanging in there," I nodded in my appreciation towards his expression of concern towards the girl that he barely knew, "She's asleep right now though so…"

"That's perfect!" He shouted, practically squealing in the burst of excitement that accompanied my revelation so that I jumped backwards slightly in my surprise, raising a confused eyebrow towards his intentions.

"Come on, I'm taking you out to lunch." It wasn't a question; instead, it was practically an order, emphasized by his tugging at my arm, pulling me towards the hospital's exit before I had so much as a minute to hesitate and think about this…

"Nathan, I…" I provided a natural resistance towards his motions but it wasn't much of a secret that Nathan was more than a lot stronger than I was so that my efforts didn't generate very successful results.

"Nope, come on Haley made me promise to make sure that you weren't starving yourself." He explained his intentions readily so that I couldn't help but think that I should have known that Haley had something to do with this little outing. "Besides, we can catch up. It's been a while, you know."

"Okay fine," I loosened my muscles in my acceptance of defeat, "But it can only be for an hour, I have to get back to Sam."

He nodded silently, still holding my arm tightly as he moved forwards, allowing me to follow in silence as he managed to get us both lost trying to navigate our way back towards the parking garage.

* * *

"So… how was Florida?" I grappled with awkward small talk, trying my hardest not to sound rude as I rushed through our lunch date, sipping at my burning hot coffee so quickly that it seemed to burn my very insides.

"Um... well we lost our game; that was real fun." He laughed, to my humble gratitude, playing along with my bullshitting despite the fact that he could clearly see right through it, "I don't know I guess that I was just feeling kind of badly about having to leave right away after everything that happened here…" He placed his apology out onto our table hesitantly, as if he were nervous that I was going to blame him for continuing to live his life when in reality, I just wished that that's what we all could do.

"It's not a problem… really; I have a lot of help with this one." It was mostly true, after all… Peyton and Haley had been shuffling in and out of this hospital practically just as much as I have been, doing anything and everything that they possibly could to distract me from the fact that I'd forced the man in my life temporarily away… again.

"Hey… what's up?" He read through my thoughts like a book, strange considering I'm not well known for writing the deepest of my problems clear across my face.

"Nothing," I sighed, rubbing my hands up and down my face with the intention of erasing my inner demons from my very skin, the problem being that they seemed to have been encrypted onto it with permanent ink, "Julian and I just had this… I don't know, this thing right before you called me."

Actually, I wasn't sure what exactly it was that Julian and I had had right before Nathan had called… I guess that _thing_ simply was the most acceptable adjective to be used in this scenario.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," I sighed quickly trying to assure both him as well as myself that it wasn't as big of a deal as I was making it out to be. "I just miss him that's all, and then he called me and I freaked out because he told me that he would be stuck in L.A. for work for a couple more weeks… It was all just me feeling sorry for myself, that's all… It's stupid."

"Hey, it's not stupid." Nathan reached over the table top, grabbing onto my free hand with his own while my other tentatively released the coffee mug clutched between my hands… Suddenly, I was not in so much of a rush to go back… I guess it was just that every time I talked to Nathan about something that was bothering me; he always managed to say exactly the right thing to make it feel better.

After that, well I just couldn't help but to find myself experiencing this deep feeling of nostalgia, thinking back to the way that my life used to be… And by back, I mean way back, before I had Sam, before I had Julian, before Peyton had fallen in love with Lucas, even before Nathan had conned Haley into tutoring him all those years ago… if you can even remember a time that long ago now.

Sometimes if felt as if that stuff never even happened, that it was all just some elaborate figment of my imagination. I mean, it had to have been because when I look at Nathan right now, I can't even remember back to what he had looked like long ago when we were mere juniors in high school…

"What?" He asked, making me suddenly very conscious towards the fact that I was staring.

"Nothing," I shook my head, hiding my unconscious grin. "You're just good at making me feel better is all."

"Yeah well, I've been told more than once that that's the only reason you guys still keep me around," He joked, "But really Brooke, I know that you're in this… I don't know, absolutely insane situation and that you need people there to help you so it's totally normal to be missing Julian, and I know that I can't do everything for you that he can but… well, I can try, okay?"

"Really?" I asked in an effort to get him to confirm the fact that I wasn't being as insane as I truly thought I was.

"Really," He assured me, watching as I began to inconspicuously wipe at the undersides of my eyes, pretending as if I hadn't just been literally tearing up towards his words when in reality, I was.

At least things were finally starting to level out for a change.

"Thanks Nathan,"

"No problem," He assured me, handing me his napkin without so much as another word simply to ensure that I knew that I didn't have to be embarrassed about losing my cool in front of him. "Besides, I knew how empty inside that you must have been with me all the way in Florida… It must have been a rough time without me."

I let out a bizarre noise, something strangely between a laugh and a snort as his attempted humor helped to clear away my passages previously clogged with tears.

"I was crying every night without you, Nate." I looked upwards in my appreciation, watching his face contort upright into that famous little smirk that had the capacity to melt girls' hearts clear out of their chests so that I couldn't help but think about how glad I truly was that I'd allowed Nathan to kidnap me, initially against my will, and force me to go on this little outing with him after all.

* * *

I guess that in retrospect as I calculated all of the ups and downs of my day, in the grand scheme of things, it didn't turn out all that bad.

First and foremost, Sam felt good, and if Sam felt good then by default, I did too.

Secondly, the new roommate situation turned out to be just as I had previously expected it to – uneventful and un-intrusive.

Finally, Nathan's visit sent me away with some generally good spirits for the remainder of the day, the entire combination of all three of these events successfully putting me in a state well enough to practically erase all of the unease that I had experienced with Julian earlier in the day.

But now, as the evening rapidly began to dwindle and I found myself in my typical position, lounging back onto the foldout chair watching the sun go down as Sam slept, I couldn't help but twist my cell phone precariously through my fingers as I struggled with the inner debate as to whether or not I should call him.

I was starting feel badly about the way that we'd… okay, about the way _I'd_ ended things today, and really, I just didn't want him to go around any longer than he already had thinking that I was mad at him when in reality I wasn't, when I truly did understand the fact that he was busy and that he could come home only when he could find the time, that I couldn't expect him to rearrange his entire schedule merely to satisfy my needs…

I made it as far as dialing his number, but every time I did, I couldn't help but hesitate before pressing the send button.

Looking upwards towards Sam, I busied myself with the distraction of watching her fast asleep and glowing underneath the overhead lights that clashed horribly with the otherwise darkness of the room, making her look even paler and sicker than she already had to…

For a moment, I held my breath, silencing my uneven breathing in an effort to allow the only sounds of the room to be that created by the coordinated harmonies of Sam, Logan, and Logan's mother as they breathed rhythmically in a synchronized order.

I'd never ended up telling Sam about anything that happened today… I don't know, I guess I was just too afraid of facing what kind of telling off that she would have in store for me in response to learning about how I'd managed to screw it all up with Julian this time…

I thought about letting her know, really I did, but after I had gotten back from breakfast with Nathan and then had Sam asking me to take her for a walk around the hospital's outdoor courtyard where she ultimately apologized about her getting snippy with me yesterday, I just couldn't find it in me to bring up yet another point that would send us right back to the path of fighting…

Sighing in my cowardice, I destroyed the beautiful blend of breathing, hitting the End button from my phone, once again erasing Julian's number from the menu of my phone…

Behind me, a noise that sounded strangely like the door to Sam's room opening from behind me caused me to freeze. In my curiosity, I allowed my head to creak slowly sideways, focusing on the shadow in the doorway, fully expecting to see yet another doctor or nurse shuffling in to wake Sam up and force feed her meds or take her vitals or do whatever else it was that they did but I never did…

Instead, a tall, lean figure emerged as it began to take several small steps forwards, my eyes adjusting to the change of light allowing me to identify that chiseled jaw line and the all too familiar gentle brown eyes staring back up at me.

"Julian," I breathed the words I had been dying to say since the moment Julian had left, all of the exhaustion I'd previously felt forgotten, instead replaced with overwhelming relief just to see his face…

Inside of me, a new found energy warmed the entirety of my body, powering my leg muscles into an upright position as I practically ran straight into Julian's open arms, burying my head so deeply inside of his chest that I could have easily sunk straight through his skin into the very depths of his heart itself.

Gently, I felt his chin rest on the top of my skull and for a moment, we simply sat in the silence, wrapping ourselves together by the din lighting seeping in from the hospital's hallway.

It was only a few seconds that we allowed ourselves to fall into this dream state but to me, it felt like hours, and I couldn't have asked for any more as I held onto him tightly, refusing to let go as his head lowered until his lips were right besides my ear, just close enough to ensure that I would be able to hear him when he turned to me and whispered –

"I'm coming home tonight, Brooke Davis."


	15. Drop Out – The So Unknown

**Wow, it's been a while.. Haha sorry about that guys but finals and projects caught up to me in the long run because I'm the biggest procrastinator in the entire world plus I spent the last week at a rugby tournament. Butttt, all that crap is done and I am on summer vacation so expect big things!! Thanks for being patient and awesome, hope this chapter was worth the wait, I tried to make it nice and long to make up for everything :)  
**

Chapter 15: Drop Out – The So Unknown

**Wednesday, November 9****th****, 2011**

**JULIAN**

Lately I seemed to have found myself caught up in this relentless trap of overwhelming sleep deprivation. I'm sure everybody knows how it goes, that pattern of all work and no play, it has a tendency to do things to your sleep cycle.

Of course, like all aspects of life, sleepless nights tend to come in pretty distinguishable categories; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now, over the course of the past week or so, I've been averaging on 'the ugly'; an unfortunate event for both me, and everybody who got in my vicious, hostile, sleep-deprived way.

It was just… all the three a.m. wake up calls; this actor won't perform without more money, this plot hole needs to be fixed, that story line doesn't make sense… it was enough to make the most stable man's head spin in circles and of course, considering my stability was already being tested with a bought of chronic stress and worry over what Brooke and Sam were doing on the other side of the country, I think it was safe to say that the whole thing quickly made my head spin and knocked me out faster than a blow to the head would.

But for right now, none of that seemed to matter; suddenly, things seemed to finally be shifting back towards the side of the spectrum that I could actually respect; and besides, there's a distinctive difference between watching the sun break through a long night and watching the sun break through a calm night, and as I sat in silence, feeling my heart beat slowly against my ribcage, keeping track of the time, I knew that I was okay right where I stood.

I guess that it was true that I'd missed so much in my week long absence that it only seemed appropriate to spend my hours, normally designated for a peaceful slumber, catching up on lost time; of course, it was my college years that taught me that this tactic had a tendency to work wonders on productivity.

But it was still a nice change of pace that being productive wasn't exactly a necessary feature for me to have right now considering the fact that Brooke had managed to do a bang up job keeping everything blissfully normal in my absence; or else, as blissfully normal as was possible, especially considering how much of a relative term normal seemed to be these days… okay, so normal has been a relative term throughout the majority of my entire life, but that concept had been exponentially amplified in these past couple of weeks, thanks to… recent events.

I mean, how normal was it to watch the sun rise through the blinds of a hospital room anyway, right?

"Julian?" I straightened at the sound of my name as the heart beats I'd been previously counting fluttered with the sudden intrusion and my head snapped up towards Sam who was slowly raising herself into a seated position by her arms, her face contorted in such a way so that I knew that she was still struggling to decide whether or not she was dreaming or if I really was here in the room with her.

"Hey Samson," I whispered so that my voice was just audible, as I stood slowly and carefully, glancing over just to make sure that I hadn't woken up Brooke.

"When did you get here?" She yawned, her voice groggy with sleep as she rubbed her eyes free of exhaustion and stretched widely.

"A few hours ago, I didn't want to wake you up… you were kind of out cold."

"Yeah," she forced a fake laugh as she wiped a hand over her head, "they started giving me sleeping pills, they knock me out pretty fast… I don't know, I can't sleep without them anymore." I put my brave face at the admittance and nodded as Sam shifted so that her features glowed against the still light of the now risen sun.

In the dark, it had been easy to face the fact that everything would be just fine, because it had been easy to lose the images that were right in front of me to the blackness. The problem was, now that I could see again, the comfort blanket that had gotten me through the night just wasn't cutting it anymore.

A week ago, if you told me that it was possible for Sam to look sicker than she had the last time that I saw her, I would have called you crazy; I would have told you that it was impossible, because in my entire life, I have never seen a person look sicker than Sam did that day I brought her into the ER… that day that seemed so long ago now.

But if I told you that, I would have been wrong, because as I watched Sam's nearly smooth scalp gleam in the sunlight, and her eyes sink a little bit further into her skull as she stared at me, awaiting my response, I realized that the possibilities were horrifying, and the reality, even more so.

"As long as they help you, right…" I didn't really know what else to say; I had found myself at an awkward dead end street.

"I don't know, I guess… they make me kind of nauseous when I wake up though." She told me as I watched her cheeks puff out and her face simultaneously sink deeper into her skull.

"Are you feeling sick?" I sprang upwards with the poise and agility of a hunting lion, ready to pounce at a moment's notice, but of course, I couldn't exactly tell you what I had planned on doing next, having never exactly been in this situation before while Sam was probably an expert at this point. The reality of it was, I would probably just get in the way.

"I'll be okay," She mumbled, as she pulled herself shakily to her feet while at the same time, delivering a swift kick of warning towards Brooke's shins, a communication device designed to arouse her and prepare her for what she was about to wake up to; a task, which I must say, she succeeded in easily.

"Wuzgoingon?" Brooke awoke startled and still half asleep and now, five minutes after I had been commenting to myself about the peaceful silence of the room around me, the hustle and bustle had returned as if that had never ended to begin with.

Sam had decided not to stick around long enough to answer Brooke's question; instead, hunched over like an 80 year old woman, she managed to shuffle her feet in a slow moving trek towards the bathroom, leaving me to try to put the pieces together for Brooke.

"I don't think she's feeling too well, Brooke." I answered, and with that one simple phrase, Brooke snapped into action, ready to perform her well-practiced duties.

I reached Sam first, naturally, considering I was already wide awake and standing while Brooke not only had to get up, but also had to wake up before she could do anything.

"You need any help?" I asked her quietly as Brooke caught up to us and wrapped herself around Sam so that the girl could use her as a crutch to the bathroom.

"Thanks Julian, but I think I've got this." She smiled up at me and disappeared behind the bathroom door, Brooke edging it closed behind her.

I got it, really, I did, there are some things that a kid just needs their mom for, and even though I've never exactly been in the same boat as Sam, I was guessing that this was one of them. Alas, my God given male accessories just didn't allow for me to partake in a bond with Sam as special as the one that Brooke had managed to form.

I can't lie, sometimes it made me jealous, other times admiring, but for right now, as I listened to the sound of Sam's puke hitting the water of the toilet bowl in rivers, mostly, it just made me feel grateful that I was left to stand in their wake, patiently awaiting for all of this to be over…

I stood awkwardly in the small space that separated the room in half, suddenly feeling like a major creep lurking in the corner while Sam's roommate slept on, oblivious to all of the commotion that was currently surrounding her. So I started to pace a little, and albeit the fact that I no longer felt like a sketchy stalker, now I felt like a worthless blob, just thinking about what Brooke was doing to help compared to what I was doing to… well, do nothing at all.

So I filled a glass of water for Sam, got some clean towels and sheets, picked the clothes up from off of the ground, and by the time I had fully occupied myself with matronly duties, Sam and Brooke were half way back to the starting line, and I was glad to see Sam fully upright, a shade or two of deeper color in her face, and genuinely looking much better than she did five minutes ago as if she and Brooke had slunk away into the bathroom to flick some sort of magic light switch.

"Sorry for the show, Julian." Sam apologized, coming up to me and pulling me into a late hug of greeting, her weak muscles barely able to pull off a sufficient squeeze while meanwhile, my arms could have wrapped twice around her small frame while my hands mapped out each groove between ribs, and each peak of her vertebrae.

"Hey, don't be sorry… how are you feeling?"

"Better," she stated briefly, hoping that that would be sufficient to convince me as she crawled back into her bed and turned on the television with one flick of the switch, leaning into her pillows and staring straight ahead.

I didn't offer any more words. I knew that naturally, Sam wasn't really the talkative type of girl, and I'd known from experience that a warning sign that she wasn't feeling her best was when she stayed quiet.

So I avoided the truth of the matter and accepted Sam's unbelievable, yet positive answer for what it was as I reclaimed my seat.

I was suddenly becoming very aware of how unprepared I had arrived. As Sam fiddled with the TV and Brooke took out a clump of yarn and a half-knitted scarf, I realized that, in my absence, I hadn't been as quick to acquire the basic skills that were necessary to get me through a day in the hospital without dying of boredom.

I guess I had expected something big out of our reunion… but now that I looked back on that assumption, I guess it was a stupid one to make. Maybe I'd just forgotten where I was going, and what I would be doing there…

About an hour later, now really bored, and really regretting my decision to come empty handed, I really started going stir crazy.

My phone had vibrated within the depths of my jeans pocket more than once in those sixty minutes, but I had ignored it. I knew exactly who it was, and I knew exactly what they had to say; that's just what happens when the producer of a huge movie production ups and walks off of the set without so much of a word.

They all probably thought I was dead or lost or something, but the truth was, I had been more lost when I'd been in L.A. and now that I'm back where I belong, it's impossible for me to get lost, mainly because I have absolutely no intentions on being found.

"I can use a vacation." Sam's voice snapped me out of my thoughts and I followed her eyes back towards the TV screen where a Jamaican flag was flapping over a silhouette of a beach while some Bob Marley song played underneath the image claiming that everybody should come and visit Jamaica right this very instant, unless of course you were busy producing a huge movie, or running a top-tier clothing company, or fighting cancer… which means that all three of us weren't quite able to meet the requirements.

"Where do you wanna go Sam?" Brooke asked the girl who offered nothing more than a shrug of her shoulders in return. I guess that when the word vacation isn't a part of your vocabulary for the first sixteen years of your life, you don't really get the opportunity to think about them all that much.

"Come on, anywhere in the entire world, where would it be?" Brooke pushed Sam as the girl sighed deeply and gave up in her quest for silence.

"Rome," She finally answered, this time, not so hesitant. "I hear that Rome is pretty bad ass." Brooke nodded her head and I followed suit. Personally, I'd never been, but I have also heard from some pretty reliable sources that Rome was 'pretty bad ass.'

"What about you Julian?" Sam asked me in an attempt to include me in the conversation.

"I'll go wherever you guys go." The truth of the matter was that I would follow them to the end of the world and back and that would be more than a sufficient vacation for me, if that's what it took.

"I think I want to go see all the world wonders." Brooke threw her two cents into the mix because I had failed to deliver an appropriate response by not mentioning a specific place that I had in mind, thus threatening to ruin the conversation where it stood.

"That would be pretty cool." Sam bobbed her head up and down in agreement.

"I think that we should do it." Brooke stated firmly, clapping her hands together to prove she meant business as she laced her voice with a determination that I knew meant that she would probably have half of the trip booked by the time the night was over.

"Really?" Sam asked, raising her eyebrow at the proposed plan.

"Yeah, definitely, as soon as you get better; we should get you a passport, maybe the next time you go home?"

"Oooo I'll do my hair!" Sam squealed with mock enthusiasm as she toyed with the few remaining strands of hair that actually remained on her head, pulling a few out with her, just for the added effect.

"Shut up," Brooke joked as she gave Sam a playful punch to the arm.

I watched as the two interacted seamlessly, smiling despite myself as my phone, once again, began vibrating within my pocket, and of course, just to follow up on the already established pattern, I ignored it.

I mean, this moment was perfect, I didn't after all, want to ruin it. And besides, work was the last thing that I had on my mind right now, just because no matter what I had left behind on the other side of the country, nothing could beat how good it felt to be back home now.

* * *

**SAM**

"Ugh, you smell Brooke." My voice rang out, sounding a little bit ruder than I had initially intended on, but of course, it was hard to control myself as Brooke leaned over me and provided me with a nice big whiff that smelled mysteriously like a person that hasn't bathed in days.

In all fairness, I couldn't be completely sure whether it was me or Brooke procuring the fowl odor considering we both met the credentials for smelling like a foot; you know, not showering, being puked on, being stuck in a confined space with no circulation… I'll let you use your imagination for more details.

"Thanks a lot." She replied, sounding thoroughly non-appreciative of my bluntness; but I knew that I wouldn't get anywhere in my intentions had I stated it any other way.

And seriously though, she was really starting to stink. I was just making it my civic duty to make sure that she did something about it.

"You smell like puke."

"And whose fault is that?" She spoke sarcastically but still, it struck me at a dead end, which I was sure she had done on purpose as she roamed over to the window, trying to get some air into the room, even though she knew full well that the latch was broken and the thing wasn't about to budge an inch.

"You know, it's probably this room… this stupid window doesn't open, you get no air in here, and then it starts to stink…"

"No, it's definitely you." I cut her off in her attempts as I looked to Julian, desperate for some assistance here, but all I got was him taking a few steps back as he shook his head at me, trying to let me know silently that he wasn't about to touch this one with a 30 foot pole.

Great, what good was Julian being home if he wasn't going to take my side.

I'm kidding of course, but really, his input could probably do wonders for my success rate right now.

"Sam, you've been sick all morning, I'm not gonna just leave you here by yourself." Her excuse was so stupid I could have laughed, especially considering she used it on me about a million times… per day.

"Brooke, I'm not sure if you've noticed this but I've been sick for the past two weeks. I'm in a hospital, you know, you might have heard of it, it's this weird building designed to help you out when you're sick so that when your dirty moms need to go home and take a shower, there will always be somebody there to take care of you until they get back."

Yup, I went there; I'd broken out the mom card, mainly because it always seemed to work wonders when I wanted something that Brooke was reluctant to deliver. And besides, we all knew that this morning's episode had been a fluke after all… like I said, those stupid sleeping pills made me wake up every day with morning sickness like I was a freaking pregnant woman instead of a cancer patient.

But as the morning began fading behind us, so was my nausea, which meant that it was about time that I took matters into my own hands.

I watched as Brooke's features faltered slightly and she made the mistake of letting her guard down temporarily, indicating to me that I had struck a nerve, and when she stuttered over her next words, which I couldn't even make out, I knew that I had definitely just found my open door.

"Go take a shower or something, Brooke, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon." That, was the unfortunate truth of it all.

"I'm not leaving you here alone." Her tone told me that she was trying her hardest to let me know that she meant business and her word was gold.

"I'm not alone." I'm not really sure what had made me say it; maybe it was our silent bond, our mutual understanding, but either way, I shrugged in the general direction of this new girl; Logan McGinnis laying right next to me, separated by nothing more than a thin curtain.

Brooke gave me that thoughtful glare that I was oh so familiar with as she stared right through me for a second. Now, I couldn't be positive, but the expression on her face, in combination with her extended silence, made me think that maybe, just maybe, she was considering something here.

"Brooke, here, I can take you." Julian offered, taking a few cautionary steps forward as he extended an arm over towards Brooke.

There was a brief pause, the entire world stood still for just a moment and I held my breath, awaiting the outcome until finally, Brooke took a step closer towards Julian and accepted his hand.

"Fine," she admitted defeat, quitting while she was still some-what ahead. "I'm gonna go take a shower and do some crap around the house. Do you need anything in particular?"

I thought about it, and for a second there, considered asking her if she was willing to pick up our entire house and drop it off right here, but I had already won one battle, showing any signs of weakness right now would be nothing more than a huge tactical error on my part.

"Fabreeze?" That was a logical answer, wasn't it? It was a sleek tool that would help make my room smell less like a slaughter house, while at the same time coming with the perk of being considerably smaller than a house.

"I'll do laundry," She got the hint I was trying to make and began shoving dirty laundry into her bag as I nodded my head in agreement, eager to get out of the sweat pants that I had been wearing since last Sunday.

"Okay," she stated with finality, shoving one last sock into her bag which was full to the tilt before turning to me and gathering me up in a strong hug. "Be good," she passed the warning to me like she would to a meddlesome toddler, which, I guess in all fairness, was appropriate, despite the fact that there wasn't that much mischief I could get myself into around here given my current condition.

"I will," I promised her without a fight, even though I could think of a handful of rebuttals in response to her taunting.

"We'll be back soon Sammy," Julian offered his word of input, replacing Brooke around my arms before leaving me back to my own peace and quiet.

My eyes lingered on the doorway for a second or two as I allowed my mind to wander into its incessant haze of itself, trying to concentrate for two seconds on anything other than the one thing I couldn't seem to stop thinking about… take a guess what that is.

I got lucky though, I wasn't able to feel sorry for myself for too long, because as soon as I started getting real deep and depressed, a new noise flew gracefully into my ears, eager to interrupt.

"What are you thinking about?"

I had learned very early on upon meeting Logan McGinnis that she wasn't the silent type; in fact, she was the exact opposite. But, the strangest thing about it was that I didn't mind it very much; in fact, I kind of preferred it that way. She was blunt, to the point, honest… qualities that were an improvement from everybody else around me who skirted around on tip-toes trying to do everything and anything to avoid the topic that I was dying.

You see, there, I said it. I'm not afraid to say it, so why is everybody else? I mean, we're all gonna die someday, right? Why be ashamed?

"I guess I'm just trying to find the big picture." I replied; I know, I know, how philosophical of me.

"Don't bother, your eyes will never open wide enough. It's like trying to look at the entire universe all at once."

"I guess that's why I keep getting stuck, huh?" I laughed at my own comment but I was serious. I was as stuck as stuck could possibly get, and I wasn't good with puzzles.

"Trust me, quit while you still have anything left inside of you." You see, most people would be appalled but what I considered to be this friendly piece of advice; but not Logan, she had been there and done it all, and if there was one thing she was good for, it was giving me a nice break from all of those other people trying to give me false hope, trying to tell me that everything was going to be fine when in reality, they had absolutely no idea what I was going through, what I was feeling.

"You'll never get out of that maze, trust me, I got caught up in it, and you see what happened to me?" I turned my head towards her, so that I could just make out her outline through the crack in the curtain as she jerked her finger up towards the scars aligning her bald scalp. "I got so frustrated, I got a brain tumor."

I watched as she threw her arms into the air in fake exasperation and I snorted out a genuine laugh, grateful that Logan's sense of humor seemed to be just what I needed these days.

"So Sam, what do you do?" A few seconds of silence later, after she realized I wasn't about to reciprocate conversation, she spoke again, "I mean, when you're not spending all your free time in a hospital."

"Not much, really," Wasn't I just an exciting and adventurous person? Rebellious, I know. "My best friend moved to Charlotte a few months ago; without him I guess… I guess I don't really have very many people around. Other than Brooke, I mean."

Wow, I don't know what the hell just made me open my fat mouth and tell her all of that but whatever it was, it was strange.

"What about you? What do you do?"

"I don't do anything," she told me, "I'm always spending my free time in a hospital." The words flooded through my body as if my blood had been turned to ice water; I suddenly felt like I was talking to my future self; I mean, is this what my life was destined to become?

Yeah, probably,

"How long have you been in here?" I spit out questions that were none of my business like a round of word vomit, but then again, in retrospect, I guess that was still better than the real vomit that I had been so accustomed to these days.

"This time, or in general?" I bent at my elbows and lifted my hands up behind my head as I stared up at the ceiling.

"I don't know… both, I guess."

"I was diagnosed 2 years, 4 months, and 9 days ago, but I've only been in here this time for about 3 weeks… how about you? How long have you been in here?" I could hear the question lingering in her voice. She was curious if, like her, I had been counting down the minutes, the very seconds since my diagnosis.

"10 days, 5 hours…" I snuck a glance up at the clock, spotting the 12:46 illuminating back down at me. I did the math quickly in my head and finished my sentence, "and about 18 minutes ago."

If you were wondering, the answer was yes; I have been counting down.

"Just add another day and that's how long I've been here." It was the first time that I had spoken that number out loud. I don't know, it just seemed like it was a big step forward.

I heard a short laugh coming from the other side of the room, "I could tell that you were a newbie," she told me with the sound of amusement in her tone, "You still have some of your hair left."

Subconsciously, I ran a hand over the top of my head, testing out my scalp, which at this point, was practically smooth, save for the few stray strands that I'd managed to lace between my fingers.

"But you're done in a few days, right? I mean, it won't be too long until you're out of here."

"Six days… six days and I'm done." I answered the question in a matter-of-fact tone, my gaze wandering absentmindedly upward to the bag dripping the newest additions into my body; the latest drugs designed to save my life. At least this time I wasn't getting as sick… yet. "I guess I get to go home after that… I hope so, I'm starting to get kind of sick of this place."

My voice trailed off with my latest revealing; I suddenly felt kind of bad. I've been stuck in her 11 days acting like it's the end of the world and meanwhile Logan, well she's been dealing with this for over two years now with nothing but a positive outlook.

"When do you get out of here?" She gave another short laugh, but it was nothing like the humored, casual chuckle I'd heard before; this time, it was more serious, her way of letting me know that I'd just said something incredibly stupid.

"Not too long, I guess." I couldn't help but notice that her voice had suddenly dropped a notch or two lower. "It's… I guess I'm kind of running low in the time department, if you know what I mean."

I did; and with that knowledge came a clenching within my chest that made it very difficult to breathe. I was suddenly feeling very awkward, very restricted… this room was way too small.

"What do you mean?" I asked the question even though I knew full well exactly what she meant.

"Do you know anything about Glioblastoma Multiforme?"

"No," I admitted honestly; in fact, the only knowledge I had of it being a brain cancer was strictly based off of an educated guess I had been able to make the first time I'd looked at her.

"When I was first diagnosed, the doctors gave me six months." I closed my eyes; I don't know when our conversation took a turn for the morbid, but I couldn't listen to this anymore. I tried to focus strictly on my own breathing, trying to make it regular again. This was too painful, too real… I needed some optimism in my life, and I wasn't getting it here.

"Well, you're still here." I offered some positivity to the table, "and it's been what, a year and a half longer than anybody thought?"

"Yeah," she sighed, "a year and a half to let the cancer spread… why do you think I've been back in here for so long." Well this was getting worse and worse every second. That rubber band around my chest seemed to squeeze tighter. Understanding spread through my veins like wild fire; Logan wasn't in here to get better; Logan was in here to die.

I pulled back the curtain that separated us so that I could look her directly in the eyes, as I sat up a little bit taller, trying to look as firm as possible. But she refused to meet my gaze; instead, she turned away, nodding her head against the reality.

It started in my occipital lobe." She mapped it out for me, plain as day so she knew I knew exactly where she was coming from. "My parents brought me in when I went blind in my left eye. The doctors took out what they could, but they couldn't get all of it. It was too big, too close to my brain stem."

Now it was my turn to look away, embarrassed that I had been reduced to tears while Logan, who was living and breathing this reality, could sit up and speak about it to me with such casualty.

"It won't be too long now," she said with a sigh and I could hear her shuffle in her seat. "But look on the bright side; at least you'll have your own room again."

* * *

**HALEY**

I was late; that's the first thing that you need to know about how I started my day today; late.

I had talked to Brooke only a few hours ago, just as I had started struggling to finish my lunch and get back to my classroom where a bunch of overeager AP Lit students would be waiting for my arrival so they could continue their analysis of Lord of the Flies.

Anyway, she called me to let me know that she had thankfully finally managed to pry herself from Sam's side, of course, not without a little persuasion from Sam herself and from Julian who had apparently made his surprise return in the night.

She tried to start small talk, initiating a bit of conversation before getting down to the point; she had a favor to ask of me, said she felt bad asking but wanted to know if I could stop in and check on Sam after school; a task that I quickly agreed to accept, assuring her that it would be no burden and that I would stop in as soon as I picked up Jamie from school at 2:45 with the hopes that I would be at the hospital by 3:00 latest.

This is where the problems started.

First of all, and this was completely and totally my fault considering it had completely escaped my mind that today was the annual career fair at Jamie's school. You know, people come in from different jobs and tell the kids to stay in school, don't do drugs, crap like that…

Well who know that talking about being an accountant could ever take so long, but there was little David's mom, Betsy Big-Jugs, rambling on and on about how much fun it was to work in a bank. But seriously now, my intentions had been to be at the hospital by three, and the fact that this lady didn't even stop talking until three was really putting a damper on my schedule.

An anxiety-ridden and fast-paced ten minutes later, I was dragging poor Jamie by the arm up towards Sam's room, panting and out of breath as I pulled the complaining child behind me into the elevator.

"Hey Sam, I'm so sorry that I'm late but…" I stopped short; something was amiss here… first of all, Sam was looking at me like I had three heads, indicating to me that she had no idea that I was even supposed to be coming to begin with, let alone be alarmed that I was late; secondly, the room seemed a lot smaller than the last time I'd been here… the already tight space having been cut in half to accommodate for the newest member of our tribe, a young girl sitting in the adjacent bed that Jamie used to like to use to play with all the buttons.

"You okay, Haley?" Sam asked me, raising an eyebrow at my frazzled appearance as I felt Jamie hide behind the safety of my legs, shy amongst this new person that he had yet to be accustomed to.

"Yeah," I sighed as I took another step into the room, relaxing with the realization that there was no immediate cause for alarm towards my tardiness. "Sorry to barge in on you like this, I told Brooke I'd stop by while she was home and I was freaking out for being late… but I guess you already have company." I looked past Sam towards her new roommate who offered me a short wave of greeting.

"Logan," she introduced, reaching out her hand, indicating for me to approach and accept it.

"I'm Haley," I told her before reaching out to grab onto Jamie's hand and pull him from his hiding spot behind my legs back into view. "And this is my son, Jamie."

"So, are you Sam's mom too?" I raised my eyebrows in alarm, kind of confused if this girl meant what I thought she did. Judging by the sound of Sam snorting in a semi-suppressed laughter, I was guessing that she did.

"No, uh… I'm Sam's teacher and Brooke's friend…" I wasn't really sure what else I was supposed to say to something like that.

"Wow, Sam, you have your teachers coming to see you already? That's not fair; the only people that come to see me are my mom and that lady that draws blood every five seconds." Sam shrugged, trying to feign modesty as she plastered a satisfied smirk across her face.

At least it seemed that the two were getting along fine enough anyway.

"So, what have you two been up to?"I quickly changed the subject as Jamie jumped into his favorite spot at the end of Sam's bed, crawling up closer to her.

"Hey Sam, did you get a haircut?" He asked before either girl had the opportunity to answer my initial question.

Silence filled the room. I was absolutely mortified. How had I been so stupid to forget that Jamie hadn't been to visit Sam since her hair began falling out, meaning I hadn't been able to deliver him with an appropriate warning to keep his mouth shut, thus allowing us to avoid the situation like the one that I managed to find myself in right now.

Sam looked up at Jamie for a few seconds before slowly, her face broke out into a huge smile… does this mean it's safe for me to stop holding my breath now?

"Yeah buddy, I guess you can say that." She laughed, giving his own hair a quick ruffle.

"Well I like it; it looks more like mine now." He told her, trying to get her hair to stick up spiky like his own, but the thin hairs just fell back limply against her skull. He quickly abandoned his efforts, throwing himself down against the pillows right next to her.

"Did you know that today in school, a doctor came in to talk to our class just like yours?" I sighed with relief at his words; he'd moved on with ease from what I expected to be a debacle but now we'd gotten him on a tangent of a different sort; and now that he'd gotten started, I didn't expect him to stop anytime soon.

Sam listened attentively to Jamie's stories as my focus wandered, my eyes darting about the room at random until I caught myself staring back at Sam's new roommate as the girl sunk deeper and deeper into her sheets, falling into an apparently fitful sleep. It was more than obvious that the poor kid was going through hell, but I guess everybody trapped in this godforsaken ward was going through hell; the doctors who tried saving dying kids every day, the parents who had to watch their dying kids every day, and the patients who were the dying kids every day…

She looked sick… and by that, I meant she looked sicker than she did two minutes ago when I'd last talked to her.

I snuck a glance towards Sam and Jamie, just to make sure that he was still busy delivering a recap of his entire day to Sam before I inched closer towards Logan.

In my movement, Sam and I locked eyes momentarily, my motions attracting her curiosity. Understanding my intentions, her worried stare shifted more towards the right towards the girl lying next to her.

I used my eyes to silently communicate with her that I'd take care of this and she gave me a quick nod before going back to her duties of distracting Jamie, even if it was more than obvious that she was paying much less attention to him now than she had been before.

"Logan, are you alright?" I asked; my voice barely above a whisper. I watched the girl as she made a strange head movement almost resembling a nod, but before she was able to do anything else, her eyes rolled back into her skull until only the whites were visible and her muscles dropped flaccid against the mattress for a couple of seconds until her limbs began flailing wildly in convulsions so strong, her very bed began to shake against the strain.

It took me a second or two to register what had just happened, but even after my head snapped back into reality, I still had no idea just what the hell I should do.

I let out a sufficient gasp as Sam scrambled upright, her face masked in an expression of horror as she tried to shield Jamie from the scene in front of him.

"Mommy, what's going on?" I ignored Jamie's frightened call as the feeling in my feet returned to me, telling me that I needed to run.

"I'm getting a nurse; Sam, watch Jamie!" I shouted, catching a brief glimpse of Sam's nod, agreeing to accept the challenge of distracting a five year old from the wailing monitors and seizing teenager despite her own guaranteed terror; but as I continued to run, my adrenaline pounding through my skull, stimulating my muscles to keep going, the only thing I could think about was getting to the nurse's station, where I crashed full on into the desk, panting and sweating over the nurse who jumped in surprise of my unexpected arrival.

"Logan… the girl in Sam's room… she's having… I don't know; a seizure or something." The lady didn't respond directly to me; instead, she darted up from her seat, shouting orders and grabbing anybody she saw towards the room that I had just sprinted out of.

I trailed nervously behind them, running straight to Sam who was still grasping tightly onto Jamie, who looked just as scared and confused as I felt.

"I think we should get out of here." I spoke up to Sam who nodded her head in agreement. "Jamie, I want you to go outside and wait for me right in those chairs there; don't move." I spoke to him sternly, pointing towards the row of chairs right outside the doorway.

He nodded and skirted out of the room as fast as his little legs would take him, not needing to be told twice to get the hell out of there as I grabbed Sam underneath the arms and helped her up to a standing position.

Moving as quickly as possible, I helped Sam into the hallway, depositing her down next to Jamie, wracking my mind desperately for something to say.

"Do you guys wanna go down to the cafeteria… get some food?" Sam shrugged and nodded but, like me, it seemed that eating was the last thing that she wanted. Poor Jamie… he didn't even say anything; and it wasn't like him to give up the opportunity for a meal.

"I'm just gonna go grab you a wheel chair, Sam… Jamie, you wanna come?" I opened the door for the opportunity to talk to Jamie about what had just happened and was grateful that he accepted my offer, reaching out his hand, silently asking me to grab it and guide him down the hall.

"Are you okay, buddy?" I asked after a couple of paces. He just shrugged, looking down at his feet, which marched in double time trying to catch up with my longer legs.

"Hey, it's okay to be scared you know." I told him, determined that he knew that it was perfectly normal to feel the way that he was feeling right now. I stopped walking and crouched besides him, meeting his eye level. "I know that this is a pretty sad place Jamie. I'm pretty sad when I think about it, so it's okay for you to be too." He finally raised his chin and looked up at me so that our eyes met.

"I guess that I'm sad too."

"And that's okay," I told him one more time, just to emphasize it, "and if you ever want to talk about it, you know that you can come see me, or daddy, or Aunt Brooke, or anybody really." He nodded his understanding, his face lightening a little, as if he felt better about the overwhelming feelings he was experiencing.

I returned the smile, lifting him into the air and placing him in the seat of the wheelchair, pulling it out of the row and heading back towards Sam, who was still waiting for me patiently in the chairs.

"Hungry?" I asked as I parked up next her, where she didn't even bother to wait for my help before standing shakily and placing herself down in the seat that Jamie had just vacated, pulling the boy back onto her lap.

"Not particularly." She grunted as I began pushing the two down the hallway.

I quickly learned, throughout the course of our trip that initiating a conversation with Sam was going to be a difficult task to achieve as throughout the awkward journey from the sixth floor back down to the basement cafeteria, there was not a word exchanged. In fact, the only part of the trip that was more awkward than the ride, was actually sitting in the cafeteria, where there wasn't even the noise of the squeaky wheelchair to distract ourselves from the lack of conversation.

She didn't want to talk about what had just happened and I couldn't blame her, but every time I brought attention to the subject, she would respond with nothing more than a one word answer, or a low grunt, and that couldn't be healthy… but it wasn't my place to push her.

Sighing as I dug into my soggy macaroni and cheese, the only thing that I could do was hope that maybe Brooke would have a better time getting across to her, and pray to God that she would get back here soon.

* * *

**BROOKE**

It was almost 4:30 by the time Julian and I got back to the hospital and to be completely honest, I was kind of pissed about it. I hadn't anticipated being gone for that long, not by a long shot, the thing is, with Julian around it was a lot harder to be the stubborn, bed-perched parent towards Sam that I wanted to be.

He meant well, I know he did, but as chivalrous as making sure I got enough sleep, food, and hygiene was, it was truly messing with my very established schedule, and I was just nervous all this me time was knocking Sam unfairly to the side when she's really the one that needed it most.

It's not that I didn't appreciate it, or didn't love him for it, really I did, it's just… I've gotten this far doing it my way, who's to say I can't make it to the end?

Ugh, who am I kidding, I haven't felt this refreshed in weeks; now it's just the feeling bad about it part I have to get over now.

I walked through the hallways at a pace that not even Julian, with his legs twice as long as mine, could keep up with as he slacked behind trying to keep me in his view, considering I was his guide through the maze of passages and tunnels back towards Sam.

It wasn't until I reached my destination that I allowed myself to come to a dead halt.

The room was empty. And when I say empty, I mean completely empty; no Sam, no Haley, no doctors… Christ, her roommate wasn't even here.

"Where is everyone?" I spoke out loud, mainly to myself, but Julian didn't pick up on the fact that the question had been rhetorical and answered.

"Maybe she had some tests or something." I nodded in accord, just to make myself feel better about the situation, but I knew full well that Sam had nothing scheduled for today and that the only reason that she would be in tests right now would be if something was wrong…

My heart fluttered slightly in my chest, despite my reminders to myself of how stupid it was for me to be freaking out right now. There were a million places that she could be, none of which involved her being in any immediate danger.

Turning on my heels, I stomped aggressively back out of the room, quickly making my way around the giant circle that was sixth floor hallway, desperately searching for any signs of Sam, but with every doorway I past, and with every result I didn't get, my heart pounded a little bit harder.

I came full circle, back to my initial destination, no closer to finding Sam than I had been when I left, and despite my best efforts to tell me how stupid I was being, I couldn't help the nerves bubbling up from the pit of my stomach. I just had the worst feeling… call it instinct, something was wrong, very wrong.

I walked briskly away from Sam's empty room, heading towards the nurse's station for reinforcements; if I couldn't figure out what was going on for myself, it was time to bring in the help. And besides, it was a comfort to see a familiar face behind the desk staring back at me.

"Hi Mary, do you happen to know where Sam is?" I tried to mask the fear laced behind my voice, but I'm pretty sure that I may have skipped a beat or two between words, which may have given me away.

The nurse that I had grown to know and thoroughly like looked up from her spot at the desk.

"Um… I think your friend Haley took her down to the cafeteria about an hour ago." I could feel the look of confusion as it contorted onto my face until I watched the nurse's own expression dawn with realization.

"Oh… you don't know."

Well that didn't help settle my nerves; it didn't help one little bit.

"What? I don't know what?" I spit out, suddenly more frenzied than I had been before.

"Something happened with Logan this afternoon." My heart suddenly did a free fall towards the floor, shattering into a million tiny pieces when it finally landed. I'd only known the girl for a day, but there's a unity, a bond between the people here. When one of us faltered, so did the rest.

"What happened?" I asked, holding my breath as I did all that I could do; I feared the worst and prayed for the best.

"She had a seizure." It was bad news, I knew it was, but when I was expecting to hear that Logan had died, I could only take it as good. "I'm not sure of the details; she's having an MRI now, but when I hear something you'll be the first to know."

I thanked her and turned towards Julian who was looking down at me with a worried grimace splayed across his face.

"Come on," he said, reaching out to me and wrapping his arm around my waist. "Let's go find Sam."

* * *

We found them easily enough; the cafeteria had a tendency to simmer down after about three so that there were only a few stragglers left behind. And today, those stragglers happened to include Haley, Sam, and Jamie.

Poor Haley's eyes darted around nervously, her face pale and scared like she'd just seen a ghost while Sam was busy trying to entertain Jamie with no tools other than a piece of paper and a few pens that I'm sure Haley had easily procured from her bag.

Sam spotted me first. Her natural instinct telling me someone was staring at her causing her to look away from her drawing and lock eyes with me. My heart broke instantly at the pain written across her face as she began to lose the composure I knew she's been holding onto all day.

Haley, catching Sam's wandering eyes, spotted me next. I watched as she leaned over and whispered something to Sam, who nodded in response, before standing, walking over towards Julian and me.

"Hey," Her somber whisper got lost in my shoulder as she buried herself into my arms. "You heard?"

"I heard," I nodded shortly.

"I think that Sam's taking it kind of hard." Haley shot me a fair warning that I had my arms full with this one as I looked past Haley's shoulders to get a good look at Sam, now re-occupying herself with whatever she was doing with Jamie. "I've been having kind of a tough time getting her to talk to me."

I didn't respond right away, pausing as my eyes lingered on Sam.

"Thanks Haley," I told her, making sure that she knew just how appreciative I was of all her help lately as I planted a hand on her shoulder and stepped past her, moving closer towards Sam and Jamie, dropping myself down into the empty seat next to the girl.

"Hi," I offered, and even though I got an enthusiastic "Hi Aunt Brooke!" back from Jamie, I couldn't exactly say the same thing about Sam.

"Hey," She chose to mumble, looking down at her pen as she picked at the clip at the end of it.

"I heard what happened." I laid it out on the table, just to get it out of the way. "I also heard you're not quite the talkative type today." I tried to lighten the mood, distract her from the somberness of the impending conversation.

"Yeah, well… I kind of just wanted to talk to you." She admitted, the awkwardness she was feeling about the admission not allowing her to look up to meet my eyes; but my heart melted all the same; Sam needed comforting and the only person she was willing to accept it from was me…

Suddenly, I was feeling a lot worse about my prolonged absence.

"Well I'm here now." I pulled her a little bit closer to me, but still; silence. "Want to go back up to your room?"

"Yeah," she nodded to me.

"Okay," I stood suddenly and made my way behind her where I grasped firmly onto the handle bars of the wheel chair so that I could pull her away from the table.

"Hey Haley, thank you so much for looking out for Sam today, I think I can take it from here." I whispered to Haley so that Sam wouldn't hear and know I was telling everybody about her desires to be alone.

"Okay, just… call me if you need anything, alright?" She made me promise, and I nodded to satisfy her. "That goes for you too Sam," she extended her offer, crouching down awkwardly to meet Sam's eye level.

"I will. Thanks for everything Haley."

"Hey, you know that's what I'm here for." Haley smiled down at her before boosting her back into a standing position, reaching out her hand for Jamie, indicating that he should grab it.

"Come on Jamie, we have to get home before your father starves to death." I watched as the little boy reached up and grabbed his mother's hand… poor kid.

"Bye Sam, bye Aunt Brooke, bye Julian." He offered with a slight wave that I returned half-assed before the two turned their backs to make their way back through the entrance that Julian and I had just come through.

I followed them momentarily as they exited before turning back up to Julian, trying to communicate with him in silence that Sam and I needed a few minutes.

He studied my expression briefly, looking confused as he tried to pinpoint what I was trying to say before his face brightened with the light bulb that went off in his head.

"Um… I'm gonna go across the street and grab some coffee," he announced, trying to be inconspicuous in the fact that his departure was intentional. "You guys want anything?" I nodded in appreciation of both his understanding and his ability to cover his tracks so well.

"That would be great, Julian." I answered for the both of us, mainly because I knew that Sam wasn't exactly in the mood for conversation.

We parted ways at the elevator, Julian making his stop at the lobby, destined for the exit while Sam and I rode straight to the sixth floor, destined for captivity.

I watched and waited as she got herself settled, took things at her own pace, slowing everything down just to prolong the amount of time she would have to think about what she was going to say. I let it happen; when she was ready to talk, she would; for now, it was only my job to listen.

Even after she had settled back into her bed, it was still a couple of minutes before she finally did speak.

"That's gonna be me one day." I had been waiting for a while now for Sam to talk, and now that she finally was, I couldn't make heads or tails out of what she was talking about.

"What do you mean?" Nice one Brooke, way to make her feel better.

"Logan, she's been doing this for two years and… what if that happens to me one day." Her fears were warranted, I couldn't pretend like they weren't. I had no idea what would happen to Sam in two years, but the looming threat of her meeting such a malicious day as Logan had sometime in the future wasn't something I wanted to think about.

It was at least scary enough of a thought to shake Sam down to her very core, and that is hard to do, trust me.

"Sam…" I breathed out, because I didn't know what else to say… was I supposed to tell her that everything was going to be okay? The truth was, I didn't know whether or not everything would be okay, and that killed me on the inside.

"Don't." She stopped me in my tracks, confirming that I had made the right move in holding my tongue against lying to her as the tears slowly began to leak from her eyes.

I took that as my cue; I stood, got as close to Sam as I possibly could, and wrapped her up into my arms where she buried her face against my shoulder and allowed for the tears to finally come.

"Listen Sam, I know that I can't promise you that everything is going to be okay, but I can promise you this; I am going to do everything I can to make sure that that never happens to you."

Now that, that wasn't a lie, that was me making a promise I intended to keep no matter what it took. Sam didn't say anything back to me, but sometimes, you just don't need words. And now, as I held onto her as tightly as I could without hurting her, assuring her as best as I could, I couldn't help but wonder if I said the right thing, because in the end, I was still scared, and Sam still cried herself into a fitful sleep, and all I could do about it was sit there and pray that tomorrow would come with a little more hope than today had.


	16. Dig It Up and Bury It

**Hello, hello everybody! Here's the next chapter! I think its a tad bit shorter than usual but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting too much longer cause I had a wedding in California last week and it was my first time on the West Coast so I obviously had to stay a little longer! **

**Just wanted to say thanks again to everybody reading and reviewing! I really do appreciate it all, it's pretty amazing so thanks one more time, you're all pretty awesome.  
**

Chapter 16: Dig It Up and Bury It

**Thursday, November 10****th****, 2011**

**PEYTON**

In a totally, completely, entirely uncharacteristically unusual move on my part, today, I had actually been able to wake up on my own accord, get ready for the busy day I had planned, and achieve a totally functional state, all before the hour of eight a.m.

I know, crazy right?

I had gained a sort of notorious reputation at Sawyer's day care for being that lady that drops her kid off late every single day and I guess I was finally ready to make a new name for myself starting today.

With all of this new found free time on my hands, my head was suddenly spinning with the possibilities that were rapidly being thrown my way. I mean, imagine; a whole extra hour in which I didn't have to rush or stress.

I made a quick mental list of all the things I could do. I could clean the house, run errands, do the ridiculous amount of laundry that somehow had managed to pile up _or_ I could make my way over to Tree Hill Memorial and give a special early morning wake up call to my two favorite people.

And there it was; the way I had ended up back in the hallways that had become so familiar to me these days.

I shuffled past the crowds, the nurses coming in or out during shift change in combination with the families desperate to arrive at the dead start of visiting hours congesting the lobby making it difficult to reach the elevators; but I eventually did, and as I sat in the packed little box, I was grateful to see the number of people thin gradually with every floor we raised so that by the time I stepped out, I was virtually alone again; but in all honesty, that's just the way I preferred it.

I held my head up as I strolled casually down the halls. You see, I understood that hospitals were a pretty rough place to be in, and there was still that sense of hesitation lingering in the back of my head every time I stepped inside, but lately, as weird as it may sound, I seem to have been use it as a coping mechanism that has allowed me to find a little bit more closure with every visit that I have made.

You see, I have been relentlessly grasping onto the vicious memories of Ellie's death for a long time now; and by a long time, I mean it's been a _long, long_ time.

It's been nearly six years and still, not a single day goes by in which that day doesn't haunt me.

Of course, with time, the nightmares, the long days alone spent sobbing on my bedroom floor, well those got better, they got more intermittent, they eventually disappeared, save for a couple bad days… but the minute that Sam was diagnosed, it seemed as if all of the progress that I had worked so hard to make just crashed and burned onto the floor, and I found myself right back at square one as if it had just happened yesterday.

This has been hard on all of us, they're no denying that, but if there was one thing that Sam and Brooke have taught me in these past few days it was that staying positive was the thing that was going to get all of us through this nightmare.

So I found myself channeling all of that positive energy, allowing it to dominate my thought processes, and even though it was hard at first, eventually, I found myself making peace with how suddenly and unfairly Ellie had been taken away from me.

You see, I can see a little bit of all of us in Sam; she's got Brooke's wits, Haley's sense, and my spunk; but really, I see a lot more of Sam in myself than I'd ever actually admitted to anybody, and I guess because I saw a lot of Ellie in myself, then by default, I saw a lot of Ellie in Sam too.

Ellie would have loved Sam; that much is absolutely certain, and even though it's not fair that the two never got to meet, I'm more than positive that wherever Ellie may be right now, she's watching Sam, and she's taking care of Sam, and she sure as hell isn't going to let anything bad happen to her.

Okay, I'll spare you all and quit being corny while I'm still ahead.

I walked into Sam's room at 8:30 on the dot, and couldn't help but notice that the poor kid was looking downright miserable. She was slouched over in her bed, fixed in a total silence as she picked at the tape on the back of her hand that was holding an IV in place, pumping a drug that I probably couldn't even pronounce the name of into her ailing veins.

"Sam…"

I must have startled her, because at the sound of her name, she jumped about a foot in the air.

She quickly recovered her bearings, and upon noticing that it was only me that had caused her so much alarm, straightened herself out and tried to play it off cool as if nothing had ever happened, so I pretended that I didn't notice; she deserved that much, I guess.

"Hey," She responded, with a tone of forced nonchalant-ness in her voice, acting as casually as possible.

"Where is everybody?" I took a couple steps closer and threw my bag and jacket on top of the empty chair, trying to act as homey and welcoming as possible.

"Um… Brooke went across the street to get some coffee and I think Julian went back to Brooke's to go take a shower." I raised my eyebrows at Sam's answer; I couldn't pretend that I wasn't surprised when I heard Julian's name, I had no idea that he was back.

There was something about that name, that acknowledgment that he would always be around that did something to me. I can't describe it; I guess… I guess it's sort of like when you tell a lie, you know, you're body makes those subtle physical changes that can only be caught by a computer or a well-trained eye; yeah, that's kind of like what happened to me every time I heard the name Julian.

Now don't get me wrong, he was good to Brooke, he was good to Sam, I could see that, I could see how happy they were, but that doesn't mean it isn't strange to see him all the time as he intercalated within my group of friends.

"Julian's back…" It wasn't a question, it was more of a statement, and Sam took it as such.

"Yeah, he came back the other night. I think he might have really pissed off the people from that movie though because he just kind of… left." She shrugged and I nodded; Julian bailing, yup, that sounds about right.

Okay, okay, that's being unfair, just be grateful that I decided to hold my tongue today, because as long as he wasn't bailing on Brooke, I was okay with it.

"I think you'll be safe for a while Peyton," Sam assured me, "He said he had to go clean up and unpack and go get me breakfast so it might be a little bit before he gets back." I nodded my head, appreciative of her understanding that I just wasn't in the mood for those awkward run-in's today but still, I think it would be safest to change the subject.

"So, breakfast you say? I see that you're consuming food today." I picked the first topic that popped up in my head and went with it as she grinned at my acknowledgment.

"There it is, I knew that smile was in there somewhere." She rolled her eyes and turned away from me in embarrassment, but not before I watched her face get a little brighter.

"I try," she told me, exhaling deeply, leaving me with nothing but a few extra seconds of silence. I watched her carefully as she stretched and yawned widely, bringing her arms down to rub both hands over her head.

I studied her face carefully, watching as she stared down at her palms, the smile vanishing from her face so quickly that I was starting to think that I had only just imagined it being there.

I guess that she still wasn't completely used to the fact that with every passing day, her hair was becoming less and less. It was a slow and painful process, and being able to do nothing other than watch it happen was starting to take a toll on Sam, and her wavering self-image.

She sighed gently, and without a word, wiped her palms against her bed sheets before stretching out towards the bed-side table, grabbing the lint roller that Brooke had bought her a few days ago specifically for moments such as this one here.

I watched her for a moment, contemplating my next mode of attack as she struggled to reach her back, savoring her pride by not mentioning the fact that it would have been much easier for her to just ask me for help.

She took a few goes at her shoulders, rolling the Velcro over her t-shirt a couple times, collecting healthy chunks of her own hair with each roll.

"You missed a spot." I told her, slowly inching a couple steps closer and pointing to a spot on her lower back that would have been impossible for her to reach by herself. Hoping that she would accept my offer, I reached out a hand, indicating silently for her to allow me to help her.

She hesitated briefly, as I knew she would, conducting an inner debate with herself over whether or not accepting my help would by synonymous with accepting defeat; but eventually, she caved, handing me the roller and sighing as she presented her back to me, allowing me to finish the job that she had started.

"Thanks," I recognized the tone in her voice immediately. I knew where it was coming from, really I did, because if Sam was anything like me, which trust me, she was, she still wasn't quite used to being so dependent upon others.

I'd been there before and I knew all the ropes, which is why I worried so much that her inability to ask for help was going to land her in deeper trouble.

"Alright, I think I got it all." Despite everything going through my mind, I acted naturally, scanning over her back and coming up empty as I ripped the wrappings off hastily, trying to prevent Sam from seeing the damage done, but the second that I saw Sam's face, I knew that my efforts had been futile.

She looked from it to me, back to it, and finally, back to me, with the smallest trace of a smile on her face, just to let me know that it was alright, that after a week of the same old story, things like this were starting to get old and the novelty was beginning to wear off.

I returned the smile that really was nothing more than an exaggerated grimace as I imagined for a second, as I so often caught myself doing these days, what it would be like if the tables were turned; if I were in Sam's shoes, forced to lay here and watch my body disappear into the sheets while my signature blonde curls fell out of my head and I became sicker and sicker… and once again, like every other time I've tried, I just couldn't seem to be able to do it.

The idea was too big for me to wrap my mind around, so crazy that it seemed impossible.

"How does it look?" She asked for my opinion nervously, avoiding my gaze in a desperate attempt to reduce the mounting awkwardness surrounding this entire conversation.

"Lighter," It was the first word that came to mind and it just kind of… shot out, like Sam and I were on Family Feud playing fast money or something.

I surveyed her expression for a moment as she struggled to make sense of what I'd just told her. I stared into her receding brown eyes, wishing that she would give me a little bit more that would help me read her mind while simultaneously converting the message that what she looked like hardly mattered to me, and most importantly, as she self-consciously ran her hands once again over her protruding scalp peaking up behind the hair that was as stubborn as she was in its refusal to come out, I hoped that she understood and knew that she had me, and that no matter how trapped behind that hard place that she felt right now, she wasn't alone, and that she never would be, not as long as I was around.

* * *

**SAM**

"I have to pee." I interrupted the silence that had infiltrated the middle of me and Peyton's conversation, a conversation that I won't pretend I wasn't glad to see the back of… no offense intended or anything, it's just that after a certain length of time being trapped in bed, the walls start closing in on me which means one thing and one thing only;

It's time to get the fuck up.

"Um… alright, do you need any help or anything?" Poor Peyton, judging by the way she was fidgeting with her hands, I had put her in a sticky, uncomfortable situation, where she wasn't sure whether or not I was capable of doing a task as simple as going to the bathroom by myself while, at the same time, not wanting to insult my autonomy in offering me help.

I faked a laugh and a smile, just to rid the room of the tension because if I didn't, I was pretty sure we both would have burst.

"Nah, I got this one." I told her, shaking my head, trying to be as assuring as possible.

"Okay," She nodded and returned a smile equally as fake as the one that I had just put on as I heaved myself out of the Sam-shaped imprint I had made in my mattress and began my epic journey to the other side of the room.

I progressed slowly, but none-the-less, I progressed. I felt Peyton's eyes searing a hole through my back the entire time, but I made an extra conscious effort to pretend like I didn't and ignored it.

I crossed into my half-way point and reached what I had christened "the forbidden territory" as of last night. It almost felt like I was trespassing onto Logan's side of the room, treading uninvited without her permission to enter.

I paused briefly; it was hard to think about Logan. I have a pretty extensive imagination, but in my wildest thoughts, my most vivid dreams, I couldn't fathom what it was she was doing right now, where she possibly could be, if she even still was…

In retrospect, I was probably starting to annoy the crap out of the nurses. Every time they'd come in to check up on me, I'd bombard them with questions about Logan's whereabouts, her condition, whether or not she was still alive at the very least, and every time, I got the same exact answers; 'I'll try to find out' or 'I'm sure we'll hear something soon'… but so far, nothing.

"Hey, are you alright?" I guess I'd been lingering longer than I had initially anticipated, because Peyton had noticed; so I shuffled around for a second or two, quickly getting back to my feet before carrying onward as if nothing was wrong.

"Yeah," I stated simply, walking forward as Peyton accepted my weak answer for what it was, allowing me to continue until I arrived at my destination.

I inched the door closed slowly as I situated myself into the bathroom until it shut with a satisfying click and did my business in silence, the only sound coming in the form of the whooshing vents above me, humming in my ears as I reached behind back and flushed before lowering my face on top of my knees and letting out a deep sigh.

This was shaping up to be a very long day… sucks for me that it's barely nine in the morning.

I forced myself to stand, staggering over to the counter and turning on the water just so that I had a noise to occupy my ears as I cupped a generous amount of water into my palms and splashed it across my face.

Reaching over, I groped blindly for a fresh towel until my fingers clasped around it and I buried my face into the dry fabric.

Out of force of pure habit, I found myself looking down at the linen. I couldn't help but marvel over the fact that a few days ago, I was goggling at the chunks of hair, thick as a freaking wool sweater that was coming out by the handful but now, I didn't have chunks to be offered to goggle at, just little pieces.

"Shit," I mumbled shaking my head as I averted my gaze upward into the mirror, turning my head side to side to get as clear a picture as I possibly could.

I don't know, I guess that this part doesn't really bother me that much; I mean, I expected it, right? It was just one of those things that you couldn't avoid…

It's just that sometimes when you're actually forced to see it happen in front of your very own eyes, it just makes you feel like a sick person; I mean, this whole thing, the drugs, the waiting, the disappointment, it all comes into full circle the second I look into this stupid mirror, and after a while, it really starts to beat the shit out of you. And sometimes you don't feel so well, sometimes you feel a little bit better than yesterday, and sometimes you feel absolutely nothing at all.

But most of the time, like right now, you just feel incredibly confused about what you're feeling at all.

I jumped a little bit at a sudden knock on the door that jolted me out of my thoughts. My body lurched forwards, and I guess I hadn't realized how close to the mirror my face had been until my forehead bounced off of it.

"Ow, shit," I cursed, mainly because the bump to the head had shocked me, not because it actually hurt, but still, it was definitely going to leave a mark… but you have to cut me some slack here; I am a leukemia patient, you know.

"Sam, are you okay in there?" I'd lost track of the time, but it quickly became obvious that I'd taken a little bit longer "peeing" than I had intended on because Peyton had come a-knocking.

I opened my mouth with every intention to respond to Peyton's beckoning, but my response only echoed through my head before stopping. I guess I hadn't been concentrating enough to actually let them physically come out, because no words ever escaped my lips.

"Sam, I'm coming in…" Peyton announced hesitantly as she slowly turned the door knob.

I felt bad; I guess I'd made her nervous, terrified that she'd allowed me to drop dead under her watch.

I didn't turn around; instead, watched through the reflection in the mirror as the door pulled backwards and opened a slit, Peyton sliding herself through the thinnest crack she could muster.

I couldn't help but notice her facial features slacken in relief once she'd confirmed that I wasn't passed out unconscious on the tile.

"Are you okay?" She asked me a second time because I'd failed to give her an adequate response the first.

I made the move to nod my head but I stopped half way through, sick of all this lying I was doing to Peyton, especially after all she had been doing for me.

"I look like shit." I muttered, trying not to sound like too much of a vein bitch even though I had a feeling that I was failing miserably in that attempt.

Peyton cracked a small smile at me. I could tell how hard she was trying to help make me feel better, and the effort alone was enough to boost my mood a notch, and trust me, at this point, if there was one thing that I needed, it was a good pick-me-upper.

"Well enjoy it while it lasts Sam, because this is the one and only time in your entire life that you are actually allowed to look like complete and total shit with no repercussions." She put a hand on my shoulder as she delivered her reassurance and pulled me in a little bit closer to her.

I finally allowed myself to rip my eyes away from my reflection, but not before I watched them brighten a little bit in appreciation of the humor that I'd allowed override whatever other emotion that I had floating around in my head at the moment.

"Hey, do you think you can do me a favor?" I asked after a brief silence.

"Anything," She told me as I ducked out from underneath her arm and crouched down, fiddling through the cabinet underneath the sink for a second before finding what I was looking for and resurfacing.

"Can you help me do something about this?" I asked her as I handed her Julian's electric razor with one hand while pointing at the top of my head with the other.

To be completely honest, I was starting to get kind of sick of this half hair, half no hair scenario that I had going on here and I think that it was about time to go big or go home.

"Of course I can help you." She accepted my challenge without a single moment's hesitation as she opened her palm and took the razor.

"Have a seat," She motioned for me to sit on my designer salon chair, a.k.a. the toilet bowl, and I sunk down and presented my head to Peyton as the sound of the razor vibrating in Peyton's hands filled my ears.

"You know, I always secretly thought that you would look pretty bad ass with a Mohawk." Peyton told me as I felt the razor descend and make its first swipe across the side of my head.

"I grant you permission to get creative." I laughed, but I kept my eyes firmly affixed on the floor, nervous that if I looked up at Peyton I would regret this decision as I felt her tackle the left side of my head first, followed by the right, pausing briefly.

"I was definitely right." She flipped the switch on the razor and I only looked up when the noise ceased. "Wanna see?"

"I don't know," I laughed nervously, slowly turning my head towards the mirror, my eyes widening at the sight in front of me.

"I'm not so sure, Peyton, I'm not sure I'm down with the whole mullet-mohawk look."

"No, listen, you just need to learn how to do it up; you gotta gel it and spike it and dye it pink." She told me, reaching her free hand over to the top of my head, trying to contort it to stand upright.

I felt a lame tug, a brief, dull pain, and then nothing. I looked up to investigate and easily found the source as Peyton awkwardly looked down at the lock of my hair intertwined between her fingers.

"Okay, we can axe the Mohawk idea." She said quickly, turning the razor back on as I laughed and re-presented my head to her, allowing her to finish her job in swift silence.

"Okay, you're all done." She finally announced, stepping back to give me room to stand and admire my new doo.

In retrospect, I guess I'd had more hair on top of my head than I'd initially given myself credit for, that is, judging by the large pile I had to step through as I made my way away from the toilet combined with the fact that there was a dramatic difference in the reflection I was looking at in the mirror.

I let out an excessively long, excessively loud sigh as I took it for a test run, bringing my palm up, feeling nothing but skin underneath my finger tips.

"You okay?" Peyton came up behind me, resting both hands on either one of my shoulders and applying slight pressure.

"It had to happen sooner or later, right?"

"You know Sam, you shouldn't worry so much. That's what I'm here for." Her comment forced my face away from the mirror so that I could look up at her and raise an eyebrow in her general direction.

"I know," I assured her that I really did know how good every intention of everyone around me really was. "Sometimes that's just easier said than done, I guess."

"Well, I've got your back; you know that at least, right?"

"Yeah," I nodded through a smile; a smile that I knew was the intended result of Peyton initiating this conversation to begin with.

"I mean, I can't say that I know exactly where you're coming from, but I know you, you're just like me, so trust me when I tell you I know what it's like to just want to run away."

It suddenly clicked to me the main reason I loved to have Peyton around in times like these; she was good at stepping up, at trying to make me feel better while at the same time understanding that sometimes, it just hurt to bad for even her best efforts to succeed. But even then, well, she was also a patient person, good at waiting for it to pass and knowing what to do until that moment arrived.

But of course, her best efforts were successful this time around, resisting the need to stick it out until the bitter end, because what it all boiled down to was the fact that Peyton was right.

My history marked me as the person eager to run at the first sign of trouble; but this time, in some bizarre turn of events, as I found myself wrapped up in the most trouble I have ever been in in my entire life, I had absolutely no desire to go anywhere.

No, for once in my life, I was happy where I stood, and I don't think that I'll be finding myself running away again anytime soon.

* * *

**BROOKE**

I rushed back into Sam's bedroom a little bit before nine with only one immediate goal in mind.

While in the lobby, dodging person after person and moving my feet as fast as I could in order to get back upstairs, the coffee that I had been holding had spilled out of the lid, because that's just my luck, and was currently dripping down either hand, burning my freaking skin off.

I ran into Sam's room, darting to the nearest table, throwing both coffees aggressively against the wood, vigorously shaking at my wrists trying to fan away the current burning sensation screaming up my every nerve ending.

I stood there for a couple of seconds, probably looking like an epileptic the way I was shaking about until gradually, my movements slowed and the burning subsided.

Slowly, I began to bring awareness back to my surroundings, and more importantly, awareness to the fact that Sam wasn't anywhere to be found.

Now, I'm not sure if you guys have been keeping count or not, but in case you haven't, let me just point out that this was the second time in two days that I had left, only to return unable to find Sam and frankly, this disappearing act was starting to get a little bit too much for me and my wavering mental stability at this point.

The silence settled around me, but after a couple of seconds, even the sound of my own pulse pounding through my ears began to fade, replaced instead by what sounded strangely like little kids running amok from the direction in the bathroom.

Hesitantly, almost afraid to walk into a bathroom that didn't have the sound of puking coming out of it, I wedged the door open, cautiously peering in, only pushing myself in further when I recognized that it was only Peyton and Sam in front of me.

"You guys do realize that this is a hospital, right?" I put the sternest look I could muster on my face and set my hands firmly on my hips.

Both of their heads turned rapidly on their axis towards me and I couldn't help but be reminded of a scene from some bizarre movie or something.

Sam's completely bald scalp gleamed underneath the beam of the fluorescents while Peyton was frozen mid-sweep with a broom in hand, both wearing expressions of pure surprise on their faces as if they thought I'd been serious or something.

The matching looks that adorned both of their faces didn't allow me to hold my disapproving stance for very long; slowly, my mouth tipped upwards as a grin broke out across my face.

"What's going on in here?" I had to ask, even though it was more than apparent exactly what was going on. I mean, common sense allowed me to piece two and two together easily with one sweeping glance into the room but still, I thought I'd be polite and ask anyways.

"I needed a change," Sam shrugged casually, speaking as if she hadn't had enough change in her life lately, "How does it look?" She asked me, and I was alarmed to hear a hint of nervousness as she asked as if she was afraid that I would tell her she was hideous or something equally as ridiculous.

"You look beautiful Sam, really."' It wasn't like I was lying to her; she would always look beautiful to me, no matter what.

"Hey… what's going on?" Julian's voice broke through our conversation as he slid out of the hallway back into Sam's room.

"Hey, Julian," I stepped out of the door frame and walked up to him, wrapping my arms around the back of his neck. His hair was still wet from the shower he'd gone home to take, eager to clear away the smell of hospital that seemed to embed itself into your very pores, only to come back here to reinstate it.

I moved in for a kiss, leaning into him deeply, only breaking away when I noticed Sam and Peyton step out of the bathroom.

I stepped away, and he in turn, followed suite, moving in the opposite direction as me, suddenly acting like he was extremely interested in the paint patterns of solid white lines.

"Hey Julian," Sam practically strutted over to her bed, seemingly the only person who didn't give a shit that she had just walked straight into the definition of an awkward situation.

I know that Peyton and I have been up the ass with the explanations, and conversations, and apologies over the situation as well as the assurances and blessings and acknowledgments that Julian and I were just plain made for each other, but there was only so much that can be controlled; that little piece of Peyton and Julian would always be there whether I liked it or not, now it was just a matter of dealing with it.

"Um… hey Sam, Peyton…" Julian nodded to the two as he began shuffling his feet and walking in circles just so he would have some sort of distraction

I watched him, hell, I thought about joining him just to spare myself the need with coming up with what to say next, but luckily, we were saved by the nurse as she gallivanted into the room to deliver Sam's fresh bag of chemotherapy drugs.

Today, chemo would be saving our lives in more way than one, if you know what I mean.

"New haircut Sam?" The nurse asked casually as she strutted towards Sam's bed like she did every morning, carrying an IV bag wrapped up in its black, UV protector. The doctors said they liked to use the bag to protect the drugs from getting destroyed by sunlight; I liked the bag because it prevented me from actually having to see the poison that I knew was destined for Sam's veins.

"Yeah, you now, I was looking for a new look for November and I heard bald was in. I mean, I can't be associated with Brooke Davis wearing last month's fashions, right?"

"No, I guess you can't." The nurse laughed politely at Sam's joke as the girl obediently whipped herself back into bed and presented her "third arm", as Sam has dubbed it, to be plugged in.

I smiled down at her naturally as her sarcasm shown through her bright face, but I couldn't help but allow for my expression to fade as the clamp was pulled and I watched those god awful drugs flow straight into her system. I couldn't tell you which was worse; watching that crap go into Sam or watching her not even be phased by it anymore.

She looked up at me, a twinge of concern wrinkling in her forehead over the fact that I was frowning at her. I became suddenly very self conscious, pinning my mastered fake-smile routine on my face just to reassure her.

She saw right through my attempt, that much was obvious, but I was grateful in her choice to humor me, offering me a small grin in return before averting eye contact, turning over to Julian who had just said something to her that I didn't manage to hear because I was too busy blocking the world out, overpowering all my senses with seemingly needless worry, just like always.

I mean, not to say that it was needless, I worried about Sam, of course I worried about Sam. Sick or not, I had willingly thrown myself into a position where I would worry about Sam every single day until the day that I died.

I worried while she was sick, I worried while she's healthy, I worried when she lived in my house, and I worried when she moved out…

The girl has proven to me time and time again that she could defy the odds, but still I worried. She has proven to me that she could handle whatever challenges life threw in her direction, but still, I worried.

But most of all, I worried as she sat in front of me, plastering on her solid exterior while simultaneously proving to me that she was a stronger person than I could ever hope to be myself.

* * *

Despite the persistent feelings of dread that had a tendency to follow me around throughout the majority of the day, things wound up being much more anticlimactic than I had previously envisioned. In fact, I think that it would be safe to say that it went beyond anti-climactic and straight to down-right boring.

Peyton had left around noon to pick up Sawyer from day care and after that, I guess Sam just kind of lost her desire to be talkative.

Now, usually, a quiet Sam was indicative of a sick Sam, but today, I think her problems ran a little bit more skin deep than physical illness. I couldn't help but notice that every time the sound of a stretcher wheeling past the door filled the otherwise silent room, Sam's body perked and her eyes would widen as she strained her neck in an attempt to get a good look out the door, only to sink back down in disappointment when she didn't see the person that she was looking for.

Of course, I knew exactly who she was looking for; she was looking for Logan, hopeful that by some miracle, the girl would be brought back down here where the two could continue to be roommates and continue to be friends while they pretended that neither of them was dying, and that one of them wasn't knocking at death's very door.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked as I watched Sam sink back down into her sheets, the expression on her face looking as if she just needed somebody to step up and ask her if she was okay so she could be given an open door to spill her guts.

"Yeah…" She mumbled, "I was just hoping it was… you know." I nodded and reached over her bed, grabbing onto her hand gently.

"I know,"

"Have you heard anything?" I could offer nothing but my most sympathetic smile and a shake of my head, wishing I could tell her something other than the fact that I have heard absolutely nothing.

"I'm sorry honey."

"I've been pestering the nurses all day Sam," Julian threw in his words of comfort. "Trust me, they know to come to us the second the hear anything." I nodded my head in conjunction with Julian's words, but the only thing that Sam's face told me was that she hadn't been successfully reassured despite me and Julian's best efforts.

Suddenly, my phone rang, pulling me back into real life as I sighed and made the move to answer it. My freaking phone has been ringing off the hook today, a natural consequence of the fact that my company was launching its newest line today.

It's funny how I was getting all of the phone calls over a line that I barely had a part of as a result of… recent circumstances. Of course, the only person who was fully aware of my prolonged absence was Millicent, who has thus far done an excellent job of keeping me on track and keeping my situation on the down low, as I knew she would.

"Hello?" I stood and automatically began pacing, trying to calm myself down before I even started to get heated up, because once I got going, I really got going, and if the pattern of the day continued the way it has been, I was really going to get fired up.

"Hi Ms. Davis, this is Tanya Schelling from TMZ news, I was just calling to ask if you had time to give us a statement."

Crap, it was a trap. They were good, they were really good; they must have known that I was going to be a frantic mess today, bound to answer my phone without looking first.

Okay, in all honesty, that probably wasn't true, but whatever it was, it had landed me in the exact situation that I have been trying to avoid for the past week or so.

"TMZ News, are you serious? Do you have any idea what I'm…"

"Brooke," Sam interrupted me from verbally assaulting the poor lady on the other end of the line who was, in all honesty, just trying to do her job and looked up at me. "Just talk to them already."

I raised my eyebrow at Sam, blocking out this lady, Tanya, whatever her last name was, still talking on the other end of the line, trying to persuade me with a prepared speech that sounded long and thought out, making me feel slightly guilty for not listening to it.

"What?" I asked her and unfortunately, Tanya was under the impression I was talking to her and began repeating everything she'd just said. I moved my phone away from my ear just so I didn't have to hear it again.

"Do it, jeez. You know the only to get them to shut up is to talk to them." I opened my mouth with every intention on telling her that that wasn't exactly how it worked but I stopped myself. Instead, I just watched Sam for a moment, wishing I could share her casualness, her ability to knock things off as not a big deal so easily.

I didn't break my eye contact with her as I slowly raised my phone back to my ear. "Um… can you hold on for a second, please?" I didn't wait for a response before putting my phone on mute, needing silence as I tried to figure out what to do.

I looked at Sam for another moment, her defiant stare never wavering from her face before I looked back to Julian who gave me absolutely nothing that could be of any help… remind me to slap him later.

"I'll be right back." I finally gave in, stepping past the two of them into the hallway.

I walked quickly, looking through each window in hopes of finding a place that could offer me any sort of privacy.

The kitchen was full; a family was just sitting down to dinner on the circular table that wobbled if you put your elbows on it too hard, eating microwave hotdogs off of plastic plates. I recognized them but we've yet to be introduced. They were new to the ward, which was obvious judging by the fact that they were still trying to retain the normalcy of everyday life by eating around a dinner table; normalcy that the rest of us had given up on weeks ago.

The private waiting room was occupied as well; two parents inside of it holding onto each other, obviously having enough problems on their plate already without the added weight of me going in there to talk on my phone.

Believe it or not, I finally managed to find solitude in the normally swarming and boisterous play room, empty for the time being.

I sneaked inside and turned the light on before quietly closing the door behind me. I walked over to the table in the furthest corner and sat down in one of the chairs designed for toddlers so that my knees were uncomfortably constricted against the table's underside.

Sighing and hesitating for a moment, I looked down at my telephone, still on mute; the seconds calculating the time the phone call had lasted slowly ticking onward.

It took me a moment before I finally decided to bite the bullet, quickly bringing my phone up to my ear before I had time to change my mind and answering.

"Okay, what do you want to know?"


	17. We All Have Wood and Nails

**So, I spent this entire weekend stuck home sick which is really bad news for me, but really good news for you because I transformed into a writing fiend this weekend. Literally though, I cranked out like four chapters, now it's just a matter of editing them, so expect big things! I just wanted to get as much as I could up now because I will be going away for Memorial Day weekend and plan on not even thinking about my computer while I'm there, so I'll try to put the rest up before Thursday when I'm leaving. **

**So here's the next chapter, hope you enjoy! Like always, thanks for reading and reviewing, you all keep me all happy inside :)**

Chapter 17: We All Have Wood and Nails

**Friday, November 11****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

I was rudely awoken from a very peaceful, very much-needed sleep the next morning for one of my favorite things in the whole-wide world; blood draws designed to tell me just exactly where I ranked in the scheme of this whole… cancer thingy.

Not to say that the physical blood drawing aspect was particularly bad, I mean, at this point I could have probably done it in my sleep no problem. No, the painful part had to be the hours between now and the time that they would actually come in and tell me the results, the hours that I was left to sit around and hold my breath as I waited for the news that would become the difference between life and death.

There was a nurse in the room by 8:00 that morning, just like she was every morning to carry out the daily routine; deliver my palate of drugs, replace the old bag of antibiotics into my IV line, morning vitals, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

But after that, the normalcy of the routine basically took a tail spin and crashed and burned to the ground.

You see, normally, Dr. Miller wouldn't grace me with her presence until around mid-afternoonish. Seeing her even in the early afternoon was unusual, seeing her in the early morning hours was downright unheard of, and the unusualness of it all was starting to make me nervous.

"Morning Sam, Brooke," She nodded her head towards both Brooke and I but the two of us were too busy goggling upwards at her, apparently under the same impression that she had come here to tell us that something was horribly wrong, to respond back.

"I was just coming in to check up on you for your last day of this chemo round."

Huh, I'd forgotten about that. Just goes to show you how much fun I was having in here because this is the second time I've missed this major milestone, currently making me 0 for 2.

Hopefully, I'll have better luck next time… or at least improve my attention span enough to be able to count three whole days without getting distracted… not likely.

"I just want to take some blood so we can make sure that everything is still on track." Okay, now this is where that whole breath holding scenario I was just talking about comes into play. It was the 'wait and see if everything is on track' that I hated so much because it might as well have been called 'wait and see if you're dying or not.'

You would think that I would be used it by now. I mean, every single day in this place was exactly the same story where the only thing that you could do is sit around and take test after test and then wait around for the results, leading to nothing but disappointment.

I guess that was a fact that was just easier said than done, especially when it wasn't my entire life hanging in the middle of the equation.

"Sounds good," I sighed, not as enthusiastically as I had originally planned on to try to cover up my doubtfulness as Dr. Miller wasted absolutely no time whatsoever in enforcing her all work, no play method of doctoring so that I blinked, and by the time my eyes reopened, three vials full of my own blood were staring right in front of me.

The entire process didn't even phase me anymore, I was so used to the routine of it all. One arm was occupied with the needle stuck in the crook of my elbow, draining me of my tainted blood, while the other arm reached up and down like a machine; grab pill, bring it to mouth, swallow, and repeat.

One tablet of Zyloprim, used to prevent my kidneys from failing, check.

Two of Femiron to keep my iron up as my red blood cell count deteriorated every day, check.

One of Atenolol, keeps my blood systolic blood pressure above 100 so shock doesn't accompany the treatments, check.

One Emend horse pill and one Dexamethosone tablet for the nausea, check.

And finally, two eye drops for each eye to keep my eyeballs from bugging up and falling out of my head… or something like that. Check.

When both myself and my nurse had finally become satisfied that my stomach had become a satisfactory human pharmacy, and when Dr. Miller was satisfied that she'd taken enough blood from me to tell her what she wanted to know, I expected them to pack up and go, leaving me to go about my merry way, back to peace and quiet so I could fall asleep, slip into oblivion, possibly get rid of this raging headache that I had before another round of chemo came along to make it worse…

But apparently, judging by the fact that Dr. Miller had just pulled a chair up to my bed side and made herself comfortable, she had plans that were slightly different than the ones I had envisioned.

"Okay, so we're just going to send the blood work down to the lab. It should be a few hours tops, you know the drill." I nodded; I knew the drill all right. "And then, what I want to do is another spinal tap. Just precautionary, of course; you'll learn soon enough that all these tests and things become very routine as you near the end of chemo treatments, just to make sure everything worked the way it should."

I listened to her dance around a way to let me know that all of these "routine tests" were basically just a way for her to make sure that the chemotherapy, which has done nothing but give me hell for the past few weeks, was actually working.

"What we'll do now is we'll take some of the cerebrospinal fluid directly from your spine. That will tell us whether or not the cancer cells are still contained and to be sure that they haven't gotten into your central nervous system."

Nothing about that sounded too good to me at all. And I thought that waiting on the results of some stupid blood test was bad, now I had to wait on this too?

Remind me to contact the UN later about updating their code of ethics list to include this under their list of cruel and unusual punishment.

"So what happens?" Brooke spoke up, "If everything isn't going the way that it should?" That was Brooke for you, always trying to make me feel better. Or else, stepping up and asking the questions that I was too afraid to ask myself.

"Well, it would definitely change our course of treatment, and in all honesty, would most likely make the cancer a lot harder to fight."

Well, I guess there was no beating around the bush here. She said it softly, her tone telling me all I needed to understand; basically being that this better have worked, because if it didn't, we were basically out of ideas.

I would be, in a word, fucked.

Brooke and I exchanged synchronized looks that told us all everything that needed to be said without actually saying it. For a split second, there was nothing. I guess the doctor had been under the impression that one of us were going to speak up or something, her plans becoming instantly thrown off when neither of us actually did.

"Are you ready, Sam?" Now? As in right now? I couldn't even get a minute or two to absorb the fact that my life was currently lingering in the balance of these tests?

I mean, seriously, what's the rush? It's not like I'm going anywhere any time soon, right?

"That's fine," I contorted my face into a look of neutrality and lied.

"Great, okay, so here's what's gonna happen, I just want you to sit up for me, okay?" She instructed, allowing me to get myself situated while she in turn, got prepared herself, positioning herself behind me while Brooke took a front row seat right in front of my face, just in case I needed a hand to grab hold of, which, and I was just making a completely educated guess on this one, I would.

"I went upstairs a little bit earlier this morning, talked to your friend Logan." The doctor told me, trying to initiate casual conversation as I felt the back of my t-shirt raise slightly, exposing my spine as my muscles simultaneously contracted in anticipation of carrying out this conversation further.

"She's doing alright. She's been stable, anyway." I relaxed visibly at the news, forcing me to believe that she had purposefully waited until this moment to give me the news so that she'd have a device that would be able to relax me after stressing me out by telling me that there was a chance that my treatment plans weren't exactly working the way that they should.

"Can I see her?" I asked jumping a little bit as a cool alcohol swab rubbed its way across my lower back, sending a small shudder up my spine until I got used to the feeling, relaxing into the wet trail rubbing circles around my back.

"I'll see what I can do." She answered, indicating to me that I should probably stop asking questions because she wasn't sure of the answers I was trying to get her to give me. And besides, I figured she needed to focus on putting the large needle into my spine.

With that in mind, I shut up and let her concentrate.

The entire preparation probably took about five minutes. The alcohol, the iodine swab, the sterile draping… it was very official, but I couldn't help but wish that it had taken longer, because I wasn't particularly ready, or looking forward to this.

And you know what they say; the anticipation is always the worst part.

"Okay Sam, small pinch here…" I felt the needle slide underneath my skin, but my body has since become resilient to the pain of needle pricks. She might have well been rubbing a feather up and down my spine, probably would have gotten the same reaction.

The anesthetic flooded within the underlying connective tissue, causing my nerves to tingle for a moment before there was nothing.

"Sam, can you feel this?"

"Huh?" I guess the answer was no then. Maybe this was the beginning of a good sign. At least, it was putting a bit of a positive note on an otherwise negative day.

"Okay Sam, small pinch starting…now." I squeezed my eyes closed tight and grabbed onto Brooke's hand in anticipation for something much larger than this rumored "small pinch" but it never came.

Slowly, I chanced the opportunity to open my eyes, wondering what had gone wrong in order to delay this impending doom, but I managed to catch on eventually to the fact that things were indeed going on according to plan. It seemed to be just me that was missing out.

Imagine that, right?

I didn't have to wait long to confirm that there was indeed a needle in my spine. A sudden twinge let me know that it definitely, without a doubt, was. I mean it didn't hurt, per se, more like a tingle.

Was it sick to say that it felt kind of good?

My eyes interlocked with Brooke's. I instantly became very self aware of the fact that my face probably looked pretty strange, contorted with the confusion as I tried to figure out the feeling I was currently experiencing, and knowing poor Brooke, she probably was misinterpreting it to think that I was in excruciating pain or something.

My theory had been answered when Brooke instantly put a concerned look on her face, got up a little closer to me, and asked; "Hey, are you okay?"

I nodded eagerly, desperate to keep her from entering her over-worried mom mode for absolutely no reason as she grasped onto my hand a little bit tighter and shuffled closer into me.

"Yeah, I'm fine, it feels fine." She looked skeptical at my response, as if she thought I was lying or something, which, to her credit, I usually was in moments like this, but this time I was sincere… lucky for both of us.

I turned my head away after delivering the best assurance I could, eager for an opportunity to keep quiet during the rest of the procedure, just because with my luck, I'd jinx it, and turn my well-being around for the worse.

I silently waited it out for the ten minutes or so the entire process actually lasted, sitting obediently upright wishing for time to speed up and get this thing over with, even though it was just a few minutes before that I was asking for time to stop so we didn't even have to start.

Point in case, the stupid clock just never seems to work the way that I want it to.

"Okay Sam, you're all done, you did great." The announcement that I had been waiting for rang through my ears and I turned just in time to watch the doctor peel away her gloves as the nurse racked up the tubes that contained the clear liquid that had been inside of my spine mere moments ago against those that were full of my blood, creating a fascinating display of my internal fluids.

I leaned back, eager to stretch out my spine that had been curved and invaded for the past 20 minutes or so but regretted that decision instantly when a sharp throbbing that originated at the base of my spine, travelled upward and hit me like a ton of bricks that forced me into the fetal position on my side.

I just wish that somebody had told me that the after-effects of this whole thing was going to be worse than the actual procedure before I had made the attempt at moving.

I let a small groan escape my lips, that I thought had been concealed, but apparently, was loud enough to catch the attention of both Brooke and Dr. Miller, who had previously been talking quietly in a corner, whispering so that I was guaranteed to be excluded from the conversation that was more likely than not about me.

"Hey, are you okay?" Brooke rushed back to my side instantly, eager to help as I straightened myself out again, this time, going much slower in order to avoid a similar fate that had been my downfall last time.

Contraire to Brooke however, Dr. Miller made no change in her facial expression or appearance, indicating to me that my reaction had not surprised her one bit.

"Relax Sam; there may be some pain for a while so take it easy. Try not to move around so much." Oh, now she tells me. "The soreness should only last a few hours or so, but if it gets too bad, just let your nurse know; she'll give you a little something for it."

I sighed and slowly leaned my neck against the pillow, another bad move judging by another shot of pain that responded angrily to my spine arching inward.

I became instantly grouchy. I didn't take too well to being immobilized.

"We should have the results back by tomorrow morning." I heard her tell Brooke as I stayed as still and silent as possible so that that I could listen attentively. "I'll be back first thing to let you guys know."

I released the breath I'd just been holding, but I'm not exactly sure what the point of that was considering I'd just be holding it in anticipation until tomorrow morning came around and I would learn my fate anyway.

There was a few seconds in which I situated myself into the least painful position humanly possible as Brooke shuffled around the room, ready to turn her attention back towards me as Dr. Miller left the room.

She paced briefly, cleared her mind, and finally sat herself into her chair, rubbing her hands together silently for a few seconds before making the first move.

"I'm sure it will come up fine."

"I think so too." I put on my best smile to let her know that I meant it. In reality, I did mean it for the most part. I mean, I had a very strong feeling lingering deep in the back of my mind that told me that I would survive this road block and be free to move onwards, that my doctor would come back tomorrow with the news that we could carry on as usual, but even that strong sense of success didn't halt that little piece of me lingering even deeper in the back of my head; that 'what if everything is not alright' that was freaking me out beyond anything that comfort could provide.

I sighed. I was sick of this day already.

Despite all of the action and adventure from before, the rest of the morning turned out to be much less interesting, and to be completely honest with you, I wasn't sure which I preferred.

I was forced to lay still and quiet in my bed in order to prevent irritation to my ailing spine for a grand total of one hour and twenty nine minutes in which the most eventful thing that happened besides an epic fight that broke out between the co-hosts of The View, was Julian coming back, forcing me to retell the entire story of my exciting morning.

One hour and twenty nine minutes until my nurse came in like she always did to hook me up to my last round of the second cycle of my chemotherapy when I finally managed to gather up the courage to shift myself over and sit back up again.

The previously roaring pain had since been reduced to a dull throb… something that I could actually deal with.

The medication began flowing, marking me one step closer to the end, which, actually turns out to be much less interesting than it sounds, and finally, only after I got a large dose of my daily anti-nausea medication directly underneath my veins, did things start to get exciting.

Dr. Miller had suddenly reappeared inside of my door frame, and I couldn't pretend that I wasn't surprised. Not expecting to see her again until tomorrow, my breath hitched in my throat and my chest tightened to levels of impossible constriction.

Does this mean that something is wrong?

Brooke, Julian, and I stared a hole through this woman; apparently all of us thinking the exact same thing.

"Sam," She knocked politely as if she didn't noticed all of our piercing glares directed at her as she took a step inward. "Someone wants to see you."

I exchanged a confused look with first the doctor, and then Brooke, who looked as equally in the dark as I was as the doctor snuck out of the doorway, reemerging and dragging with her what looked mysteriously like a dentist chair on wheels.

My heart leapt into my throat as my mystery visitor made her first appearance.

"Logan…" I stated the obvious as the girl was brought further into the room.

I spent a moment or two studying her; it had, after all, been a while since we'd last seen each other, and a lot could happen in a few days, a concept that became more than obvious as my eyes continued to focus ahead of me.

My initial excitement immediately began to fade, my shoulders sinking down a little bit more.

She was paler than I had ever seen any other person in my entire life, and that includes the time I had to go to the funeral of one of my foster parents when I was still just a kid.

Bags of morphine hung above her head, pumping her into a nearly catatonic state as her chest shook feebly up and down with each breath, wheezing in time with the reduced motions.

Imagine a skeleton. Now imagine that skeleton with a leathery layer over it that might semi-resemble skin, stretched tightly across the bones. Now, just give it eyes, a hospital gown, and a couple of tubes snaking in and out of it, and now you've got a perfect visual aid to let you know what I was currently looking at in the face of Logan McGinnis.

It was a slap across the face, a coincidence that I had to face this on the same day that I had to sit around and wonder if this was destined to be my fate or not.

"Hey," She chose the more general method of greeting because I hadn't opened a particularly wide door for conversation.

Her voice was low, raspy, barely audible… now imagine that above pile of bones that you'd previously imprinted in your brain and think about what it would sound like if it could speak.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, pushing myself up a little bit straighter, ignoring the pain in my back. If Logan could handle it, then I could too.

"Just dandy," She let out a small laugh that sounded a lot more like the sound that people make as they're being strangled as they're gasping for air than it did a laugh.

I recognized her response as a way to avoid telling me how she was really feeling, mainly because I used the exact same method when I wasn't feeling particularly talkative.

But I didn't push it. I knew how much I hated people trying to force me to admit my feelings when I just wasn't in the mood to talk about it.

Sure, Logan and I were different cases, but only in terms of our ailments. Other than that, we were really just one in the same.

I kept quiet for a minute or so, allowing them to settle her in, push her weird half-wheelchair-half-stretcher further into the room, pulling on the parking brake only when she was right next to my bed.

Brooke made the move straight for Logan's parents.

I'd known that she'd talked on and off with her mother in passing at times when we were still roommates, but I'd never even seen her father before, let alone met him.

I tried to think back. I never remember Logan ever mentioning him before, and not wanting to pry in on a guaranteed awkward conversation, I chose not to mention it.

But none of that seemed to matter at the moment, because Brooke moved in and offered a generous hug of comfort to both of them, a motion that they both gratefully accepted as Julian offered his support in the form of a firm handshake.

I guess it was just a thing between all of the parents around here, something that I probably would never understand in my own right. Brooke knew how they felt, knew what they were going through… to an extent.

I mean, I guess I wasn't exactly on my death bed over here, but the possibilities of it all were enough to develop that strong bond of mutual understanding, the one that provided enough comfort to Logan and her parents to get them through another couple of long, painful hours that were guaranteed to be ahead for them.

I could only hope that there would be somebody here like that for Brooke… should the situation rise, of course.

"I'll give you two a few minutes." Dr. Miller told us after finally becoming satisfied that Logan was successfully set up and confirming that she was in no immediate threat of dropping dead within the next couple of minutes.

"Sam," I looked up at the sound of my name. Brooke and Julian were still wrapped up in between the two McGinnis parents, calling out to me from the doorway, indicating that they too, had plans of leaving the two of us alone in mind.

"I'm going to go take Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis downstairs for coffee. Will you be okay by yourself for a few minutes?"

I don't know why the sudden desire to leave the two of us alone; and I couldn't pretend that I wasn't surprised at their willingness to go, but I appreciated what Brooke was trying to do for me all the same.

"Yeah, that's fine." I waved towards them casually as they turned out of the room, leaving in it just me, Logan, and a very prominent thickness in the air between us.

"So…" I breathed out, looking for the least awkward approach into this conversation. "How have you been?"

Nice Sam, that was real nice… smooth.

"I've been… alright…" She took a deep, wheezing breath between every word she spoke, each one becoming harder and harder to spit out than the last. "Been… pretty busy lately… you know… dying and all." I sighed as everything that I've been trying my hardest to avoid came out into the open, all in one fell swoop.

I was left stumped over what to say next.

"Do you… ever think about it… Sam?" I wasn't quite sure where she was getting at exactly, but I had an idea.

The only thing was; I was definitely not in the mood to get at what she was getting at, so I played the fool. Besides, it would have been really awkward to bring up what I was thinking, only to have her tell me that that actually wasn't what she was thinking at all.

"Think about what?"

"Dying," Yup, I had been spot on this entire time.

There was a dramatic pause between her delivery and my response as I searched for the right answer, if there was a right answer.

"No," I decided that the right answer would be a lie, because the truth of the matter was that I thought about dying every single day of my entire life. I just wasn't quite ready to admit to that yet.

"Liar," I could practically hear the shadow of a laugh coming off of her lips as she accurately called me out for being the liar that I was. "Everybody thinks about dying."

"No," I corrected her before I could stop myself. "Everybody thinks about people like us dying."

"I guess at least now you're telling the truth." She didn't struggle between words this time around, finally getting a strong push behind a statement she believed in.

I thought hard about what to say next, hesitating against her brutal honesty. Maybe this was just something that you acquired with time and experience, something that I wouldn't understand until I was ready to face it.

"Do you?" A retaliatory question seemed like the most appropriate route to take at this point.

"I didn't really at first, but I guess now I do all the time." I guess I could relate to that, appreciate what it was that she was talking about… the first half of it anyway.

"Are you scared?" My words shook underneath their foundation as I asked the question that I was most curious, yet at the same time, most afraid to hear the answer to.

Tears stung the backs of my eyes. Suddenly, I wasn't feeling so well; a combination of the stress, and the drugs, and the emotional heatedness that this conversation was gathering too quickly for me to keep up with.

"No," She responded; her voice back to that far away, despondent tone that I'd recognized from before.

"Now who's lying?"

"I'm not, really," She told me, speaking more forcefully this time so that she made sure that I knew that she knew, and she meant, exactly what she was saying. "Trust me; you'll know what I'm talking about one day."

Yeah…I'm not particularly looking forward for that day's arrival.

I didn't respond to her comment, and I guess that she took that as an open invitation to continue talking.

"I'm not afraid of dying, Sam; I'm just afraid of leaving everybody behind." I didn't look over at her, instead, chose to stare straight ahead at the wall, needing something plain and neutral to fill my senses before my poor brain went on a system overload.

"I guess…" That was the deep, philosophical response that I'd managed to come up with, and even that took me a couple of seconds to actually formulate. I was too busy thinking, too busy trying desperately to piece together everything that she had just said to me, so forgive me if the analytical portion of my brain was a little bit occupied.

I don't know, I guess I've just never really thought about it before, but she did have a pretty point. Once you're dead, well, what did it really matter to you?

Either something will happen to you, and it will great, and it will be fulfilling, and it will be eternal, yadda, yadda, yadda, or absolutely nothing will happen, and if that's the case… well who cares, you're dead.

No, the more I thought about it, the more right Logan seemed. It was everybody else that was left behind that has to suffer through your inability to stay alive, and that, that's the scariest part of it all.

It seems selfish really, to leave such a big mess behind. But I guess it's such a normal part of everyday life that people just tend to look over that aspect of it.

Me, well all I had was time to think, and the more I did think, the more obvious it got.

"What about you, Sam? What are you afraid of?"

I'm not exactly one to open up to people this way. Ever. That's probably the reason why I won't be able to tell you why it was that every time Logan and I got talking, I wounded up spilling my guts out to her. That's probably the reason why I let her know exactly what I was afraid of.

"I think I'm still at the point where I'm afraid that I can't beat this. I don't think I'm ready for that yet."

I don't think I've ever even told Brooke that before… Logan should by a psychiatrist… or a psychologist, I don't know, I always forget the difference between them, but whatever the one is about people opening up and expressing their feelings, that's the one that Logan should be…

In another life, I guess.

"It gets easier…" She let out a strangled laugh to let me know she meant it. "I swear."

I believed her, really I did. She's been through the ropes, she's been doing this longer, and I knew she knew what she was talking about.

It was just hard to take words of wisdom from somebody at the tail end.

The problem was, all of her advice seemed to point to the idea that one day, whenever that day may be, I was simply going to roll over and accept defeat. And as much as she assured me, I couldn't help but be doubtful.

"I guess it has to." I finally replied back to her. "How the hell can it get any harder than this?"

**BROOKE**

I walked back up to Sam's room, purposefully leading the small troupe composed of me, Julian, and Cathy and Brian McGinnis, at a slow, steady pace, determined to give Sam and Logan the maximum amount of time that was humanly possible.

I'd spent the past half an hour or so down in the cafeteria, just buying them food and coffee, trying desperately to initiate any sort of conversation, just to give them a nice, well deserved break from their stringent post at their daughter's death bed.

I mean, I know that it's hypocritical for me to say this, but they just needed to get away for a moment, and it was my job to make sure that they did.

I mean, what's the point of filling an oncology unit with all of these parents if we weren't there to support one another, right?

I had two considerations behind the reasoning for my bringing them down here, stuffing them to the brim until I was sure that they wouldn't be able to fit a single additional morsel of coffee and the lasagna lunch special into their stomachs.

The first one was for Sam and Logan. I think that we could all agree that the two needed some time to reconnect, some time to sort things out considering the debacle that they had left behind from the last time they'd seen each other, you know, that time that Logan was unconscious and seizing… yeah, that's the one.

The second was purely for her poor parents. The McGinnis's looked like they haven't slept, ate, bathed, done anything other than keep strict watch over Logan since she'd been moved into the ICU, and I had become desperate to find any sort of distraction possible to help them with whatever jumbled mess was going on in their heads right now.

The problem was; I couldn't be positive that it worked. It was frustrating, really. I wonder if this is how people feel when they try to do the same thing for me.

Unable to stall any longer, I finally lead the group back to Sam and Logan and I walked back in on them, instantly falling under the impression that I had just interrupted a very important, very deep conversation. The looks on their faces was enough evidence, but if I needed anymore, I could just resort to the tension hanging over my head, so thick that I could have cut it with a knife.

"Sam?" I don't think they noticed when I first walked into the room, their attention was so focused on each other, and so I chose to interrupt on purpose. I knew what they were talking about; the conversation was written across both of their faces.

And trust me; a conversation about death was not exactly the conversation that a parent wants to walk in on their child having.

She looked up obediently at the sound of her name, her eyes big and red, her face pale with a tinge of green emerging from underneath her cheeks.

The weird thing was, I had the strangest feeling that her appearance had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she was sick, and everything to do with the conversation. A different kind of Big C, if you know what I mean.

I didn't mention it. This wasn't the time or the place for it, and as much as I loved and appreciated the McGinnis', that was a topic that needed to happen between just me and Sam.

"Sorry guys, but they need to take Logan back upstairs now." Sam simply nodded her head, turning to the side so she could wipe her eyes under the concealment, falsely assuring herself that I wouldn't see, that I wouldn't recognize the tears, that maybe, just maybe, I would ignore it.

"I'll see you later then." Sam passed the goodbye as if they were two old friends that had just met for lunch and now had to leave and get back to work before their break was over.

"Yeah, I'll see you around."

With a final wave, both her and her family disappeared from view, leaving me and Julian left in the wake to deal with the emotional wreck that Sam had just become over the course of the last thirty minutes.

"Are you okay?" She nodded in a very feeble, unbelievable attempt at convincing me, which is the main reason why I asked her a second time; this time, more forcibly than the last, ensuring an honest answer to be had.

"Hey, come on. Are you alright?"

"You wouldn't get it, okay?" Her words hit me hard, and I'm not gonna lie, they hurt me a little bit. It wasn't that she wouldn't tell me, that part I understood. No, the part that hurt the most was the fact that she was absolutely right.

I had absolutely no idea what she was going through, and as much as I would try to convince the both of us that she was wrong, that I totally would get it, well that would just be a lie.

I had no idea what she was feeling, I had no idea what she needed, what she wanted, when she hurt, when she didn't…

And that is definitely what hurt me the most; because how the hell was I supposed to fix her if I couldn't even figure out what was wrong?

She was the one that ended up breaking the eye contact in an intense stare down we had going on with each other for a minute or two, turning her head to the side as she simultaneously puffed out her cheeks and turned a vibrant shade of lime green.

It was a classic sign for her to silently let me know that things were about to get messy.

"Are you gonna make it to the bathroom?" I didn't hesitate, getting myself instantly into action mode as the adrenaline pumped and the natural responses took over tride and true.

She nodded, holding her hand to her mouth as one final attempt to keep herself plugged up for the journey as she pushed herself upright, climbing out of bed and shuffling her skinny legs as fast as they could go in the direction of the bathroom.

"Okay, come on, you'll be fine, come on." I coached her gently, struggling to move under the weight of both her and her IV pole as I dragged both towards the bathroom, which, I constantly found myself cursing at times like these for being all the way on the other side of the room.

And alright, I know the rooms aren't exactly ballrooms, but the journey just seems to be that much longer when there's the threat of being puked on looming in the air overhead.

We could only move so quickly, and the added weight of everything bogging us down was slowing our progress more than I would liked.

And just as the potential for me getting puked on grew higher and higher, relief suddenly came.

I looked over as the feeling like a 50 pound weight had been lifted off my chest took over and found the source; Julian was crouched down, his lanky 6'4" frame reduced to support us short stuffs, both under 5'5" as he wrapped Sam's arm around the back of his neck so that we were able to practically float Sam into the bathroom, distributing her right in front of the toilet bowl, where she wasted absolutely no time grabbing onto the sides, leaning forward, and distributing everything that her stomach had in it into the awaiting water in front of her.

It seemed to go on forever. All I could do was watch and wait, expecting it to end soon, but getting no results that would prove my theory.

Is it possible for somebody to puke forever? Is it possible for that Vagus Nerve Reflex that I've learned so much about in these past few days to get so overworked that one day it just short circuits, turns on, and never turns back on again?

I was starting to think that, because it just kept, well… coming. I was surprised that a person was even able to hold that much stuff inside of them to actually be thrown up to begin with, and trust me, I have had a lot more experience with regurgitated stomach contents than I would ever care to mention to anybody.

"Brooke, will she be okay? Should I get a nurse?" Julian seemed to be thinking the same thing as he ascended into the room from his previous position in the door frame, afraid of coming inside for fear that he would get sick watching her get sick, thus creating a bigger problem on our hands than we already had.

"No, she's fine. We'll be fine." I waved his suggestion off, but even I was hesitant at my answer. It was no reassurance that the second I turned around, another wave of nausea struck Sam like a punch to the face, so that she fell, once again, face first into the toilet, simply adding to her already established collection.

I have never seen her so sick; and I couldn't help but put some of that blame on myself. Here I was, gallivanting around, boasting about how Sam hasn't been sick at all lately, about how the new drugs she was on were better, that her system was getting better at fighting them…

Looks like I jinxed it.

But then again, I couldn't be positive that all of this was coming strictly from the normal, everyday sickness of chemotherapy. No, I had the strangest feeling that something about the conversation that had just happened between Sam and Logan; the stress, the emotion, all of it, had somehow contributed to this dilemma we were currently finding ourselves stuck in.

My own muscles tensed in my own pain every time I watched Sam lean forward again, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried desperately to block out the moment as dry heave after dry heaved gripped her fragile body and her own stomach mutinied violently against her.

Sweat beaded her forehead as she struggled to find time to breath between each painfully powerful heave.

Her stomach had been sufficiently emptied several minutes ago, but still just refused to ease up on her, determined to just get everything that ever occupied it; food, water, gastric juices, probably even little bits of itself, back out.

Per usual, I was stuck in a rough spot, unable to do anything other than help her ride it out, sit at her side, rub circles into her back, and coach her with motivation until it was all over.

"Just breathe, honey, breathe through it. Nice deep breaths, in…" I demonstrated the deepest inhale I could, "And back out." I pushed the air out forcefully, making sure she felt it so that she would follow my lead.

I did the same thing a couple times over, acting as a guide for her to follow, just in case she'd forgotten how to do it herself as she took shaky breaths thorough her nose and even shakier exhales through her mouth.

"Good, good," I coached as she did it over and over again until finally, it seemed to start paying off, her muscles relaxed, her stomach made peace with her, and Sam deemed it safe to finally move away from the toilet and lean back against the wall where she closed her eyes and gasped for air, recuperating from the violent war that she had just fought within her very own body.

The tears were rolling freely down her cheeks and honestly, it didn't surprise me. In a different sort of way, I knew how she felt, I knew what it was like to just want to sit down and cry. The weakness, the helplessness, the feeling as if everything was crashing down around me, yeah, I felt that too.

But Sam, she had earned her right to cry.

Me, all I earned was my right to sit at her side, stay strong, and make sure that she knew that it was okay, that she would be okay.

"It's okay Sam, you're okay." I leaned against the wall next to her and put a very gentle arm around her shoulder, determined not to aggravate her stomach any further.

"Do you think you can manage any water?" She shook her head instantly at my question, with no hesitation as I practically heard her stomach churn at the mere thought of putting anything inside of it right now.

"Okay, that's okay… how about we get you back into bed then, huh?" I stood up, reaching down to make the move to support her by the undersides of her arms in order to lift her into a standing position but she gave me nothing but resistance in the form of dead weight.

"I don't think that I can, Brooke." There was a very limited amount of times where Sam downright told me that there was something that she didn't think she could do. That is why when she said it, I knew that she meant it. That's why when she said it, I got so frightened.

I dropped back down onto the floor, not exactly sure what to do, completely under the impression that I was about to sit on a bathroom floor next to my sick and ailing teenager for the next couple of hours…

"It's okay Brooke, I've got her…" And then my knight in shining armor entered.

Julian contorted himself so that he slipped effortlessly through the small space that I had a hard enough time fitting two people in.

Bending at the knees, I watched as, with pristine delicacy, Julian slid his arms underneath Sam's body with careful precision, being as gentle as he could not to jolt her, and raised her into the air; one arm under her knees, and one behind her upper back as she instinctively draped her arm around his neck and pulled herself closer into his chest.

Safety in more ways than one.

She hung limply like a wet noodle as Julian took slow, orchestrated steps from the bathroom, to the direction of Sam's bed, moving so lightly, that you would have thought he was carrying a newborn infant as opposed to a teenage girl.

The two of us worked as a team, working silently as I pulled the sheets off of Sam's bed and Julian lowered her with care onto the awaiting mattress, allowing me access to pull the blankets back up around her shoulders, tucking them gently underneath her body, only stepping away when I was completely satisfied that she was finally in a peaceful state of warm, painless sleep.

Her body shivered slightly for a second as she turned into the fetal position to accommodate for the best of her body head and her chest moved up and down irregularly for a couple of tense minutes where all I could do was watch and pray but then, finally, the automatic reflexes of her body began taking over in orchestrated movements as the epinephrine that had been pumping through her veins all day finally disintegrated, allowing for her homeostasis to restore itself, and then… she was asleep, the exhaustion of the day finally taking its toll on her.

Julian presented me with my chair that he pulled up to Sam's bedside and I took it gratefully, impressed by his ability to care for me and Sam.

It ceased to amaze me every single time, how I'd managed to run into a guy so incredibly perfect; because trust me, that's not like my luck, it's not like it at all.

"You were great with her, Julian." I praised him as I sunk into the thick cushions of my chair, suddenly feeling bad that Julian, the ultimate hero of the day had settled for a hard slab of wood with a thin piece of fabric doubling as a cushion to sit in.

But judging by his face, he didn't seem to mind. In fact, all he did was pull it closer to me, angling it in just the way so that I knew he could keep an eye on both me and Sam at the same time.

"Yeah well… you know I'd do anything for you guys."

"Yeah, I know." I adored that about him, and I hope the look I had plastered across my face currently effectively told him so.

"Do you think that she'll be okay?" His question was vague. I was having a difficult time deciphering whether he was talking about this particular mishap, or if he was hinting at the big picture. For simplicities sake, I chose the former.

"She'll be okay. She's just tired. It's been a long morning. She'll sleep it off, and when she wakes up, she'll be fine again." I think that the tone of my voice made me sound like I was trying harder to convince myself than I was Julian, which I guess would be accurate considering it was the truth…

I also couldn't help but pick up on the fact that Julian noticed the same thing I did.

"How about you; will you be okay?" I thought that to be a strange thing to ask. What do you mean will I be okay? I wasn't the one with cancer, I wasn't the one who had just puked my insides out and was expected to carry on and continue for another day, I wasn't the one that had the fact that I had to face my own death sooner rather than later written across my face…

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

Actually, it's been a while since I had thought myself to be classified as "fine". A long while if you count in terms of years.

I thought that I would be fine once. I thought I'd be fine when I found Lucas, when I'd convinced myself that we would live together forever… that didn't quite work out.

I thought I'd be fine when I moved back to Tree Hill, opened my own clothing store, decided to start life anew in my very own home time… yeah, that was a bust.

And most recently, I thought that I'd be fine as I started building my very own nuclear family, something I've always wanted more than anything my entire life. I thought I'd be fine as I began to feel the thresholds of solid love, but even that seemed to be teetering on edge these days.

Yes, it has in fact, been a very long while since I was fine, so to speak. But it's also been a long while since I've mastered putting on my disguising happy face and assure the skeptics otherwise.

Sure, there'd been a time when things were different, when I was younger, more naïve, and full of faith, belief, ideals, moralities.

I hung with the cool crowd because I thought they mattered. I prayed to God because I thought he was actually listening…

And look where that's gotten me. I am a miserable, dejected, cynical excuse for a human being.

I just wish that a person comes along soon that can drag me by the arm and help me get rid of these demons that seem to be following me around, relentless in their crusade against my happiness.

Please, somebody, anybody, come down here and open my eyes, because all I want is to be able to see again.


	18. You Can Breathe Now

**Sooo… I've been in kind of a writing funk lately, kind of having a hard time getting over the extreme case of writers block that has hit me. But here's what I've been getting stuck on (don't read if you don't want to know what happens!) I'm trying to explore Brooke and Julian's relationship and how it's being effected through all of this and I'm having a hard time so if you have any suggestions, let me know!**

**Anyway, hope everybody had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend, and as usual thanks to everybody for reading and double thanks to everybody that's reading and letting me know what you think. It's much appreciated.**

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Chapter 18: You Can Breathe Now

**Saturday, November 12****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

I swear to God I didn't sleep for a single second last night.

Forget the fact that I spent the majority of the time being sicker than I had ever been in my entire life, but then tack on how every single time that I closed my eyes, the only thing that I could see was little leukemia cells running amok inside of my entire central nervous system, ultimately destroying my life… very literally.

Can you tell that I'm having a little bit of anxiety about my test results coming in this morning?

The good news was that I was already one for two. Last night, somewhere in between the puking and the recovering, right after the nurses gave me enough anti-nausea medication to put me into a Compazine coma for the next month, but right before I fell into my long, sleepless night, Barbara, the newest addition to Tree Hill Memorial's oncology wing, was nice enough to come in and let me know that the blood work I'd spent the past twelve hours or so panicking over had come back clean and right on target which, at least, was a start.

Actually, I do believe that the exact words she used were "above average," which was good enough to give me that boost of confidence that I needed to actually survive last night, but unfortunately wasn't strong enough to help me comfortably sleep through it.

But still, as the clock continued to tick the morning away without so much as a word from Dr. Miller, the hypertension settled in again, and the amount of time I spent not breathing increased so exponentially that my chest tightened uncomfortably and I was more than certain that my face was starting to turn blue.

You see, you always hear the phrase being thrown around 'no news is good news,' which, of course, was designed for people like me in situations like this, but I've learned strictly from experience that the words no news is good news was something thought up by people who didn't know how else to comfort somebody when they knew that what they were saying was complete and total shit.

In the most extreme cases, when a doctor delivers no news, it probably just means that your loved one is lying dead in a morgue somewhere while all of the doctors and nurses are sitting in the back playing rock paper scissors in order to sort out which sorry son of a bitch had to be the one to go tell the family.

But when news comes fast, well that means that there's a rush, doctors in a hurry to get consent for a surgery or to figure out if a person has any allergies before pumping them with penicillin…

Sure, fast news means that there is a life hanging in the balance, but at the same time, it means that there is a life that could still be saved.

So you see, they should probably change that phrase, or better yet, cut it out of society all together, because as the clock ticked on… 10:00… 11:00… 12:00… the only prospects that I could think of just went from bad to worse.

Yup, all-in-all I was starting to think that my luck had just about run out.

Come on Dr. Miller, I was on a time limit here. There is after all, only a certain length of time that a human being can last without oxygen before it becomes fatal, and I had the strangest feeling that that time was rapidly coming to an end for me.

"Sam?" I jumped nearly two whole feet in the air, not because I was particularly surprised to hear my name echoing through the otherwise silent room, but because I'd gotten so used to keeping my ears wide open for this exact moment, only to be met with disappointment, that when sound finally did sweep through my ears, I hadn't been expecting it anymore, and it came as more of a shocker than I'd expected it to.

I guess I just thought that she had ditched out on me or something.

Besides, now that the time had actually come, I wasn't so sure that I actually was ready to hear it.

She walked in on her tip-toes, acknowledging and respecting the fact that Brooke and Julian were still fast asleep, wrapped up within each other's arms, smooshed inside of the same chair, folded into an awkward jumble of limbs so that I guess it could be described as spooning… if somebody took the spoon and bent it in half.

She came around to the opposite side of my bed, clutching between her hands a manila folder so thick that it could have passed as a dictionary.

I instantly recognized it as the folder of my life; my own assortment of personal information, compiled into one easy to read folder; a sort of Samantha Walker museum, if you will.

I've seen it a million times before, and I would probably see it a million times more after.

She lowered herself down into the vacant chair, adjusting so that she could properly shuffle through the files without scattering an entire forest full of paper across the already disgusting floor.

"I got the results of your spinal tap back this morning." She spoke with such a casual tone behind her voice that I almost let out an audible cry of pure frustration from it all.

She thumbed through each paper at an agonizing rate; one at a time in search for the needle in the haystack; surveying chart after chart of my entire life story looking for the correct chapter.

I couldn't help but wish that these things came equipped with an index or something. I was willing to bet that it would make situations such as these a lot easier for all parties involved.

I played the fortune teller as I waited, attempting to judge the possibilities based on the tone behind her voice, or her facial expression, or any tiny hint of a context clue that I would greatly appreciate her giving me right now, but I failed because I got absolutely nothing.

Then again, I never do, so I'm not really sure why I expected it.

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times; this woman should forget this whole doctor business and enter herself into a World Poker Tournament, because I bet she'd be good at it.

She'd probably make a hell of a lot more money than she ever would working in a county hospital, only a step above a general practitioner anyways.

"Blood count looked good; especially your white cells, which is great. Red blood cells are near normal, even your platelets are going back up…" She started reading off of the paper, sounding like she was thinking out loud more than she was actually talking to me, but that was okay; I was still waiting for the good part anyway.

"And… from the looks of things, your spinal fluid came back with absolutely no signs of cancer cells." She finally looked up from the mask of paperwork and smiled down at me. "Spinal tap came back negative."

Have you ever been hit with something really, really hard right in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of you?

Well, if you answered yes to the above question, then you would probably know all about those truly agonizing couple of seconds afterward where you struggle to fill your lungs with oxygen, but your poor body just can't keep up with the difference between the atmospheric pressure outside and your body pressure inside, so no matter how hard you try, you come up empty and basically just feel like you're about to die.

But the good thing is that finally, after you just lay there for a while, it all goes away. Eventually, everything will even itself out, you'll take a deep breath, get the satisfaction of a huge gulp of fresh air that restores your lungs back to its normal working state, and get overwhelmed with this feeling of just being born again.

Well, imagine that initial feeling, the one full of dread and terror lasting an entire 24 hours and then some. Now imagine how much more amazing it felt to take that one initial breath of fresh air again.

And if that's a concept that's just too out there for you to wrap your mind around it, I'll spare you the trouble of straining yourself and just let you know that it felt good.

It felt really, really good.

Tears of pure joy caught up with me and welled to the front of my eyes without me even trying to control them. Relief hit me like a ton of bricks. I was crying. I had just heard the best news I have ever heard in my entire life, and here I was, crying like a little girl.

"This is good news you know." The doctor peered up over the top of the chart, staring directly at me raising her eyebrows as she tried to figure out whether or not I had correctly interpreted the news that she had just delivered.

"I know, I know," I wiped my eyes in heated embarrassment but still, I embraced it; there were very, very few times in my life where I had the opportunity to shed tears of pure happiness. Yup, I think that I am going to enjoy this moment while it lasts.

"Okay… well, with this news, we can officially start planning your next phase of treatment now. I don't know if you want to wait until Brooke is awake, or…"

"No, no!" I yelled with a sense of urgency thick in my voice. There was no way in hell that I was waiting. I have been waiting; I've been waiting for almost three weeks now. No, I think I was ready to put waiting to the side for once.

I reached over the side of my bed, extended my arm out as far as I could possibly stretch it and began to deliver swift, hefty blows on top of the mass pile of limbs that was Brooke and Julian's sleeping bodies, not really caring who I hit. As long as I woke somebody up, I would be happy.

I continued my bodily assault upon the two lovebirds until I was absolutely positive that my attempts had been successful, which didn't happen until I heard Julian deliver a deep, extended groan of annoyance, displeased in his arousal as he slowly slipped out of dream state while Brooke, in a total opposite fashion, shot up instantly, jumping a foot in the air with such alarm that her foot made contact with Julian's back so hard, that the poor guy rolled right off the chair, landing with a resounding thud on the solid ground underneath him.

My eyes widened in pure shock and amusement as Brooke scrambled to help Julian off the floor, leaping to her feet and grabbing him under the arms as if her scrawny ass was going to lift a 6'4" guy all by herself.

"Oh my God Julian, I'm so sorry, Sam what's…" Her sentence was cut off as she looked up at my face, immediately noticing the residual tears that had just compiled underneath my eyelids.

She entered instant panic mode, all other parts of her brain shut off as she darted towards me, once again, dropping poor Julian who was already getting his ass kicked two minutes into his day as he, once again, landed on the tile with a loud thud.

"Sam what's wrong? What happened? What's going on?" Her eyes darted between me and my doctor, both of whom were desperately trying, and failing to keep a straight face on as this debacle unfolded in front of us.

I was the first to break. I mean, I couldn't help but laugh at Brooke, in all of her hot mess glory as she freaked in front of me. Of course, there was that little part of me that felt kind of bad for sending her blood pressure through the roof for the millionth time this week alone…

Poor Brooke, I'm going to give that woman a stroke before she turns thirty.

"The lumbar puncture came back negative Brooke." The doctor cleared the air for her, hoping an authoritative voice would get her to relax for a little while whilst simultaneously bringing her back to a normal state of functioning.

It appeared to work; something inside of Brooke clicked like a light switch as her bulging eyes shrunk back into their sockets and her muscles visibly relaxed as her body began to finally recognize that there was no immediate threat to be had and that it could finally diminish the ever-increasing amount of adrenaline coursing through her veins.

"That's good." Brooke whispered quietly to herself as the gears starting churning and realization started striking.

"That's good!" She yelled. Literally, yelled her approval to everybody within a five mile radius, frolicking around the room in celebration delivering hugs to everyone within it, including poor Julian who was still trying to nurse his bruised pelvis from his spot on the floor.

It took a couple of seconds for her excitement to die down as her face turned downwards and she took a step back, retreating slightly, nervous that she was getting her hopes up a little bit too high because the both of us have learned from plenty of experience that it was best not to get your hopes up because more times than not, it just ended badly.

"That is good, right?"

The doctor laughed instantaneously at Brooke's reaction, allowing Brooke to put her guard down once again and go back to beaming in absolute joy.

"Yes, that's very good." She smiled eagerly, seemingly enough just as excited as we were about the news. "It means that we can go ahead now and continue on to the second phase of Sam's treatment regimen, which we have to start thinking about considering your first round of chemotherapy is almost over."

It was true, in three days time I would be officially finished with my first chemo round. It was crazy really, but you know what they say; time flies when you're having… whatever.

"So what is that exactly?" It was me who actually spoke this time; seems like the only time I can actually gather the guts to open my mouth is when the prospective future delivers good news which, up until this point, was never.

But there's a first time for everything, they always say.

"More chemo," She tried to say it in the most care-free manner she possibly could, knowing full well that the news wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, hoping that a jovial tinge to her voice would somehow possibly make it better.

It didn't work.

She must have seem my face visibly sink because she instantly stood and shook her head at me. "Now don't knock it right away. It will be much less intense than the induction chemo was. Trust me; you've gotten through the hardest part."

I still couldn't help but be not as certain as she was but then again, she had gotten me this far; maybe it was time that I returned the favor with a little bit more trust.

"It's called consolidation chemotherapy. Basically, if the induction therapy is successful in putting you into remission, which, based on your latest blood work, I'm very hopeful about, this upcoming round will help prolong the remission, hopefully on a permanent basis by blasting away any residual cancer cells that may have been left behind after round one. Now, these cells aren't visible in the blood work that we do because there are so few of them, but, if they do exist, even one cancerous cell can send you right back to square one and you'll relapse. So the hopes are, after round two, you will be completely cancer free with a much smaller chance of the leukemia ever coming back."

This sounded big. Of course, half of it went straight over my head, but the half that remained on a relatively similar plane as the rest of my body sounded big.

"So what does that involve exactly?" It was Brooke who took up speaking again. I have effectively been silenced once again.

"It's a five day course; three days of a combination of drugs; high dose Cytarabine like what you're getting now in combination with two drugs; Toposar and Daunomycin, then a one day break, and then one more day of the same drug combination… so its shorter than what you're doing now with about the same recovery time between cycles." I tried to keep up but I was still trying to wrap my head around why all of these drugs sounded like they were named after some weird science fiction character and before I knew it, she was a mile ahead of me again.

Whatever it was, it sure as hell didn't sound like it was going to be any better than what I was doing now, contraire to popular belief. In fact, I was puking just thinking about it.

"So after those five days, you'll obviously be in a pretty severe state of immunosuppression, just like you are now, so we'll need about two or three weeks between cycles to get your blood counts up again, and then we'll repeat. All together, we'll do this probably about three to four times, depending on what your lab results look like through the course of the treatment. Just remember, the more intensive the treatment is, the higher the prospect of a complete cure. So just keep telling yourself that we really do want to attack this head on."

I nodded; I got that part, really I did. Even on my worst days, there was never a single second that I regretted making the decision to receive treatment, and I planned on continuing to receive treatment until I either got better or died… whichever came first.

"So what happens after that?" Brooke again, always prepared with a book full of questions no matter what. "I mean, is it over after that? The leukemia will be gone, or… whatever."

And this had been another medical terminology course with Brooke Davis. The word remission has now officially been replaced with; "or whatever."

Dr. Miller paused, thinking about her answer as she sighed. Translation; she wasn't about to tell us something that we wanted to hear.

"Do you remember the day that Sam was first diagnosed? When I told you that AML has a very high remission rate but at the same time a very high relapse rate as well?" Brooke, Julian, and I all nodded our heads simultaneously. There was a very little chance that any of us would ever forget the details of the day that I was first diagnosed.

"The thing is, chemotherapy may not be the only thing that Sam needs to make sure she gets into remission and stays in remission." I contorted my face into a look of angry confusion. If this isn't what I needed, than what the hell was I sitting here going through this hell for? What, was I doing chemo for shits and giggles? Puking my brains out every day so that the doctors and nurses can get a good laugh?

"After the next round of chemo is over, we can go one of two ways. More chemotherapy, usually for a range of anywhere from a year to two years to try to make you stay in remission is one possible route. A second, much shorter option; is a stem cell transplant, which is usually the best bet when the donor is a direct relative."

A few moments ago, I had been so relieved, so excited about the prospect of being so close to having this whole experience behind me, but my hopes were being dashed rapidly. With absolutely no chance of getting a related donor for a stem cell transplant, it looked like my only option would be another two years of chemotherapy, a.k.a. another two years that I really, really was not looking forward to.

"Um… I don't exactly have any relatives…" I spoke awkwardly, always feeling a little bit strange about having to explain my train wreck of a family situation to anybody.

"That's okay," She assured me, trying to keep my hopes up as it became visibly obvious that they were dwindling rapidly. "We can dig through the donor bank, test anybody really to see if they're a match; but the truth is, when you get the transplant from an unrelated donor, the chance of it being rejected is much higher. The problem with that is if you do decide on the transplant, and it does fail, and the leukemia does come back, then fighting it with chemotherapy will be a lot… less successful." She chose her words carefully, not exactly coming straight out by saying that if I did do this transplant, and it did fail, I didn't have a prayers chance, but lacing her words with carefully placed implication to get the point across… to me at least.

"Now, I know that this is a big decision to make. That's why I'm presenting it to you right now. You have a few weeks, so I recommend spending some time thinking it over, talking about it, asking questions… Just remember, you don't have to rush to any conclusions here."

I remained stone still, keeping my eyes affixed on the doctor as the electrical impulses fired out of control within my brain, resulting in a giant cluster-fuck overwhelming my mind as I tried to wrap my head around the whirlwind of the potential impact of an enormous decision that had just been laid out on my shoulders.

Using my peripherals, I was able to make out Julian as he laced his fingers together, wringing his hands out while Brooke stared straight up at the ceiling, her head leaned so far back that I was afraid of her neck snapping underneath the strain.

"So remember, you don't need to make the decisions now, and as we progress with the treatments, the results of your labs will help us to pick what the probable most successful route will be."

I looked over towards Brooke and Julian, both of whom returned the look, locking us into a little telekinetic triangle of unsaid decision making, ultimately coming to a mutual agreement based on facial expressions and nodding our heads accordingly.

We would take the doctor's advice and worry about the present before we got too over-concerned with the future… for now, anyway. When the time came to make the ultimate decision, I was certain that we would know what to do, and I was certain that it would be the right one.

"Okay…" Brooke nodded and spoke slowly as her head slowly processed the next possible steps, "I think that's doable… we can do that." She sounded like a coach trying to convince her little league team that in the bottom of the 9th, with 2 outs, and down by 10 runs, that there was a chance that her team could come from behind and win it all.

"We can do this," She repeated again before turning towards me for the seal of approval. "Right Sam?"

I nodded. I'd made it this far, hadn't I? Why stop now?

"Yeah," I assured her. "We can do this."

"Okay, sounds good." The doctor voiced her approval with my persistence, sounding convinced that she had gotten the point she was trying to get across, across. "Well, I have a few more patients I have to go see. I'll be back in a couple of hours to take you off this junk." She promised, pointing up to the collage of chemotherapy drugs dangling above my head, mocking my every move as they swung slightly underneath the breeze of all the people walking back and forth.

"Are you all set for now?" I shrugged and nodded, watching as Brooke and Julian made identical movements to mine; we were all okay for now, but I think at this point, it was just whether or not we'd be okay later that truly worried me.

But that was yet to come, impossible to see, and horrifying to think about as with each passing second, I got a little bit closer to that ominous fork in the road that would either rise me up with one fall swoop of glory, or else knock me down straight into the path of the fire itself.

"Strange how fast this is all going, huh?" Brooke asked me a few seconds after the doctor had safely exited the room, leaving us all in the wake of all of the impossible-to-answer questions she'd left behind.

"Yeah…" I responded as my brain continued to fumble around with all of the different possibilities. "I wonder what will happen after this…"

"Well whatever it is, we'll make the best decision we can, Samson." Julian assured me, putting a dramatic emphasis on the word 'we', assuring me that I wasn't going to be alone when it came down to making the biggest decision of my entire life.

"Let's just worry about getting you through this next cycle of chemo for now and we'll take it from there." He tried to de-stress me, you see, he was starting to understand the simple concept I like to call 'Murphy's Law of Chemotherapy'. The more stress your under at the beginning of a treatment, the more sick you'll be later and vice-versa.

Really, he was already trying to make my future a little bit brighter just by helping prevent an all out puke-a-rama like we'd had yesterday. He was making me feel better already about the fact that I knew that both he and Brooke would be there when it came down to the bigger choices.

"How does it feel?" He asked me about my feelings. Nobody ever asked me about my feelings anymore. I guess that they were afraid that they would catch themselves in this trap of emotionally charged cancer kid… understandable, I guess.

Either way, this was a nice change of pace.

"Official…" I'm not sure if that made sense or not, but it was the best I could come up with, and judging by the way Julian nodded at me, he got the message I was trying to convey.

But it was true; a few days ago, I was the new kid on the block; the newborn infant, still asleep and caught up in this horrible nightmare that I couldn't seem to wake up from.

But now, well now I had grown to the age where life became a routine. I had finally woken up, I had finally understood that this isn't just going to go away; this was real, this was my life. These were my problems, and this is my fight.

The good news in all of this is that after all of the bad news that I seem to have been getting lately, things finally seemed to be taking an uphill turn, which I could appreciate.

It was a nice change of events, a nice motivation booster, a nice reminder that this couldn't be all bad, and most of all, it was a nice inspiration that leaned in to tell me that maybe, just maybe, I would be able to survive this entire journey after all.

* * *

**BROOKE**

There came a part of the day, usually at about the same time every day, that we would hit a string of hours stuck right smack in the middle of the day where things get really, really boring.

I mean, before that, you have the hustle and bustle of the every-day morning routine; Sam gets her medication, another chemo round starts, there's vitals, tests, and the daily update from the doctor… it was all very exciting.

But then, at about ten, things slow down until Sam, Julian, and I break off and do our own thing for a while until about eleven, when finally, we're so bored that we can't even do that and become limited to doing nothing other than holding back our tears of shear boredom.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, this pattern continues for an agonizing two hours or so when, usually at around one on the dot, just like clockwork, Sam's head will start pounding and the room will start to spin as the drugs truly succeed in finding their way throughout her entire system.

On really exciting days, by two o'clock, she'll start puking. On the less exciting days, all she'll do is fall asleep.

I was pleased to announce that today was one of those less exciting days where Julian and I had both been relieved of bathroom duty, instead assigned to the much simpler task of standing guard as Sam slept the late-afternoon away and I successfully completed the sixth book that I've read since we'd been in here while Julian compulsively checked the e-mails on his Blackberry every five minutes or so…

I put my completed book down on the bedside table, and I was just starting to get nervous that I wouldn't have anything to do for the rest of the day, when Sam's cell phone started going off from its position plugged into the wall next to me.

I shot upwards and grabbed at it, my fingers fumbling to shut the ringer off as fast as I could, nervous that the noise would wake up Sam, subsequently creating a bad situation that nobody wanted to be in, because trust me, when Sam didn't get her appropriate amount of sleep during the day, it meant that she wasn't going to get the appropriate amount of sleep during the night either, creating a long night for all of us that I knew nobody was prepared to have.

I looked down at the caller ID, curious to see who it may be calling, but the name that she read across the banner confused me more than it did clarify things.

"It's Rebecca." I told Julian, a mixture of shock, and I hate to admit it, but a little bit of contempt written behind my voice.

I had absolutely no idea that the two of them had been keeping in touch since Sam moved back in with me and now, I couldn't help but wonder what else I didn't know.

How long has it been since Sam had talked to her? Did this woman have any idea what the hell her daughter has been up to these past weeks? And if she did, well forgive me for saying this but where the hell was she?

I stared at the phone for a couple more seconds, debating what I should do with this incoming call. Should I answer it? Should I leave it and let Sam find it later on when she woke up? Or should I be really crazy and paranoid and ignore the call while simultaneously permanently erasing it from her phone's memory banks so that Sam would never even know about it?

I know, I know, it was insane, but since the day that Sam made the decision to get to know her birth mother a little bit more by moving in with her, I couldn't help but be a little bit threatened by the woman. I mean, was it possible that Rebecca might be considering asking her back? Even more important, would it be possible that Sam would accept this hypothetical offer, even after all we've been through together?

The majority of my mind raged with a defiant 'no', but the minority 'yes' somehow still stuck out to me more powerfully, enticing a sliver of fear to slide through my veins.

"Are you going to talk to her?" Julian asked me.

That was a very good question; was I going to talk to her?

"Yeah," I finally answered, only because I didn't want Julian to picture me as that crazy, paranoid, jealous freak that I currently saw myself as. "I'll be right back."

I adhered obediently to the recommended 'no cell phones in the bedrooms' policy instated here at Tree Hill Memorial and stepped towards a secluded corner in the hallway, finding a seat, and finally answering the phone that was still ringing from the depths of my palm.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Brooke?" It's been a few months since I heard her voice. At the end of August, the day after Sam asked me if her old bedroom was still free, her and I had a brief… very brief discussion; a simple verification of the situation and an announcement that Sam would be at my doorstep with all of her things the following morning. That was the last time I'd heard her voice.

I heard no signs of contempt, no hidden animosity, no awkwardness present over the fact that I was currently mothering her daughter. It kind of just made me feel worse over the fact that I was harboring mixed emotions of misgiving over a simple phone call.

I mean, if anybody had any right to be jealous, it was Rebecca Dennis.

You see, after Sam left, it was quickly made aware to me that the reason behind the move was one of pure curiosity; the girl just wanted to get to know her real mother, and I think that just about anybody could truly appreciate that hidden desire.

Sure, it was hard to let her go, I'm not saying that it wasn't, but every kid should have the opportunity to know her parents, and that's why it had to happen.

I just think that the strangest part was, after curiosity waned, and realizations discovered, Sam ultimately decided that her real home had been with me the entire time.

In the last few weeks that Sam lived with Rebecca, I couldn't help but notice that the number of visits she graced me with would increase exponentially with every day that passed until it got to the point where she would be sitting at my counter every night over dinner, fighting tears as she explained to me how confused she was over the fact that she knew she should want to stay with her real mother, but her heart was yelling at her to come back to me.

And all I would do was nod and listen attentively, assuring her that I would always be there for her no matter what she decided on while in my mind couldn't help but leap with joy with the knowledge that the two were struggling to hold a permanent relationship, and as selfish as that may be, I couldn't help but be ecstatic about the final decision that Sam eventually came to.

Even if that did mean that I couldn't help but be extremely uncomfortable with the current predicament I was in.

"Yeah, hi Rebecca, this is Brooke."

Ultimately, as far as I can tell anyway, there had been no hostilities, no hard feelings, no fights… Sam returning to live with me had become an exchange that went as peacefully as I could have imagined, and with everyday that had passed since then, Sam and I managed to get closer and closer… and then some.

Since then, I'd considering the idea of making the whole thing official a couple of times, the thing was, every time I got close to asking Sam about it, I would remember just how awkward it had been the last time I mentioned the big "A" word, and I would back down.

The papers, straight from the state of North Carolina itself, were still sitting in the back of the junk drawer in my kitchen. They had been filled out for months; I'd already gone through the notions; interviews from the adoption agency, a full home inspection, the background check, the letters of recommendation that said I made an excellent mother to Sam… shit, I even did the psychological evaluation which, somehow, I managed to pass.

Now the only thing that was missing was my ability to gather up the courage to talk to Sam about it.

"I'm sorry to bother you, I was just calling to tell Sam that I was cleaning up the house before and I found some of Sam's things that she left over here. I don't know if she wanted to pick them up or anything…"

She didn't know. That's the first impression I got after she spoke, anyway. No, there was no way in hell that she had any clue that at this very minute, she was talking to me as I stood outside of her daughter's hospital room, grappling with the decision of how to go about handling her next chemotherapy rounds.

After that realization entered my mind, I found it even harder than it already was to continue concentrating on what she was trying to say anything, because now, on top of the awkwardness that was already filling every corner of my brain capable of carrying out my attentive listening skills, I also had this giant burden of this enormous secret between us.

I'd mentioned this dilemma to Sam once before. I had casually snuck it into conversation, brought it up just as Sam began criticizing my inability to call Victoria and tell my mother. Obviously, it was a conversation that needed to be stopped before it started, so I pulled the old subject-change and brought up the notion of whether or not she was planning on telling Rebecca.

But she was just like me in all the right, and unfortunately, all the wrong ways, which is why she too chose to avoid the subject. But ever since then, I had been under the strange impression that Sam wasn't about to go out of her way to tell Rebecca; or anybody else for that matter.

But now, as we engaged in direct conversation, I couldn't help but think differently. I mean, as strange as the relationship may be, what it boiled down to was the fact that this woman was Sam's mother. Did she have the right to know the truth? Or had she given up that right at the same time she'd given up Sam?

"Oh, um… thanks, yeah, maybe I'll swing by and pick it up." The tension was mounting with every second that passed, and I didn't know if it was just me or not, but I was starting to get the feeling that she could feel it too.

"Actually…" Her voice wavered as she spoke; yup, she definitely felt it too. "I was wondering, maybe if Sam doesn't mind, if she would come. It's just… I wouldn't mind seeing her."

Shit… well this is a trap if I'd ever seen one.

"Um… listen, Rebecca…" I had no idea what to say or where I was going to go with this one so my voice faltered off, instantly giving off the wrong idea.

"It's okay, Brooke, I understand if you don't want Sam to…"

"No, no, it's nothing like that." I told her as the guilt pressing down against my conscious began to work its magic on my notoriously loud mouth. "It's just… it's just…" Well, here goes nothing I guess.

"Sam… she's sick." I took it slow; what other way was there to do it, right?

"Oh," Rebecca's voice told me that she thought that she had stuck realization right on the head, but I knew that she had absolutely no idea. "Well maybe I can just drop it off some other time then." Yup, I was right. She had no clue what I was about to throw at her.

"Listen Rebecca, I'm really sorry that we didn't get a hold of you about this sooner, but… Sam has cancer. She was diagnosed with leukemia a few weeks ago."

There I said it. I shut up my mouth and held my breath in hope that I'd said it the right way; as gentle as I possibly could.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line so that after a while, I wasn't sure whether or not I had left or speechless or if she just hung up on me.

"Are you alright?" I asked hesitantly into the phone, not exactly sure if I was actually going to get a response back.

"Uh… yeah, yeah… um… how is she?" This conversation was getting stranger and stranger by the minute. I was starting to regret my decision to answer the phone.

"She's doing okay," I answered, bringing a bit of genuine honesty to the table for what seemed like the first time this whole conversation. "She's almost finished with her first round of chemotherapy." I decided to stick with the basic facts, the idea in mind that as long as I stuck to that and avoided the emotional aspect of it all, I would be fine.

There was another long pause in which I didn't know whether or not I should keep going, or wait for her to reply back to me.

"Listen," I spoke when I was finally certain that she wasn't going to. "If you want, maybe to come and see her… she's at Tree Hill Memorial… she's going to be here for a while, and I think she'll like to see you." Was I stepping out of line there? I couldn't help but think that I was, especially considering she was probably still recovering from the last blow I'd delivered upon her.

Maybe one day, I'll learn to shut my mouth. But you know what, today is not going to be that day.

"Um… listen Brooke… I don't think… that's not really… I mean… it's not really my thing." She stumbled over her words looking for the best way to express how she felt, but either she hadn't found it, or there simply was no right way to say it, because I felt as if I had just been slapped across the face as I grasped what she was trying to convey; basically, I shouldn't wait up for her arrival.

I had known from the beginning that Rebecca Dennis was not a confrontational person; it had been obvious from the day Sam was born, but still, the shock caused my jaw to fall open and hang to the floor and before I knew it, my anger, which had become very testy these past few weeks ignited, causing my blood to boil underneath my skin. All of the sympathy I had previously felt for the woman vanished on the spot.

It was one thing to walk away from a problem; it was another to walk away from your own flesh and blood as she fought for her very life.

"What do you mean?" I took a deep breath and decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I had misheard her, or at the very least, misinterpreted what she was trying to say.

"Listen, I hope that Sam will be okay, really I do, it's just… I can't… I don't…" Her sentence drifted away before she had the opportunity to complete it, hopefully realizing just how pathetic and lame she sounded at the moment as she proclaimed her plan to walk away from her daughter for the second time in her life.

I didn't know what to say, I didn't know how to respond; I wanted to yell, I wanted to scream, I wanted to reach through the phone and shake some sense into the woman I was talking to, because her priorities suddenly seemed very out of whack to me.

"I'll drop her things off at your house." She told me when I didn't say anything.

A strange noise came out of my mouth; something in between a grunt and a mumble. I was so angry, I couldn't even speak; and trust me, that never happens to me. I'm notorious for running my mouth when rage sets in.

"But… but what about Sam?" I finally blurted out, probably a little bit louder than I should have.

"I'm sorry, I can't… I'm sorry." She apologized over and over again and even though I truly did believe that deep down in her heart of hearts, she was very apologetic over the fact that she was too weak to suck it up for her sick child, but unfortunately for her, I was fresh out of sympathy.

"What do you mean you can't? Your daughter is sick in a hospital and you can't even…" My angry rant was cut off suddenly by a click and a dial tone. I had been hung up on.

I let out a small yell of frustration, choosing to hang up my phone by throwing it against the wall. I was so pissed that the sound of my phone crunching against the cement and the sight of the crack that ran across the length of the LCD screen actually satisfied me, leaving me to feel slightly better than I had mere moments ago.

I walked, no, stomped would be the better word to use back into Sam's room. The girl was freshly awake in her bed and I couldn't be sure whether or not she had woken up on her own accord, or if my angry tirade, which I'm sure could have been heard down the length of the hallway disturbed her, but either way, the second I walked in the door, I noticed that both her and Julian's guards instantly went up, their faces displaying looks of nervousness that I was going to blow a fuse at any second.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked me.

I took a couple of deep breaths as I looked down at her, marveling at her strength and resolve while simultaneously deciding that those characteristics were not inheritable factors because at a mere sixteen years old, Samantha Walker was a stronger person than her mother would ever be.

Ever since Sam had come back from living with her, I was in constant fear that there would always be that little piece of Rebecca lingering over Sam's head, that Sam would always see her as her true mother, that one day, that little piece would compile into a big picture and Sam would decide that maybe her moving back in with me was a mistake after all.

But now, that fear was gone. To me, it was as if it had suddenly become official; I was the one taking care of her, I was the one supporting her, I was the one sitting stubbornly at her sick bedside every waking minute of every single day… and as far as I was concerned, I was Sam's mother, and she was my daughter.

I liked this feeling. It was very… freeing.

"How'd it go?" Julian whispered, cutting in between Sam's question and my answer.

I took a moment and snuck a glance between the two, picking up on Sam's confusion and Julian's curiosity. This day was getting very overwhelming very quickly.

I sat and exhaled deeply.

"What's going on?" Sam finally asked. I think Julian and I were making her nervous. She probably thought that I had just come back from talking to her doctor about something that had gone terribly wrong because I was willing to place a bet that never in her wildest dreams would she ever imagine that I would ever have the conversation that I just had.

"Sam…" I started there because it was the introduction that seemed to work best for me. "While you were asleep, Rebecca called you on your phone." I tried to ease myself into it, but Sam caught on instantly.

"You told her…" She spoke in a monotonous tone, revealing absolutely no emotion that would help me in my quest to figure out whether or not that had been an angry "you told her" or an, I'm just simply stating a fact because I already know what's going on "you told her."

I took it as the latter because I liked that option better.

"Well, she called to tell me that you left some stuff over at her house and then she kind of… tricked me."

"Tricked you?" Sam asked me skeptically, a trickle of humor escaping from the back of her throat indicating to me that maybe, just maybe, I didn't screw up as badly as I had initially thought… but then again, I hadn't got to the good part of the story yet.

"Yes, tricked me." I stated firmly, trying to defend myself from Sam's incessant tormenting. "And then… I kind of invited her to come visit you." I was slow in my approach, putting a slight inclination behind my voice as I put a look on my face that told everybody looking how unsure I was with myself at the moment.

She raised her eyebrow high at me as her mouth opened a little, apparently shocked by the fact that I would ever extend such an invitation.

"So… is she coming?" I let out a steep exhale as I weaved my fingers over the top of my head to get the bangs out of my face so that the look of sympathy on my face was readily apparent as I shook my head from side to side.

"I'm sorry, Sam." For a second, she looked hurt, offended; but still, it only lasted a second, because after that, she became aware of the fact that she had let her guard down and displayed her best 'I don't give a shit' face, as if she thought that I would think that she'd be totally okay with the fact that she was just abandoned for about the millionth time in her entire life.

"It's okay," She told me, but I declared a firm objective in the manner, sitting myself on the end of her bed and reaching out as far as my arm would stretch until my hand rested upon her knee.

"I don't think it is, Sam." Maybe I was pushing things out of proportion, maybe it wasn't my place to try to get her just as angry over the entire situation as I was, but in all honesty, I didn't think that what Rebecca had just done to her was anywhere near okay, and it was my job to let Sam know that.

"You know, I think that it's okay to be upset or angry. I know I would be… hell, I am."

She laughed a little bit and averted her gaze down towards her blankets as she began to pick all of the loose threads up out of their stitching.

"You didn't rip her a new one, did you?" She asked me. When I didn't answer right away and put my guilty face on, she just shook her head and put her hands up. "Never mind, I don't want to know." She joked, but it was only because she knew that I had.

"You know, I kind of always knew that Rebecca had a hard time dealing with her problems… I think that's one of the big reasons that I came back home." She told me, "Trust me, I was angry, I'm not anymore…" She paused and took a loud, deep breath. "Why do you think I never called her?"

I guess that her explanation made sense; she had after all, experienced this before first hand, for several months in fact. Me? Well I was new to this. And I guess I just hadn't been expecting it like Sam had been.

"Are you alright?" I asked her after a moment of silence. I'd gotten through the first obstacle of actually telling Sam the news, and now I was rapidly approaching the second one; making sure that Sam hadn't been permanently scarred emotionally from this whole experience.

"I'm fine, Brooke," She assured me, putting on the best convincing tone that she could possible muster. "I don't need Rebecca, really… I've got you."

A long time ago, about six months to be exact, even though it felt like six years, I remember Sam telling me that she believed that Rebecca was a genuinely good person, continuing to tell me that she wanted to move in with her, get the opportunity to know her real mom a little bit better.

I'd given the woman the benefit of the doubt and agreed. She had after all, spawned one of the best kids I had ever known in my entire life, so how bad could she be, right?

I accepted the fact that maybe it was just that at sixteen years old, Rebecca Dennis just wasn't ready to be a mother. But there was a statute of limitations to my timeline of understanding, because at thirty two, it was more than obvious to me that she still wasn't ready, and she probably never would be.

Sam's words sparked something inside of me. It got me thinking; the first time I had asked Sam for her permission for me to adopt her; I had blurted it out totally unexpected, totally unplanned, at the worst possible time, and with the barricade of Rebecca Dennis standing right between the two of us. But this time, I was going to blurt it out totally unexpected, totally unplanned at the worst possible time, but with nothing but the open road and the clear blue sky standing in our way.

"Sam, listen, this whole thing… well… it got me thinking… I know we've been down this road before, but I think now, I mean timing wise… it just makes more sense…" I rambled on aimlessly and I could see Sam getting confused trying to keep up with me. "It's just that, these past few weeks I realized just how badly I want us to be a real family." My eyes welled with tears as I kept going, watching as Sam's eyes softened as she began to understand just where I was getting at.

"Sam, I want to adopt you. What do you think?"


	19. Two To The Chest To Remember

**Okay so to make up for making you guys wait forever for this, I made this chapter super, and almost annoyingly long. So I hope you enjoy!**

**Anddd a lot of people have been asking me about throwing Jack in the mix. Don't worry, I have a plan for him but it's a little into the future so he definitely will be making an appearance, but that appearance will be in a few chapters. **

**One more thing, just a special shout out to everybody who threw ideas my way, I appreciate it and definitely am going to try my hardest to put them in.**

Chapter 19: Two to the Chest to Remember, One to the Head to Forget

**Sunday, November 13****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

One day left.

That little reminder was going to be the only thing that was going to get me through this day. As long as I sat here and kept saying it to myself, I was certain that I was going to be able to survive this day.

One. Day. Left.

I repeated the simple phrase over and over again like a broken record in the back of my mind as I watched Sam's doctor pull the plug out on her second to last chemotherapy round in this first cycle of pure hell.

It should have been a happy time for us all; a time to celebrate the fact that we'd somehow survived this entire experience without completely losing our minds, but unfortunately, any trace of joy that any of us had left inside of ourselves was currently being overshadowed by the fact that Sam had spent the majority of the morning getting sick to the point that the nursing staff had been forced to drug her into a stupor all morning, maxing her out on pain meds before lunch time hit.

"Look on the bright side, at least this will be the last time you'll be sick like this for a while, huh?" Dr. Miller tried her best attempt at throwing a well placed joke into the mix, but Sam was just too concerned with the bottom of her emesis basin to actually appreciate what the woman was trying to do for her.

But despite everything, I couldn't help but notice Sam's face as she looked up briefly from her bucket, and I swear to it, I actually saw her give the doctor a hint of a smile.

I lurked in the corner and couldn't help but give a slight grin myself as I watched the interaction, allowing it to spark the memory of the last time I'd seen her this genuinely happy; it seemed like so long ago now, when the reality of it was, it was barely 24 hours ago that I asked Sam her permission to be adopted by me, that she accepted the request with a broad smile and strong promises of beginning our tightly bound, if not strangely bizarre little family.

* * *

"_Sam, I want to adopt you, what do you think?" The moments that followed, I quickly noticed, were to become a slow, arduous wait.__ First, Sam's eyes widened into flying saucers, then, her mouth dropped open so far, I swear I saw her jaw hit her knees below her for a moment._

_In fact, it had taken her so long to finally speak, that for a second there, I thought that maybe she was going to say no._

"_Really?" I watched as a small hint of a glow lit up behind her otherwise pale cheeks, and her face contorted back to normal appearance as she put her guard back up, because I knew for a fact, the majority of the time that this poor girl had gotten her hopes up, she'd just been shot right back down again. _

_It was my goal to change that; right here, right now._

_So I nodded my head and put my best assuring smile on my face as I responded to her skepticism._

"_Of course, Sam; you know, I mean, after all that we've been through together, I don't know… how many real families get to go through all of the fun and excitement that we get to, right? I just thought… I don't know, I thought it would be nice to just go ahead and make it official."_

_I started tapping my feet nervously against the tile floor as I shied a glance in Sam's direction, waiting for her answer._

_The seconds ticked away like hours, until slowly but surely, the smile on her face spread wider and wider until it seemed like her mouth had become large enough to stretch from ear to ear._

"_I think I'd like that." She nodded, her response much more enthusiastic this time around than the first time I had asked her, leading me to believe that this time, things had gone better than the last._

"_Really?" This time, it was my turn to ask and be a skeptic, because I swear, after all of this, I don't think I could deal with being shot down a second time._

"_Yeah! Yes, I would love for you to adopt me." I didn't think it was possible, but her smile widened even further, her head bobbing up and down with such vigor that I was surprised that it simply didn't snap off of her neck and roll away._

_My mind was racing with a whirlwind of excitement; she said yes, she wanted us to be a family just as much as I did… she said yes._

_I watched her for a couple seconds… my new daughter, as she settled down in her position in her bed and began to open up the flood gates, a couple stray tears escaping from the corners of her eyes._

"_What! What's wrong? Is something wrong?" I panicked; five seconds into our officially established family, and she was already crying. Great._

"_Relax Brooke, nothing's wrong, it's just… this feels so right." Her eyes continued to glaze as she gave a strong nod to prove her point. "This, I mean; us being a family… I've always wanted a family, and I mean, you know how it goes… the older a kid gets without getting adopted, I mean… after a while, I guess I kind of just lost faith."_

_I took a couple steps closer to her and sat myself down at the foot of her bed, listening attentively as I put a strong hand firmly on one of her knees._

"_I guess it's just… I've never had anybody who didn't just give up on me." She finished her speech, pausing to allow me room to stand up and wrap my arms firmly around her small frame, leaning into her as she returned my embrace with equal enthusiasm._

_All of a sudden, Sam's head fit even more perfectly into the nook between my neck and my shoulder than it had before. All of a sudden, we were even more of a match made in heaven._

"_Well," I told her, speaking into her neck as she clung to me tighter, "You've got me now."_

_

* * *

_

"Brooke!" I jumped slightly at the sound of my name, my eyes snapping open from their glassy daydream state over towards Sam as Dr. Miller began flushing her central line with a generous dose of Saline in swift, flawless movements of experienced hands.

"Huh?" I asked stupidly, shaking my head from side to side in an attempt to clear my brain from this daze that I was embarrassed to have allowed myself to have fallen into to begin with.

"I was just asking you what your plans were for the next few weeks that you guys have a little break from chemotherapy." Dr. Miller addressed me, but her head darted between both Sam and I, making her best attempt to give Sam a little bit of positivity in light of the crappy day she was having by mentioning the event that she has been looking forward to for weeks now.

"Does that mean I can go home?" Sam interjected between the exchange between the doctor and myself, pulling together all of the strength she could in order to ask the question which, in her humble opinion, was the most important question that could possibly be asked.

She was desperate for her freedom; I knew that, I could appreciate that. The poor kid hadn't been able to even see the outside world since she'd been stuck in here, a time frame that was rapidly approaching two weeks now, as amazing as that may sound, and I knew that even the sanest of human beings would be approaching nervous breakdown state at this point upon being enclosed within these same four walls for so long.

The problem was, I watched the doctor's face sink a little bit in response to Sam's question, and I knew that she wasn't about to give Sam the answer that she so desperately wanted to hear.

My heart instantly went out for the girl; she'd been having a rough couple of weeks… a rough couple of months… okay, a rough life, and all she wanted was to hear a little bit of good news, but she wasn't about to get that good news any time soon.

"Sam…" She started slowly, trying to be as sympathetic as possible in her approach. "The treatments you've been getting… well, you know what they do to your immune system; they're designed to destroy it. It's very dangerous for you to be walking around outside of this hospital; you're already at an incredibly high risk of picking up infections, and at this point, even something as simple as the common cold could be very detrimental to your health."

I knew where this conversation was headed; and judging by the look of extreme disappointment that had just befallen over Sam's face, so did she.

I watched as she sighed, leaning her head back until it was resting comfortably against the pillows for a split second before she recognized the movement as a bad decision on her part and swung forward to bury her face in her bucket once more.

"How much longer?" She gathered up the courage to ask a question that I knew she wasn't fully ready to hear the answer to for fear of further disappointment.

"It depends," She shrugged, indicating to both me and Sam that she had absolutely no idea when the hell we were going to get out of here. "Usually it takes about a week or two for your white blood cell counts to get up to levels that would make me comfortable enough to send you home… after that, it would be another one or two weeks that we'd monitor you closely from home. After that, once all your numbers are back up enough to handle being so severely depressed again, we start your next round of therapy."

That sounded like a long time.

And if it sounded like a long time to me, than I'm sure that it probably sounded like a life time to Sam.

I watched Sam as she wiped her hand over her eyes in exhaustion. The both of us were getting pretty sick and tired of this waiting game. It seemed like every time that Sam ever reached a milestone, thinking that we were close to the finish line, an extra ten miles would just get tacked onto the race.

Sometimes I can't help but catch myself wishing that somebody would just come over here and tell us a definitive answer on how this story was going to end, because the suspense was really starting to get to me.

I don't know, I think it's about time that I just hire my own personal weather forecaster or something. Then maybe he'd be able to come over here and help me predict what the weather was going to be past this storm.

"And I rescheduled your second bone marrow aspiration for later on today if you're up to it." The doctor told Sam, continuing her pattern of piling the news onto Sam's shoulders that this poor kid just didn't want to hear.

It was supposed to be this morning. Another one of those standard post-chemotherapy tests that lead me to believe that getting treated was just as bad as getting diagnosed, if not worse.

Her doctor had come in early, the expectation being we could get this entire thing done and over with, but Sam had had other plans at the time; plans that involved a continuous flow of vomit, a nosebleed, and enough morphine to make it so she wouldn't even be able to be delivered a local anesthetic without sending her body into overdrive, so the woman had been nice enough to wait for Sam to feel better before going ahead and making her feel like shit all over again.

I think that I was probably just as nervous as Sam was. I couldn't help but think back to the first time we'd had to go through this, the pain that it caused her, the pain that it caused me…

Of course, I'd been going about my merry way with the intentions that we would never have to deal with something like that ever again, but of course, per usual, that had just been wishful thinking on my part.

The doctor had spent the better part of the morning trying to convince us that it was just the standard thing to do at the end of every chemotherapy treatment cycle, that it was the best tool that they had to track the progress of the cancer cells currently running amok about Sam's body, that it unfortunately was just something that had to be done.

And meanwhile, as I continued to have a minor breakdown over the potential of this whole thing, Sam, in her typical fashion, offered her nothing other than a simple smile and a nod of the head; but her lack of emotion didn't really surprise me much.

Sam had stopped crying over treatments nearly a week and a half ago; the thing was, I'm not sure which I preferred more.

"When?" Sam's voice snapped me out of my haze, forcing me to remember that I had to focus on the task at hand.

"About an hour, if you're up for it." All eyes were on Sam as the girl simply shrugged as if she was indifferent either way.

"I'll be okay." She nodded. That girl was a trooper, she really was. But we all already knew that much.

"Okay. Until then, I'll up the Zofran a little bit, huh?" She told Sam, nodding towards the clear, plastic IV bag full of anti-nausea medication that hung in the carousel above Sam's head, indicating the need to pump even more anti-nausea drugs into the poor girl's system then there already was.

At this point, she could offer nothing more than a soft grin and a nod at the doctor's offer, but she was stopped short as her face turned a sudden shade of deep green and her head plunged deep into her personal bucket for what seemed like the millionth time that day, emptying nothing but residual water into it.

"I'll get you another one of those too."

Sam offered a grimace of embarrassment as her head re-submerged, always self-conscious about her getting sick in front of other people as she allowed the woman to take the soiled basin out from underneath her chin, instantly replacing it with a fresh one that always remained stocked on the shelves in Sam's room… just in case.

She excused herself, and for a few moments, Sam didn't say anything as she preoccupied herself in testing the success of her extra dose of drugs until she felt confident enough to step away from her support bucket for a moment.

There were a couple of tense seconds where the two of us stood with bated breath, waiting to see whether or not this dare-devil move on Sam's part would end tragically, but when Sam leaned back a little bit further and offered her thumbs up of approval, I was finally able to exhale again.

"Do you think I'm ever gonna get out of here?" She finally asked me after a few more seconds.

"Of course you're gonna get out of here." I assured her, wondering whether she had meant that as a rhetorical question or not. "Didn't you listen to the doctor you doofus, it's only gonna be another week or two. You can do that." I tried to light the somber air that had unfortunately been forming thick, heavy smog over our heads these past few days, but any potential of my accomplishing this task was cut off as the sound of a soft, strangled cry coming from the space next to us laced through our ears.

Sam sighed and tried her hardest to close off her ears, but it was no use.

Earlier that morning, it had been decided that Logan was finally going to be moved out of intensive care and back into her old room.

At first thought, Sam and I could only take this as good news; after all, it had to mean that Logan was getting better, and that Sam finally would have some extra company to keep her occupied again, to keep her happy again…

It didn't take us very long to learn that that wasn't actually going to be the case; not by a long shot.

The truth was, in a very spaciously limited ICU, the doctors simply needed the extra beds to give up to somebody who actually had a prayers chance of survival. In the long run, it had been decided that the benefits of moving her ultimately outweighed the consequences and that Logan could just as adequately be cared for and kept comfortable down here, as she had been in the ICU.

But this girl wasn't the Logan we had first met and learned to fall in love with, no. This Logan was quiet, calm. This Logan had now become completely dependent on truck loads of morphine to keep her pain levels down to the bare minimum. This Logan was never awake, and when her eyes actually were open, the only sounds that she could manage were a few soft groans, stemming from the overwhelming pain that not even all the medicine in the world could block.

Sam and I had spent the more silent moments of the morning, the ones between her puking episodes, simply listening to the sounds of this poor girl dying, and trust me, it was a painful process for everybody involved, but still, it was my job to stay positive for Sam.

"You'll get out of here, Sam." I told her after she didn't answer me the first time. "I'm going to get you out of here."

Before, when Sam had first asked me whether or not she was ever going to get out of this god-forsaken hospital, I thought that it had been a stupid question. I thought the answer was as obvious as night and day; yes, Sam would be able to physically get up and leave this hospital, whenever that may be, but now that I truly thought about it, now that the true meaning behind her inquiry began wrapping itself around my brain, I couldn't help but be forced to reformulate my answer.

Yeah sure, the two of us were going to get out of here one day; pack up, leave, and never look back. But now the only question remaining was whether or not, when we did finally make it back home, either of us would still be all in one piece.

* * *

**PEYTON**

My daughter's loud wailing echoing off of the walls and straight into my ears was ultimately what wound up distracting me.

I was standing on my tip-toes when she started, balancing on top of a wobbly chair trying to straighten a particularly crooked album on my wall of records at the studio and had just reached the offensive decoration when she began howling, causing me to turn so rapidly where I stood that I almost fell right off said chair, subsequently almost breaking every single bone in my damn body.

It wasn't her fault really; I've been particularly restless all day long, stemming from the fact that for some reason or another, I just couldn't seem to get Brooke off of my mind since I'd woken up to a voicemail that she had left me the night before where she ranted and raved for nearly ten minutes, speaking so quickly and in such a heated manner that the only words that I managed to make out were 'adopting', 'Rebecca', 'ditched', and 'I'm going to kick that bitches ass'.

After listening to it about five times, no closer to making out what she was trying to say than I had been the first time, I quickly lead to the conclusion that

1. I was missing something; and;

2. Some major shit must have gone down last night.

I'd spent the majority of my morning in the studio, my excuse for not immediately going into the hospital in order to and put together the pieces of what had happened with Brooke last night being that I was in way over my head with work that should have been done a long time ago, but, under some mysterious circumstance, just never got completed.

But now, as the afternoon rapidly tapered away and the pile of work that I needed to get done had been diminished to the pile of work that I could continue to put off, and, now that my biggest detriment in life was the fact that the Physical Graffiti album on the wall dipped a little bit too much to the left, I could tell that I was out of excuses and it was time to see just what the hell was going on.

I planted both of my feet back on solid ground and gathered the still bawling Sawyer into my arms, bouncing her up and down softly in a desperate attempt to get her to quiet down; but the only thing that I seemingly managed to achieve was making hr cry louder.

"Hey, come on Sawyer, what is it? What's wrong?" I asked the infant as if she would understand and respond to me.

I began my ritualistic pacing back and forth, hoping that the combined movements would cause her to settle down until eventually, after what seemed like forever, her cries became residual hiccups which finally turned into silence.

"Thank God," I muttered as Sawyer repositioned herself in the nest of my arms, got comfortable, and rolled over, falling right back to sleep as if nothing had ever happened to wake her up to begin with.

But that was Sawyer for you; she was notorious for her abilities to make me rush in a panicked frenzy to her side in order to force me to nurture and coddle her for nothing other than the sole purpose that she knew that I would fall for it… yup, she was my daughter; that much was for sure.

"Do you wanna go see your daddy, huh?" I asked the sleeping child I had been rocking in my arms before placing her softly back into her carrier, locking her securely in place, before finally closing up shop and stepping out of my studio.

I ended up leaving Sawyer at the house with Lucas, and after only a few more wasted minutes of me trying to convince him that I would be fine going on alone, I was off.

I'd always been better at dealing with things like this alone; I know, I know, marriage is supposed to be me taking a step forward in eliminating that selfish need for solitude, but I'm getting better, I swear… contraire to what this exact moment is doing to prove me otherwise… trust me, I am.

When I got into Sam's room, it was only to find the poor kid hunched over in an armchair, puking into what looked strangely like one of those big yellow buckets that our janitors used to use in high school to mop up the floors with after class got out.

Brooke and Julian were pacing about the floor, synchronized in their set, uniform motions multi-tasking between the tasks of taking care of Sam and cleaning up the mess that she was leaving behind faster than they could pick it up.

Their faces were relaxed, experienced, while me, I just stood in the doorway, unable to even stand hearing the word vomit without just puking myself and thus, keeping my distance in order to prevent becoming more of a problem than a solution.

It's strange to think about it; me, not even ten seconds into my visit and already freaking out while Brooke, two weeks into hers managed to stay completely calm, cool, and collected, her features relaxed and etched with maternal concern, her motions fluid and unhinged, her mind focused on getting done what she knew needed to be done.

I was back and forth with my concern for Brooke; you see, sometimes, I had moments like yesterday, where Brooke would call me freaking out, yelling, ranting, carrying on, and losing control, where I would be afraid for her; where I would be afraid that she was losing her mind in here, where I was certain that she was teetering on the edge of a total collapse; and then, something like this, something like watching Brooke care for Sam with such concern, with such a smooth edge, with such a selfless glory… and every hint of worry that I may have had was immediately contradicted and erased, making me believe that Brooke was as ready to handle this as a person could ever possibly be.

…But I'm bad with mixed signals, so at this point, I couldn't help but wish that they would just stop because now, I was just confused, my head as jumbled as it was torn between these two polar opposite directions, ultimately leading me to believe that I was just as much of a horrible friend as I thought I was because I couldn't figure out something that seemed as simple and mundane as knowing what it was exactly that my best friend was thinking in her greatest time of need.

And it was about this time in my great big epiphany that I decided that from this moment forward, I was going to make sure that I always knew just what Brooke Davis was thinking, what she was feeling, and that she was being taken care of just as much as Sam was.

Yeah sure, one might argue that Julian was there for things like that… most of the time anyway, but trust me when I say that in moments like these, there is a distinct difference between having a boyfriend's support and having a best friend's support, and considering that Julian could only provide for half of that equation, I was taking it upon myself to complete it.

"Brooke?" I chanced the opportunity to sneak my voice into the mixture in the form of a soft whisper towards Brooke's general direction only after a momentary calm befell over Sam and I noticed that she appeared to feel safe enough to finally lift her head out of her plastic safety blanket.

Brooke's head snapped instantly up at the sound of my voice as she took a second or two to properly identify me before stepping away from Sam momentarily in order to offer me a firm, rib breaking embrace without a second's hesitation.

"Bad day?" I whispered into her ear as I snuck a glance over her shoulder towards Sam who had taken to leaning back against her chair, eyes closed in deep concentration as Julian sat at the foot of her bed next to her trying to coach her with everything that he could offer, back to health.

Brooke nodded her head up and down against my shoulder before breaking up the embrace. "Yeah," She finally responded, "We've had a rough few days, but I think she'll be okay."

I nodded through a look of pure empathy as the two of us turned back to face Sam as the girl leaned forwards again and distributed a fresh round of vomit into the makeshift toilet bowl in front of her.

"Hey Sammy, you're not feeling too good, huh?" I offered, rounding myself behind her as she lifted her head up again, purposefully in order to avoid having to see the contents that danced around inside of the bucket in front of us.

To my great surprise however, she managed to give me the slightest trace of a smile through those reflexive vomit tears that stung at her eyes. "You came on an exciting day." She choked out; an action as simple as speaking producing another gag reflex that I was grateful ultimately didn't deliver any results, leading me to believe that maybe, just maybe she was finally all out of puke. "Most people don't get to see puking _and_ a bone marrow aspiration all in one day."

The sarcasm was laced heavily in her voice, allowing me to believe that I guess I couldn't be too worried about her, considering she was still acting like her same old sarcastic self.

I cocked an eyebrow; "A what now?"

"Oh, it's really cool," She emphasized the sarcasm in her voice even more than she had before as her stomach produced another powerful contraction that I could physically see roll across her frail body, but once again, nothing came in return.

She paused briefly, regaining the edge she had formed over her body before continuing to speak despite the lump of bile that I could practically see forming in the middle of her throat.

"Basically, they put a really, really long needle in my hip bone and take marrow out of it. Trust me; it's a lot of fun."

"Sounds awesome," I responded to her, giving her just as much sarcasm as she had given me. She instantly picked up on my intentions, mainly because anybody with half a brain, even one that was water-logged in chemotherapy poison could recognize the fact that this bone marrow aspi-whatever-thingy sounded like it would be absolutely everything but fun.

She gathered herself within the next couple of seconds before finally releasing the death grip that she had on her bucket in order to give me a thumbs up of agreement before she snapped back to her previous position of white-knuckled intensity, heaving over the thing once more, filling it to the absolute brim and forcing me to shuffle my feet slowly backwards, fearing an over flow and, as a result, a very large mess, when, just in the nick of time, the doctor that I had become so familiar with lately appeared out of nowhere in front of me.

"Need another one already?" She asked Sam as a tiny nurse adorned in a dark blue pair of scrubs trailed behind her, dragging a tray on wheels with a bunch of funky looking tools scattered across the top alongside her towards Sam's empty bed.

I guess I was starting to see just what Sam had meant. This was looking fun already.

"Ugh… no, I think I'm done. Finally," Sam replied, sitting up and wiping her hand across her mouth, trying to push the full buckets and all of its contents away from her, but it was to weighted down for her weakened muscles to be of any affect, so the doctor offered her own generous assistance, passing it along to the poor nurse who had the unfortunate job of having to clean up after situations such as this one.

"Hi Peyton," She turned to greet me after all of the commotion finally settled down and she deemed the scene safe enough to turn her focus away from Sam long enough to be able to identify me lurking like a creeper in the corner. "You came on an exciting day."

"So I heard," I responded, unable to control the grin stemming from the identical greetings that both Sam and her doctor had offered me.

"Well Sam, are you ready?" She didn't linger, instead, she waded casually over towards Sam's bed as both Brooke and Julian helped the ailing girl up from her chair and onto her mattress, as the girl offered no response other than a long, dramatic sigh as she turned to present her back to the doctor obligingly.

"I guess that's a yes." She spoke as she simultaneously tapped the tip of a syringe that caused me to cringe just looking at it. I was getting woozy already. Did I mention that I don't handle needles, blood, or any other types of body fluids very well?

I held my breath as I watched the doctor's hand descend towards Sam's lower back, the needle oozing medication from the tip as I automatically grabbed onto Brooke's hand; you know, the hand that I was supposed to be holding onto to comfort Brooke not the other way around, and squeezed hard.

I watched with wide eyes as the needle got closer and closer to its destination; I could feel my heart pounding within the strict confines of my chest, and then, finally, it reached its intended target… directly into Sam's IV line.

My muscles relaxed and I let out a steep exhale, instantly embarrassed as the doctor turned to us and stated simply; "Anesthesia," as Sam's muscles instantly relaxed into the drugs, mixing with the ones already floating around within her system, the result being a pretty dramatic effect.

Brooke, Julian, and I stood in a straight, attentive line, just far enough away so that we could watch, but not get in the way as the doctor rubbed a generous layer of iodine over Sam's skin, staining it the color of rust and draped it so that only a small circle around her hip was exposed to the air until finally, she hovered her well-trained hand over the array of needles, picking up one that looked about as long and as thick as my forearm.

I cringed at the thought, but after my first freak-out that lead to nothing other than an embarrassing situation for me, I couldn't help but notice that this one just didn't seem to be as bad as the last time; and it helped me when the needle finally did break the barrier of her skin and the girl didn't even flinch.

It was as if getting a foot long needle stuck into your pelvis was as routine of an experience as brushing your teeth every morning… which, I guess in all fairness, it was for Sam… but that didn't stop me from thinking that it shouldn't have to be.

Her face didn't change, her body didn't move; in fact, the only thing that did happen as the doctor continued to swiftly carry out her duties was that Brook detached herself from my hand and stepped out of the little line we had formed in order to approach Sam and squat down so that she could be eye level and face-to-face with the girl.

"Are you alright?" I heard Brooke whisper as I gritted my own teeth in time with the entrance of a second needle, equally as large as the first.

"Yeah," Sam mumbled with a small nod of her head. "It's not so bad the second time."

My heart melted at Sam's words, getting me instantly upset over the fact that there had to be a second time at all. My body was suddenly numb; I wanted to break down and cry at the heartbreaking interaction currently unfolding between Brooke and Sam right in front of my very eyes as Brooke grasped onto Sam's hand, assuring her that she was doing just fine as the vials rolling around in the doctor's spare hand began filling red with marrow as it was extracted from Sam's very insides.

I watched Sam's eyes, this time, seeing the flash as she blinked in rapid succession for a few seconds, indicating to me that she had indeed felt the pain, she had just learned from experience how not to show it.

Apparently, Brooke had caught it too, because she grabbed onto Sam's hand a little bit tighter, while simultaneously pulling her body a little bit closer to the girl.

To me, as an outsider, this had been a unique experience for me; one that I must say, I wasn't very sad to leave behind, grateful as I watched the final needle slide its way out of Sam's body for the last time, leaving only a handful of vials behind to be analyzed with a life or death gravity heavy behind them.

Of course, to the more experienced eyes, like Brooke's and Sam's, they didn't even have to look anymore. This entire experience has been drifting from a unique anomaly to a routine errand for days now, and I couldn't help but notice that Sam's grip around Brooke's hand just didn't seem to be as tight these days as it once was.

The entire thing lasted oh, I don't know, maybe fifteen minutes or so, but as far as I was concerned, it might as well have been hours.

Sam sunk, no, more like feel, flaccid on her bed as the drugs and the exhaustion that had been beating hr both mentally and physically for hours now finally caught up to her.

"We'll let you know the results when they come in." The doctor whispered to Brooke, collecting the small vials of painfully extracted marrow into plastic hazardous material bags destined for the laboratory.

She nodded herself out of the room, leaving us to finish cleaning up the mess that she had started as the three of us approached Sam in an effort to check up on her.

Julian and I found ourselves hanging back slightly, leaving Brooke to stride the full distance to Sam's bed as the girl slid her eyes open into slits, desperately fighting the haze that was trying to keep them closed.

"Sam," Brooke called out to her, dropping one arm down so that she could grab onto Sam's hand and

lifting the other up in order to rub her hand over Sam's smooth scalp.

"Brooke?" Her voice was slurred and raspy, barely coming out of her mouth as a whisper, close to getting completely lost in the air as her eyes drifted shut again.

"Yeah Sam, I'm right here." She assured the girl, offering Sam the confirmation of a safe environment that she needed in order to fall into a comfortable sleep.

She forced her eyes open again and put in a generous effort of every muscle in her body to focus on Brooke. The scene warmed my heart, while somehow simultaneously managing to break it at the same time. It felt as if I was almost intruding by being here, dropping myself into a situation that was solely meant to be between mother and daughter… I turned my head and locked eyes with Julian. I couldn't help but wonder if he felt the same way.

"You did so well, Sam." Brook continued, tightening the grip she had around Sam's hand. "I'm so proud of you. I wish I could be that brave, Sam. I wish that I could be just like you."

I watched Sam struggle for a moment before somehow managing to defeat the effort of the drugs and open her mouth, swallowing a big gulp of air before speaking; "No Brooke,"

She shook her head hard to accompany the defiance in her voice and I watched as Brooke's composure faltered for a second before gathering herself and straightening her body back upright. "I don't want you to be sick too."

Have you ever been on a roller coaster? You know those couple of milliseconds right after you start free-falling where you get that feeling in your stomach, the allusion that it had just dropped right out of your abdominal cavity straight into your feet?

Of course, this time, the roller coaster in question was strictly a metaphorical one, but still, you get the idea, because that was the exact feeling that had just swept across my gut the second I heard those words come out of Sam's mouth.

My face tensed up; I tried desperately to stem the flow of tears that I could feel burning at the backs of my eyes, but I managed to control them as I sat and watched Brooke, amazed at her ability to simply continue to hold onto Sam's hand and assure her that everything was going to be just fine, maintaining a firm composure until finally, the girl turned over and succumbed to sleep.

I was embarrassed.

It seemed like every time that I came out here to offer my support to Brooke, and the going got a little bit tough, I was reduced to an emotional ball of tears, unable to handle any of the obstacles that were thrown my way.

Was I a dead beat best friend or what?

What if, God forbid, something like this happened to Lucas or to Sawyer? If it did, we would all be screwed, because I don't think that I could ever be as strong as Brooke… ever.

I admired her, adored her, respected, loved, cherished, and overall wanted in every way to be as strong as Brooke Davis.

I looked over towards Brooke as she continued to rub her hand over Sam's gently, even in sleep, trying to keep the girl comforted and peaceful, causing me to admire her even more in this moment.

It was a fascinating honor to be able to experience watching Brooke Davis grow up and develop into the person that I knew nobody in their right mind would ever imagine her to become… the person that we all wished that we could be.

"Hey Peyton, are you okay?" She looked up at me, finally standing up from her spot rooted at the edge of Sam's bed, walking over towards me. So that now, on top of feeling like a total coward, I also felt bad for making Brooke leave Sam's side for me, when it was more than obvious that she was the one who needed Brooke the most right now.

"I'm fine…" I told her, backing away slightly, my feet shuffling me closer and closer to the door until I was right at the edge of freedom. "I just need some air for a minute."

I turned on my heels, throwing myself through the doorway, power-walking down the hall until I managed to find a secluded waiting room at the end of the corridor and threw myself inside of it, ignoring the numerous chairs strategically situated around the room and instead choosing to sink down against the wall until I felt my butt hit the carpeted floor below me.

I brought a shaking hand up to my face and rubbed it over my features roughly, determined to shake out whatever it was that had gotten into me.

It didn't take Brooke very long to find me; a couple of minutes tops and, in fact, the only reason that it did take her as long as it did was because she had made a pit stop at the vending machine down the hall in order to get me a water bottle, which she handed to me as a peace offering before sliding down the wall next to me so that we were shoulder to shoulder.

"You should be with Sam," I stated simply, never looking up at her, instead, choosing to stare at my hands as I draped them over my knees and danced my fingers around each other.

"She's passed out Peyton, Julian is looking after her. And besides; I think you need me more than she does right now."

I took a small sip of the water, struggling to put the lid back on with my trembling hands.

"How do you do it, Brooke?" I finally asked after relishing in a moment of silence. "I look at Sam and then I get to thinking about what it would be like if I were in your shoes… if this was Sawyer… and no matter how hard I try, I can't even imagine…" I shook my head, still staying strong in my determination to look anywhere but at Brooke as she answered my question.

"Honestly? I'm barely holding on." She admitted, a laugh choking up behind her voice despite the seriousness of her statement; a desperate effort to lighten the mood as best as she could.

"You look like you're holding up pretty well. Look at you; you're the one sitting here comforting me while I'm crying on the floor." Brooke shook her head with a small laugh, wrapping her arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close to her.

"Wanna know a secret?" She asked me, "Sometimes the only thing that I want to do is curl up in a ball in the corner and cry." She confided in me, knowing that it would make me feel better to hear that I wasn't the only one, even though I still wasn't so convinced. "And trust me, sometimes I do. And really, it is a good thing to do every once in a while, but I have Sam to think about, and she needs me to be strong for her; especially when she can't be strong for herself."

I guess that I could appreciate that much. I thought of Sawyer, I thought of how I was willing to do anything and everything if it meant picking up the world and moving it aside in order to protect her from all of life's dangers, and how I would do anything to somehow find a way to pull myself together, breaking down only in the comfort of privacy so that she knew that I was always there for her and that she knew that there would always be somebody fighting for her, no matter how rough things got.

"You're an amazing mom, Brooke Davis. Not many people would be able to be as strong as you are right now." If I've told Brooke Davis what an amazing human being that she was once, I've told her a million times, but to someone like Brooke, whose bravery and charm interlocked in that rare characteristic to as close to a perfect person as possible, she deserved to hear those words as many times as were humanly possible.

"Thanks P. Sawyer," She told me, tugging her arm just a little bit tighter around my shoulders. "But I couldn't have made it this far without you guys."

I finally gathered up the courage to face her, watching as her features matched mine in that special contortion I had mastered in an effort to block the tears from flowing out.

"No, no, no, I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you cry!" I apologized frantically, upset that I had just reached the point where I was about to make her feel better, only to reverse it and reduce her to tears.

She snorted out a laugh through the shield of tears, a smile breaking out across her face. "It's not that." She assured me, "Trust me, this is the good kind of tears." She laughed again, reaching up to rub the tears away from her eyes.

I smiled, rubbing her shoulders up and down, suddenly feeling a lot better about, well… everything.

"So, are you gonna tell me about that that message that you left on my phone was all about last night?"

"Oh!" She yelled in the excitement of the reminder, her eyes finally clearing; "Well… it's… it's kind of a long story." She laughed, taking a deep breath as if she was preparing herself to run a marathon, but it didn't surprise me; if there was one thing that Brooke Davis was good at, it was running races with her mouth.

"Rebecca accidentally called me last night."

"Rebecca as in Sam's mom Rebecca?" I asked her going suddenly wide-eyed.

"Oh yeah," She nodded in the excitement of the direction that this story was going. "She called Sam's cell phone but she was asleep so I was the one who answered it."

"And you answered it because…" I drifted off, waiting for her to finish the sentence that I had started because I knew for a fact that there could be nothing good that was about to come out of this conversation.

"I don't know…" She shrugged it off, trying to ignore the fact that she knew that I knew that she would never miss an opportunity to be sneaky in her attempt to spy on the woman. "Anyway, she goes on talking about how Sam left some stuff at her house and that she wants her to pick it all up and I guess I kind of let it… you know, slip about what's going on with Sam."

"Shit Brooke…" I shook my head and hung my mouth open, whispering the only response that I could currently think of making at the moment.

"Oh it gets better." She stopped me before I could get going, the tone of her voice telling me that it was indeed about to get much, much better. "She basically told me that she doesn't want anything to do with this whole situation… or Sam."

"What!" I shouted, literally, shouted so loud that I was quite certain my voice echoed down the entire length of the hallway. I felt my jaw drop so that it practically hit the floor underneath me as my eyes widened as I watched Brooke slowly nod her head up and down in the form of a confirmation. "Oh my God, Brooke, did you kill her?"

"Trust me, if I could have gotten my hands through the phone and around that bitch's neck, I would have. She even hung up before I had the opportunity to rip her a new one… I mean, I just can't believe that somebody would just abandon their own child at a time like this… then again, I guess she'd done it before, why not do it again, right?"

I watched Brooke sigh, pushing a deep breath of air out of the cavity of her lungs as she continued to shake her back and forth, still in utter disbelief about the entire situation even though it had taken place right in front of her very eyes.

"Well, Sam doesn't need a hack like that in her life when she has somebody like you." I assured my best friend who just smiled and looked up at me as a small spark went off in her eyes; a light in the tunnel of all of this darkness.

"That reminds me," She said, "I think that whole thing with Rebecca kind of set something off inside of me… I mean, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing but… last night, after all of this crap happened, I asked Sam to let me adopt her again."

"Oh my God!" I jumped up, in my excitement, forgetting that Brooke was so close to me until I head butted her, our foreheads connecting with a hollow thud. "Ow, sorry, but Brooke that's amazing; what did she say?" I rubbed my forehead with one hand as I waited for my answer, allowing my excitement to die down, just in case the answer wasn't a good one… a painful reminder washing over me of the heart break that poor Brooke had to go through the last time that she had been down this road with Sam.

"She said yes." Brooke smiled, a look of pride dancing over her face, like it would for any new mom celebrating the latest addition to the family.

A bright smile emerged across my face as I jumped to my feet, grabbing onto her hand and pulling her up with me so that I was in a good position to give her a proper embrace that a moment such as this one deserved.

"Well congratulations Brooke Davis. I know that you'll make an awesome mom to Sam… you already do."

"Thanks P. Sawyer." She told me, holding her position between my arms for a few more minutes so that she could properly take it all in.

"Well what are you waiting for?" I asked her, finally pulling out of the hug and grabbing onto her free hand and dragging her out of the privacy of our waiting room. "Come on, your daughter needs you."

* * *

**JULIAN **

It was only about 10:30 that night, long after Peyton had left, long after the evening routine died down, and way, way long after Sam had fallen asleep that finally, I became too tired to even be able to pretend to keep my eyes open anymore.

When I was in L.A., I had prided myself on my uncanny ability to pull multiple all-nighters in a row, to spend my nights in bars and restaurants with big time producers and actors until I had to go straight to work the next morning, and to, in general, resemble and model myself off of the Energizer bunny in my ability to just keep going, and going, and going, and going…

Of course, since then, I have lost said abilities, proving to myself that spending long days in a hospital taking care of a sick teenager was much more taxing than spending long days in Los Angeles, producing a big budget movie production.

"I think I'm going to go to bed, Brooke. Are you staying up?" I asked when I've finally had enough of this whole "being tired" thing and I stretched out my arms, digging through my backpack until I found my toothbrush and a fresh pair of sweatpants to put on.

"No, I'm pretty tired; I think I'm going to go to bed too." She slammed her magazine shut on her lap and followed me into a standing position, leaving me shocked when she abandoned her comfy, oversized armchair to set up camp on top of the two folding chairs that were lined up seat to seat, throwing a pillow and a spare blanket over them to form her own, personal makeshift bed.

"Is that where you're sleeping tonight?" I asked her, instantly sparking into defense mode, under the impression that I had done something wrong or something to warrant the punishment of being forced to sleep alone tonight.

"No, nothing like that," Brooke shook her head towards me in assurance as she unfolded the blanket and parachuted it across her 'bed'. "It's just that both of us don't fit on that stupid armchair and I wake up in the morning and my back is killing me… I think I'll just sleep here tonight, it's fine."

I refrained from pointing out to her that opting to sleep on nothing more than a hard slab of metal wasn't going to do any benefit to her back problems and just chose to watch her work in her silence.

I couldn't help but notice how distant things have gotten between Brooke and me lately. Every since my return from Los Angeles, we would talk less and less with every day that passed, and whether her excuse for choosing to relocate her sleeping location was true, or whether it was just that, an excuse, I wasn't sure, but I did know that this attempted separation was really starting to get to me, and was starting to get to me hard.

I understood that I probably sounded selfish right now, and I understood that on top of sounding incredibly selfish, I was probably being incredibly selfish at the same time.

Sam needed Brooke's time more than I did right now, I got that, really I did, but still, was it wrong for me to say that I needed some time with Brooke too?

I mean, I really didn't think that I was asking for too much here, I think that's why I was currently so confused about why I was so afraid to bring it up with Brooke.

But as I watched her as she sat down on the bed that she had just made for herself, settling into it with the expectation of me sleeping on the more comfortable chair on the other side of the room from her, I couldn't help but feel the word vomit as it slowly snuck its way up my esophagus, and before I even knew it hit me; it was all out.

"Brooke, is it me?" Okay, so maybe that wasn't the best approach to take, but when it comes to word vomit, the best approach it usually is not.

"Excuse me?" She raised her eyebrow and sat up, looking directly at me with a bizarre look on her face that I have never seen before.

"Is it me?" I repeated. I spoke slower this time, but judging by the fact that she still plastered an extremely confused look across her face even after I repeated myself, she didn't quite get what I was trying to say the second time around either.

"It's just… it's… I can't help but feel that we're drifting apart here, Brooke." I spit out the words quickly, because quickly was the only way that I was ever going to be able to spit them out at all. But even after I finally did speak up, the look she gave me this time just echoed more confusion than it did clarification, leading me to believe that maybe my confrontation with Brooke had been poorly worded… if not just poorly placed."

"Julian…" She started speaking with a tone of neutrality behind her voice as she paused, keeping me guessing with bated breath and a heavy heart for just a little bit longer. "I've been taking care of Sam… you know what a rough time she's been having lately." I had a feeling that she was going to bring up her packed caretaking schedule as an excuse with me.

The thing was; I knew that Brooke couldn't hide behind the excuse of Sam's illness for much longer, and I just wished she would stop already before it became too late.

"I'm just afraid of what we're going to become now that all of your time is spent with Sam… I can't help but feel like I'm the only person that's gunning for us here, Brooke, and I'm trying to understand, really I am, but this is a two-way street, you know, I need a little something from you too."

My words were harsh and I regretted them the instant that they came out of my mouth. Here I was belittling and questioning Brooke right in front of her, and as I watched her eyes begin to well up with tears, and her body tremble slightly under all of the emotion, I really, really regretted it.

"Brooke, I'm sorry…" I reacted instinctively, choosing the best words a guy could ever use when he was in trouble with his girl, but the words were already out on the table, and it was too late to go back now. "I shouldn't have said that, it was selfish of me, it's just… I'm sorry."

I faded away, finishing my ramblings before I just made everything worse than they already were and just topped it off with another apology because, when all else fails, apologize endlessly and come bearing gifts; and, because I didn't have any gifts to bear, I just apologized extra hard.

"I'm just worried about you, Brooke." I paused, giving her the opportunity to say something in return but when she never did, I quickly decided that fixing this mistake that I myself had caused was going to be up to me, and I was going have to break out the big guns, using a couple well placed words and a few more "I'm sorry's" to make this one right.

"You need to take some time for yourself too, you know."

"You don't get it Julian, do you?" The tears finally broke free of their barrier underneath her eyes, dripping casually down her cheeks as her face flushed and it broke my heart to know that it had been who had caused this. "_I_ need to take care of Sam. _I_ needto get her better!" Her voice progressively rose in volume with every word that came out of it as she jabbed her index finger firmly into her chest every time she annunciated the word "I" as even more tears of defiance and determination were shed behind her beautiful eyes.

"But why is it so hard to let me help you, Brooke?" That after all, was what this whole thing boiled down to in the long run; Brooke's stubborn inability to let anybody in; her obsessive-compulsive tendency to have to do everything by herself, no matter how much it killed her. "I know how badly you want this family, Brooke, and I know how badly I want it too, so why don't you just let me in?"

She locked me into a defiant stare down for a few more seconds, both of us more stubborn than the other in our determination not to break eye contact.

And then, suddenly, Brooke Davis went from pissed to anguished in a matter of three seconds flat, and I'm not sure which one hurt me more.

"Brooke…" I reached out my hand, determined to give her at least a little bit of comfort considering I'd caused this mess, but she backed away from my touching, wrenching her wrist out of my grasp… and I just let her go.

"You're just gonna leave again Julian." She choked out between heavy sobs. "You're going to leave and go back L.A. or New York or London or wherever to be this big time movie producer and make movies and sign autographs and I'm just gonna be stuck here all alone to take care of Sam by myself." She threw herself into a seated position on the chair behind her and buried her face into her hands.

"I thought that this would be easier." She mumbled into her palms so that I could barely understand her.

"None of this is ever easy, Brooke." I shook my head and slowly lowered myself into the space next to her, wrapping my arm around her and pulling her head close into my shoulder. "And I'm sorry, but whoever told you that it would be lied."

This time, she accepted my offer of comfort, digging her face further into my shoulder until I felt her tears leak through the fabric of my shirt. "I'm not going to leave Brooke. I'm never going to leave you, and I'm never going to leave Sam, no matter what happens."

I could feel her body trembling underneath mine as my left hand began rubbing small circles into her lower back while my right weaved gently through her soft hair.

"You are not alone Brooke Davis; and you're never going to be."

I could of held onto her for hours if it were up to me; but as it was, she was the first person to break up the contact between ourselves.

"I'm tired," All the things that she could have said to me and that was what she landed on… "I think I'm just gonna go to bed." I watched her turn from me, her eyes sad and teary and her heart heavy and scared, and a spark of nerves erupted from somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

For a few moments, she was completely silent as she settled herself into the big, comfy armchair, abandoning the previously homemade bed that had sparked our argument to begin with.

I watched her as she pulled the blankets high above her shoulders until they rested underneath her chin before she turned back to me.

"Come sleep with me?" She asked, making the request and sounding like a scared three year old calling out to their parents after waking up from a nightmare.

She looked up from the depths of the cocoon she had made for herself, anxiously awaiting my answer as I looked up at her, flashed my infamous grin, and nodded, crawling up next to her and wrapping her into my arms, pulling her tightly into my body in an attempt to offer her as much comfort as I possibly could.

I sat like that for a long time, but to me, even a long time wasn't long enough. I leaned myself into her back, finding comfort in the rise and fall of her back against my chest as it slowed into the even pattern of peaceful sleep.

I repositioned my face and dug it gently into her shoulder, soothed by the steady beat of her heart pounding against her ribs, the silence of the room making it so that was the only noise that I heard as I tried to make sense of all of this.

I'm not sure what exactly it was that happened to Brooke Davis at some point in her life to make her believe that love was strictly for the weak of heart and the weak of mind. Of course, I did know that now that I was here, it was up to me to prove just how wrong she was… and even if she was right, well than I guess I wouldn't mind calling myself a weakling.

I let out a steep breath as I lifted my face so that my chin rested against her shoulder and my lips pressed in close to her right ear. "I'm going to teach you how to love again Brooke Davis."

She let out a soft groan in her sleep and shifted slightly against me as I repositioned my body against hers, curled up, and finally fell asleep with her buried deep in my arms.


	20. Is There Anybody Out There?

**Wow, where did Chapter 20 sneak up on us so fast? That's pretty cool making it all the way to chapter 20. I can't even write a five page paper for school without freaking out so this is huge!**

**So, this chapter was inspired by another one of my insomniac nights that I spent sitting up watching Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' (hence the chapter title) so expect some bizarre-o antics about with this one. **

**And this is another long-ass chapter but I had a good time writing it and might have gotten a little over eager. Hope you enjoy! **

Chapter 20: Is There Anybody Out There?

**Monday, November 14****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

When I woke up the next morning, I did so with the feeling inside of me like I could go conquer the world. I felt good… at least, I felt better than I had felt yesterday.

Then again, the only way that I could possibly feel any worse than I felt yesterday would be if I was dead so I guess that that isn't really putting it in any proper perspective for you, but really… I felt good today, and considering that I have since learned to take what I could get, I embraced it as an optimistic sign of things to come.

Today after all, was a huge day, my last day of chemotherapy. So far so good, I guess.

Even the weather outside appeared to have decided to be nice for the occasion; at least, it looked that way from what I could make outside the window…

I made a mental note to ask Brooke to take me around the hospital's corridor later when she woke up and leaned back against my bed fumbling with the television switch at my side.

Curling into a comfortable ball, I hit the power button, jumping slightly as I watched the TV quickly spark, turn white, and finally, shut off completely… crap.

I jammed at the power button repeatedly for a moment or two with my index finger but it yielded no results. I released an audible sigh, but if a broken TV was my biggest problem at the moment then I think that I would be able to deal.

I mean, this was simply a matter of life and death, but it's okay, I'm used to it. I do after all, deal with things like this every day.

I threw the worthless box in my hand to the side, disappointed that I was now forced to find a new outlet of entertainment to get me through the rest of the morning. The TV was a no-go, Brooke and Julian were out for the count, curled up fast asleep in a tight ball of tangled limbs in the chair besides me, synchronized in their snoring indicating to me that they were out for the count, and the only reading material I had in this entire room were magazines that I have read and re-read about ten times over already…

I continued to wrack my brain for something to do until my thoughts were interrupted by a soft, strangled cry, just loud enough to reach me from its origin in the cubicle right next to mine filled my ears.

Cringing, I now focused all of my attention on finding a way to block the noise, lifting my hands to the side of my head, pressing my palms firmly over my ears until the only thing that I could hear was my heart beating rapidly from somewhere within myself.

I held the pose for a few extra seconds, waiting until I was certain that it would be safe to hear again, slowly lowering my arms down, grateful for the resulting silence that I was greeted with.

I turned my head and strained my neck to get a decent glance behind the curtain until I caught a glimpse of the girl next to me.

These days, she was always asleep, and at this point, we all just seemed to be playing this waiting game in order to see whether or not she would wake up.

I took a few deep breaths, forcing my head away before I could linger long enough for my mind to put my own face over Logan's, before I could give myself the time to convince myself that this was how my life would just end up being.

I was determined to get myself back on track, determined on concentrating on anything but Logan, so I reclined my bed all the way back until I was staring up at the ceiling, watching the dripping bags over my head as they dumped the last of my chemotherapy into my veins.

I plugged my headphones deep into my ears and whirled the wheel of my iPod until the volume was blaring at its maximum level, leaving me to the mercy of my own thoughts as I wondered and prayed if there was anybody, of any capacity that could swoop in here and magically save Logan. A person that could magically save me, save Brooke, save everybody…

There were more than six billion people floating around in this world and God only knew how many people outside of it.

Out of all of those people, there had to be at least one that could safe us all.

My song faded into nothing-ness, and in the space between songs, the sound of Logan's strangled breathing broke through my carefully planned barrier and filled my ears, getting slower and slower with every passing second as I jabbed at the 'next song' button in my desperate attempt to have something to drown it out.

A heavy guitar riff finally came through my ears, but even still, the noise of Logan's wheezing, strangled breathing had already embedded itself in my mind, and with every passing second, I couldn't help but get more and more skeptical… maybe there was nobody out there after all, and if there wasn't… well then where would that leave us?

The thought ran through my mind relentlessly until it was coming out more as a plea than as an actual statement, and before I knew what was happening, I had found myself speaking aloud.

"Please," I whispered to myself, squeezing my eyes shut tightly as Logan began to wheeze and sputter so that not even my music could block it out.

"Is there anybody out there?"

* * *

It ended up being three hours later that I finally found something to preoccupy my festering thoughts, three hours later that I finally found a new hobby… starting at the clock on the wall, watching as the second hand made every agonizingly slow move forward.

It ended up being three hours later that they had finally given in and delivered Logan enough Morphine to effectively knock her out of her painful reality.

It ended up being three hours later that Brooke had stepped out of the room, leaving under mysterious circumstances and giving me nothing other than a quick explanation of "I'm getting lunch" before she straight-up walked out.

It ended up being three hours later that only Julian and I sat in my room, both equal in the fact that we were holding our breath in anticipation of my disconnection from an IV line for the last time for a couple beautiful weeks.

"Okay Sam… Congratulations on officially being finished with your first round of chemotherapy." They were the words that I have been waiting to hear for what seemed like a lifetime, the thing was, when they finally did come, it was almost bittersweet.

I looked up at Julian, the only person that was currently around to help me celebrate this enormously monumental occasion. I watched him smile down at me as my doctor disconnected my port and injected the standard flush; 10 cc's of Saline and 20 of Heparin.

"Congratulations Sam, I'm proud of you… Does it feel good to be done?"

"Hell yes it does," I emphasized my new-found freedom, stretching my arms behind my head and relaxing again my bed. "It's just one step closer to being done for good."

"That's the spirit, Samson," Julian told me, reaching down and pulling the wool hat I wore to cover my bald head down over my eyes.

I grinned, pulling it back up as Dr. Miller plugged the end of my catheter shut for hopefully what was the last time in a while.

"Before I forget Sam," She finally spoke up after completing her work in silence. I perked my ears up in instant attentiveness eager for her to deliver her message. I did after all still have the results of a particularly obnoxious bone marrow aspiration lingering up in the air... I'm just sayin'.

"I have a kind of… end of chemo present for you." I scrunched my face into a look of confusion, wondering where exactly she was getting at with this one. "Last night, me and the team working on your case got together to review all of your latest blood work and we all unanimously agreed; we think that it would be safe, and in your best interest to send you home a little bit earlier than expected."

I dropped my mouth open as my eyes widened in pure disbelief, I mean, there's no way that I had just gotten as lucky as I thought I did.

"Are you serious?" I questioned, refusing to get my hopes up, just in case I'd heard her wrong; but she gave me a small nod and a soft smile, and I could have screamed at her confirmation, I could have jumped up and down like a toddler that had too much sugar, I could have hugged her and squeezed so tightly I risked suffocating her to death; but instead, I just sat there, feeling the excitement build so thick and heavy underneath my skin that I was having a hard time doing anything at all other than sit there with a big, goofy grin displayed across my face.

"Under special circumstances of course," She added the catch quickly into the mix but still, I didn't care. I was going home and to me, no amount of special circumstances could change that.

"What do I have to do?" The inquiry shot out of my mouth practically before the doctor even had time to finish her sentence.

"Sit in a plastic bubble…" She answered in a tone that didn't adequately let me know whether she was being serious or sarcastic, but either way, I took it as a serious comment, just to show her that I was willing to do absolutely anything to get the hell out of this place.

"I'll do it!" I yelled, literally yelled at her as I sat myself up a little bit higher in my bed.

"Okay, but listen Sam." She held up two hands, indicating for me to slow down before I hurt myself or something, so I slunk back down and put my best attentive face on as she continued speaking. "There are a lot of precautions that you need to be taking if you're going to be spending the next couple of weeks at home." She took a seat at the edge of my bed, preparing to lay down the law while simultaneously letting me know that when she said that there were a lot of precautions, she meant that there were _a lot_ of precautions; emphasis on the word 'a lot'.

"Okay, I'm listening." The doctor laughed at my persistence and nodded through it, continuing on with her speech.

"One step at a time, Sam; let's just see how things go after today and then we'll take it from there, huh?"

My body sunk down just as fast as it had gotten up, the previously ecstatic look on my face fading instantaneously, a motion that Dr. Miller must have noticed because when she spoke again, she did so with an obvious effort to try to get my spirits boosted again.

"Hey, listen Sam, you can be out of here in a good two or three days if everything checks out. And trust me, at the rate your test results are coming in, everything is going to check out."

My smile returned… two to three days? Well now we're talking; I'd take that over two to three weeks anyway…

"Well, you're all set here." She finally told me the words that I have been waiting to hear her say for more than two weeks as she collected all of the empty IV drip bags into her arms and balanced them carefully in her arms… good riddance, I say.

"I'll be back a little later when your test results come back to let you know what's going on."

"Sounds perfect," I let her know, holding back my eager anticipation as I hoped for the best in the news that was still a few hours away from being delivered.

I saw her out the door before turning back towards Julian who, up until this point, had been suddenly very busy with his thumbs, typing away on his cell phone so quickly I thought I saw a little bit of smoke rising from the heat of the friction between his fingers and the keys.

"So," He finally looked up when he noticed I had been staring. "Any big celebrations planned for your big day?" I sighed and shook my head. The closest thing that I had planned to a celebration was to take a walk around the hallways only so that I wouldn't get bedsores on my legs from sitting in this bed for so long.

"Nah," I told him, choosing to spare him the details of that gory elaboration, keeping it nice and simple. "There's not much room for a party in here… Hey, by the way, where did Brooke run off to?" I could only assume that it was Brooke he had been texting so ferociously, probably just as curious as I was… it wasn't like Brooke to miss an opportunity to hover over me, even when I was doing stupid, worthless junk, which is why I was extra surprised that she wasn't hovering over me for something as important as this.

"Well… uh…" Julian got back into his mysterious mode, diverging his attention from my question by looking down at his phone once again, holding his finger up in the air indicating for me to wait. "Hold that thought," He told me, stuffing his phone back in his jeans pocket. "I'll be right back."

I watched with a look of confusion smeared across my face as he stood up and walked briskly right out the door. I found myself raising myself up in my bed, stretching out my neck in an effort to see past the door trying to find out just where the hell Julian had disappeared to…

It was just when I was starting to get so curious that I was almost considering getting out of bed to investigate that I watched Brooke barge into the room, Julian following right behind her, both of their arms laden with balloons, flowers, gift bags… you name it, it was there.

My eyes widened, trying to make them big enough so that I could see everything that they were currently carrying, but there was so much of it that that seemed to be impossible. I was absolutely shocked by the pleasant surprise but I'm not really sure why… I should know by now that I should always expect nothing less than extravagance from Brooke Davis.

"Brooke…" I asked as she dumped her load right on top of my sheets, covering my bed. "What is this?"

"This," Brooke told me, leaning in and gathering me up into her arms, squeezing tightly. "Is a congratulations present… Sorry I didn't make it back in time for you to get finished, but I went down to that weird little card shop over on the corner to get you some balloons and stuff and I think I may have gotten a little bit carried away…"

She pulled away from me and shrugged, sorting through the assortment of things in front of her. "Everything just looked so nice." She shrugged.

"It's fine, Brooke… thanks for all this stuff, you didn't have to do all that." I felt my face flushing, embarrassment from all of this attention filling me to the hilt as I picked up some of the random things laid out in front of me, quickly recognizing that not all of it had come solely from Brooke…

There was a drawing, some sort of comic from Peyton, a homemade card from Jamie, flowers from some teachers that I didn't even know existed at Tree Hill High School, a balloon and card from Haley…

"Where did you get all this stuff?" I asked her wide-eyed, marveling over the sheer amount of people that seemed to have been thinking about me these days as I continued shuffling through the various items from various people, getting more and more amazed by the second at the outpouring of love and support.

"People have just been dropping it off lately," Brooke shrugged as if the answer were obvious. "At the house mostly, but sometimes they go to the store… your teachers gave all of that stuff to Haley to give to you… I don't know, you know this town; gossip is like gospel, it spreads like wildfire and once it does, everybody just wants to "help out"." She held her hands up, moving her fingers in quotes in her poke at the Tree Hill residents as I read over a giant construction-paper card that had been signed by every single member of my 2nd period English Lit class.

For the first time in my entire life, I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging, of support, and it was a lot for me to take in; my eyes began to water with affection, but I controlled it to nearly unrecognizable levels, and lucky for me, Brooke was too distracted by the goodies on my bed to notice.

A smile emerged, wide and flashing across my face. It was looking more and more like this day could do no wrong. Good news poured from every direction, and finally, even though I'd waiting for what seemed like forever, and was forced to go to hell and back to gain it, it seemed like my bad luck was starting to turn around…

My thoughts went back to my request of the morning, my prayer for help, and I began to think that maybe, just maybe, my prayers had finally been answered.

Maybe there was somebody out there after all.

* * *

It took a little while for the excitement of the morning to finally ware down, but after it finally did, I found myself lying flat on my back, headphones in my ears and waiting silently or my doctor to come back with the news of when I could go home.

Brooke was sitting next to me trying to her luck at knitting her first ever sweater and Julian had ran back to the house real quick to shower but Brooke and I sat in a comfortable silence, content with ourselves for the moment as we absorbed the much needed rest and relaxation.

I cracked my eyes opened and looked towards my left. Brooke was nursing an aching thumb, her knitting patterns getting so intense that she had literally drawn blood from her fingers with the wooden needle, but it was nothing that she couldn't handle herself.

Satisfied, I turned back to my right.

For a moment, my attention lingered out the single window in the room. The sun was blazing, but the crisp, mid-November air was still visible in the wind, the very thought of it causing me to shudder involuntarily as I pulled my blankets up a little bit higher over my shoulders, my gaze dropping down and once again, landing on Logan… poor Logan; she was just lying there, totally despondent, totally unaware… she barely even knew where she was these days, she rarely talked, rarely even moved if you wanted to get technical.

It was horrible to watch, and I'd imagine even more horrible to experience.

My eyes began to focus as I took in the scene, expecting what had become so normal to me these days. Logan fast asleep, sucking greedily on any available oxygen she could pull into her system… but this time there was something that wasn't so normal… something strange… something different.

Something was wrong.

Her normally loud, hoarse gasps were absent, replaced by a sea of complete silence, and… well, was she awake? I couldn't tell; her eyes were open, but they were unmoving. She wasn't blinking, she didn't look like she was looking at anything in particular, she was just staring straight ahead, she was just…

A sudden feeling enveloped my senses making me feel like somebody had just filled a garbage bag with bricks and hit me over the head with it. I was staring at a scene from a horror movie, no; I was dreaming… yeah, that was it; that had to be it. It was the only possible explanation because there was no way in hell that the scene that I thought was in front of me was actually in front of me.

I shook my head hard, but it didn't go away. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I couldn't feel… I could only stare.

"Brooke," My voice came out in such a low whisper that I was barely able to hear it myself. So I gulped, took a deep breath, and tried again.

"Brooke!" This time, I yelled, my voice carrying and echoing off of the walls, straight into Brooke's ears causing an instantaneous reaction as Brooke literally threw her knitting half way across the room and flew up from her seat, running over to me with pure panic in her eyes.

"What is it? What happened? What hurts?" She reached over and grabbed my shoulders into a vice grip, looking me up and down in search for any visible signs of what could possibly be hurting me so badly as to warrant an outburst of that magnitude.

I opened my mouth but no words came out. The painful reality was sinking steadily; the loss of Logan was seeping through my veins, replacing everything that had previously been in there. I became instantaneously mute; all I could manage to do was scrunch up my face and sob while Brooke, poor Brooke was still freaking out over me with the impression in her mind that I was currently in some sort of unimaginably excruciating pain… of the physical sense, that is.

"Sam, talk to me honey, please. What's wrong?" She was starting to panic, I could see it in her eyes, and I felt bad, really I did, but still, it took me a couple more seconds until I was finally able to regain the feeling back in my hands and my feet, even longer still until my tears slowed down so that I could actually see out of my eyes again, and only a few seconds extra for my brain to defog long enough to allow a single phrase to pass through.

"There's something wrong… Logan… there's something wrong with her!"

Brooke pulled away from me so suddenly that I was convinced she would leave fingernail marks in my shoulders. She darted upright and made the move to race towards Logan's side of the room before she thought better of it, instead, choosing to inch her way forward, terrified of what would greet her behind the curtain.

She disappeared behind the partition, and through the curtain, I managed to catch a glimpse of her hovering over Logan, still other than the motions of her back as it heaved up and down for several long seconds before finally, she began to back away from the bed slowly, continuously shuffling her feet until she got back on our side of the room.

It was only then that I watched as she slowly turned around and then, in the blink of an eye, she ran.

The world froze. Any ounce of hope that I had before was now gone. In the brief seconds between the time that Brooke and darted out of the room and the time that she would come back being trailed by a team of doctors, my thoughts became free to run rampant.

As I watched the small group of white-coated braniacs saunter past me without a second glance over towards Logan, I figured that everybody would try to find their own way, their own reasons as to why tragedies like this have to happen. Why there would be thousands, no, millions more men, women, and children that would all die in vain before somebody opened their eyes and realized it was too much. Why kids like Logan, kids like me could never be truly saved…

But I guess that's the thing with reasons… we all have them, and ultimately, reasons are just the reason that we're all going just keel over and die one day, so why bother.

The group of five or six doctors gathered with no commotion. It wasn't anything like that one time they'd all raced forward, eager to help when Logan had her seizure… no, it was like the complete opposite.

This time, it was clear as day to them all from the instant they set eye on Logan. There was nobody there to be saved anymore; there was nobody to bring back, nobody to save.

Logan McGinnis was dead, and nothing was going to change that.

I forced my eyes away as a male nurse reached down with gentle hands and pulled a white sheet lightly up over Logan's body, covering her wide eyes and peaceful features from anymore wandering eyes.

I chose instead to focus on the window; it was amazing that despite everything, blue skies still shown brilliantly through the glass; birds still flew on in their normal routine, people walked past, blissfully pretending as if nothing was going on through the other side of the walls.

I felt my mattress sink next to me and instantly recognized the feeling as Brooke as she climbed into my bed beside me. Her arms snaked across my shoulders, pulling me into her chest, and I embraced it.

It was about that time that I totally lost it. It was about that time that I broke down completely. It was about that time that I found myself violently shaking within the safe confines of Brooke's arms, feeling her as she gripped me tighter, allowing me to cry harder.

"It's okay honey, you're okay. It's going to be okay." Tears were dripping steadily from Brooke's eyes. I couldn't see them and I couldn't hear them, but I could feel them; big, thick droplets splashing down from her chin, landing heavily on top of my bald scalp.

I tried to let her words sink in, work their magic in their efforts to relax me, but for the first time that I could ever remember, not even Brooke could ease the downright agony that I could feel settling into the pit of my stomach because that feeling, that pain was lacing itself through every single crack and crevice of my body, making itself comfortable and very apparent to me in its insistence that it wasn't planning on leaving any time soon.

It was my fault really. How had I been so stupid to allow my hopes to get that high? How had I been so stupid to think that I would be able to have one good day, to think that everything was going to turn out just fine…

I get it; this was karma, my personal punishment for ever believing that any aspect of my life could turn out good.

It had been stupid to the point of pure naivety for me to think that there had ever been anybody out there. So do yourself a favor; next time you're considering asking if anybody's out there, just hold your breath, because I'll give you the answer right here, right now.

There is nobody out there. There never has been, and there never will be, so you might as well quit trying while you're still ahead.

* * *

"Sam?" 28 minutes after Logan was officially pronounced dead, and 20 after they'd rolled her prone body passed me in a body bag, Dr. Miller found herself trailing cautiously into my room, approaching nervously as I sat up in my bed, curled up in a ball against Brooke's shoulder trying to control the red, puffy-faced mess that I had become since.

Her face looked somber and pained. I could only guess that she'd heard the news.

I felt Brooke's instinctively tighten around me, protective of this intruder before she recognized the lack of a threat and hesitantly loosened her grip without completely detaching herself, still fearful that if she let me go, something would swoop down and take me from her, just like it had taken Logan…

"I heard about Logan, Sam. I'm sorry; I know the two of you had gotten pretty close." I couldn't muster anything more than a curt nod of the head, the simplest of acknowledgments that I had heard her and that I appreciated the fact that she had been thinking of me.

"Listen, Sam," She continued speaking, "I know that this is hard, and I know how you're feeling right now, believe me I do… so if you need anybody else to talk to remember, I'm not just here to get you better…"

I finally forced my eyes upward to lock with the doctors. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but now that I did, it seemed pretty obvious… Dr. Miller wasn't simply just my doctor; she was a doctor that had been through the ropes, who has seen hundreds of desperately ill children cross her path in her time…

And now that I was thinking about it, I couldn't help but wonder how many of those desperately ill children she had lost.

"Thanks," I managed to choke out, my voice hoarse from crying all afternoon.

"Well," She moved on, "I do have some good news for you." She opened the folder in her hand and flipped through it carefully until she found what she was looking for. "Your aspiration results are in. Your counts are high, your numbers look good… congratulations Sam, you're officially in remission."

It was good news, I knew that it was, but I just couldn't find it in my heart to be happy right now. In fact, I felt worse, if that was possible. I mean, why is it that I got to be in remission while kids like Logan McGinnis would never get the opportunity for that… would never get the opportunity for anything anymore.

It wasn't fair, and you know what, I think I was starting to understand that this entire screwed up world was just one giant jigsaw puzzle, where I'm just one little piece, so no, when I thought about it in terms of the big picture, who really cares if I'm in remission or if I'm dying… maybe that just means that I've finally found my place in it all.

"That's amazing Sam, I'm so proud of you." Brooke whispered in my ear, rubbing at my shoulders a little bit as if she was trying to rub off some of her happiness onto me as she began to notice the fact that I was obviously not taking the best news of my entire life quite the way that she had expected me to.

"Sam…?" When I didn't say anything, my doctor addressed me again, the concern laced in her voice telling me that she thought she had lost me completely for a second there.

"I know, I'm sorry," I breathed out, shaking my head roughly in a failed attempt to clear my mind. "I guess my mind is just wandering today."

She gave a short nod in my general direction but didn't cease in the intense stare down she placed in my general direction for a few more seconds before she turned back to my charts.

"Well, your blood counts are a little low, but that's to be expected," She carried on as if nothing were wrong, flipping through a couple more pages. "I'm going to get you set with a blood transfusion just to bring them up a little but things are looking good Sam. I think it's safe to say that you should be expecting a trip home very soon."

Had she said those words to me yesterday, the news would have been like the second coming of Christmas. But now… I was suddenly very reluctant to leave this room behind me, suddenly afraid of letting go of that last reminder of the first and only friend I had made while stuck behind these walls.

I opened my mouth with the intention to at least be polite and respond to the woman who was, in her defense, trying her very hardest to cheer me up, but the only thing that happened was instead of words, tears spilled out instead.

I tried to will them away, the only thought running through my mind being to please not do this here, not now… it was just plain embarrassing to be crying in front of my doctor, but no matter how hard I tried, they came, and after that, there was no stopping them.

There was a split second where I just sat there, crying my eyes out like a little girl when before I knew it, I felt a fresh set of arms wrap themselves around my shoulders, giving me a firm squeeze as a hand rubbed circles around my back. Suddenly, I didn't care so much anymore, instead, I just leaned my face into the woman's shoulder, the sudden realization of what she has to go through every single day of her life hitting me like a slug to the temple… I suddenly respected her a thousand times more for being able to wake up every morning and come back to it.

"It gets easier Sam." She promised me as I finally allowed myself to pull away, my red eyes looking up to meet hers.

"But how do you stop feeling it?" I was certain she would have the answer. After all, she was an expert of the trade, a person who's been around the bend more than once and still somehow manages to get up when it's all done and move on.

The last thing I was expecting from her was for her to look down at me with a sad look and a shake of the head as she replied to me, "You never do."

My blood ran cold. Another painful lurch of tears sent my body into fitful sobs. The pieces were slowly coming together; so do you want some advice, because I'm ready to give some advice.

There is a line between being awake and being asleep that isn't as solid as most people care to think.

The point is, reality is relative, and the sooner you learn that, the less it will hurt when you finally realize that your dreams and your nightmares are really all just the same thing.

So take that advice, because trust me, it would have been a lot easier if somebody had dished it all out to me first.

God, sometimes I feel like I just need somebody to tell me just exactly how this is supposed to be done; somebody to come here and let me know exactly what I should be doing, exactly what I should be feeling, exactly where I should be going… so this is my final call, and trust me, I'm not usually a beggar, but this time I need it; so please, answer me this:

Is there anybody out there?

* * *

**BROOKE**

"You should really eat something, Sam." It has been nearly two whole hours since Logan McGinnis had been officially pronounced dead, two hours that I have been sitting besides Sam, holding her tightly as I listened to her cry, two hours that I've been desperately wracking my brain for something so say, only to come up empty… except of course when I told her that maybe she should eat something… great.

"Yeah, come on Sam, it might make you feel better." Julian took a shot in the dark in his own attempt to get through to Sam as the two of us exchanged worried glances between each other.

I felt bad for Julian. The poor guy had just gone home to take a damn shower, but when he came back, he had inadvertently walked straight into the eye of the storm, into a problem that was way over both of our heads. The double whammy with Julian was that he was forced to sit and try to rectify the situation while he was still half in the dark.

The of us had thus far done a fairly good job in our attempts to collaborate our efforts to get Sam to open up to us that had lasted a good hour of so by now. I was astonished that we had actually been able to work off of the fight that we'd had with each other last night, you know, the one where Julian went off on me for fifteen minutes about me not allowing him to contribute as much as he wanted to… yeah, that one. Well, much to Julian's relief, the combination of both of our contributions actually produced something that I would call at least semi-productive in our efforts to guide Sam through this mourning process… Jesus, we sure did pick a doozy to start off with though.

"I'm not hungry." She muttered almost inaudibly into my shoulder as she fixated her glassy, void eyes firmly in front of her. I was understandably starting to get nervous.

She'd barely moved, barely spoken, barely done much of anything for the past two hours… the tears had stopped flowing like rivers from her eyes nearly an hour ago, finally limited to a single tear drop that would appear every now and then… Now I was just trying to decide whether to take that as a good sign or a bad one.

I found myself once again, locking eyes with Julian, our nerves expressed in the matching terrified looks mirrored in our faces.

"You know you can talk to us, Samson." Julian assured her, unconsciously inching the chair he was sitting in a little bit closer to the bed her and I were currently squashing ourselves uncomfortably within as I pulled her body into my shoulder a little bit tighter; my way of telling her that I seconded Julian's motion of letting her know that she could tell either of us anything that she was currently thinking in complete and total confidence.

It took her a couple of minutes so that for a second, I thought that maybe we had lost this battle, that she was going to stubbornly remain determinedly silent… and then she spoke.

"It's gonna be me soon." Her expression never changed, her voice rang in emotionless monotony as she continued to stare straight ahead at the wall.

For a moment, I wasn't sure what she was talking about; and then, as my gaze focused on the empty bed next to me, and then back to Sam, and then back to the bed, and then finally back to Sam, a hole ripped through my chest, slicing my heart clear in half.

"You can't think like that." I scolded her because when I said that she couldn't think like that, I meant that _I_ couldn't think like that, that _I_ didn't want to think of the possibility, the very threat we were desperately trying to avoid…

Do you want the truth? The truth was that I was terrified that she was right, terrified of the constant threat that what happened to Logan would turn around and rear its ugly head on us. That thought crossed through my mind every single day…

So yeah, she couldn't think like that; but was it hypocritical of me to actually say that to her when I had just been thinking the same exact thing.

How the hell was I supposed to step up and adopt her, to be her mother when I couldn't even have faith in her at the moment she needed it the most.

"Why not?" I listened to the inclination in her voice raise slightly as she lifted her head away from my shoulder. Her eyes were full of tears as her face tipped down in a look of anger. "You do realize that this disease kills people, don't you?"

"It doesn't kill _you_!" I shot back instantaneously, staring at her sternly so that we met eye-to-eye. Me and her, well we were both born with the gift of having tongues that were as sharp as knives, which meant that when we fought, I knew I had to keep my guard up or else risk getting cut.

"Why are you thinking like this?" I softened my tone, "You heard your doctor; you're doing better than even she expected. She's letting you go home in a few days, Sam. Do you honestly think that you get to leave the hospital because you're dying?"

"Wake up Brooke, I am dying!" I opened and closed my jaw a couple times, pursed my lips as if I was going to say something in response to that but I came up short… I had absolutely nothing.

It was a slap across the face. I knew that she knew that I was trying. I knew that she knew that if it were up to me, I would have gotten the worst of this over with long before it had even started...

Of course, it wasn't up to me. It took me a long time to realize that I had absolutely no control over things like this…

Through the small corner of my eye, I could see Julian's muscles tense in response to the uncomfortable thickness that seeped through the air, filling every inch and crevice of the tiny room. The silence was deafening. I could practically hear the sound of the liquid dripping through Sam's IV lines and through her veins.

Her chest was heaving in a combination of rage and anguish. Tears stung and threatened in the backs of her eyes but I didn't see a single one fall.

"Brooke…" Julian took a step forward, no longer able to awkwardness in the room, but I just held my hand up, indicating for him to step back and let me handle this as I slid myself off of Sam's bed and stepped away, leaving her to huff dramatically and turn over in her bed so that she faced the wall, back to me.

"Brooke, come on," Julian tried, once again, to be the voice of reason and once again, I ignored him, choosing instead to stomp like an overdramatic teenager towards the door where I whipped around, pronounced "I'll be right back," and then walked right out.

I marched out of the room, feeling as the heat rose slowly in my cheeks and my face turned bright red from the frustration, from the anger… I wasn't angry at Sam, I was angry at… I don't know… fucking cancer.

I hated it. I hated everything about it. I was starting to get really, really tired of all of this…

Technically speaking, I knew that phone calls weren't allowed within the hospital, but the truth was, I had broken that rule about a million times over already and absolutely none of those times resulted in any sort of spontaneous combustion, monster attack, alien invasion, or whatever else might result from me using a cell phone right next to an elevator, and I was desperate… so I chose to press my luck again and dialed the first familiar number that popped into my head.

I paced back and forth through the packed hallways, listening to the repetitive ring tone that filled my ears six times later before Peyton's answering machine greeted me.

"Shit," I mumbled to myself, probably a little bit louder than I should have judging by the few blank stares coming from the people closest to me as they stared in my general direction looking as if they'd never heard a curse word before.

I resisted the urge to just flip them all off and tried again with the next number on my speed dial.

This time, the phone rang only once before I got the answer that I was looking for; an actual voice talking back to me.

"Hello?"

"Haley," I gasped out the word, not expecting her to have answered so quickly and therefore leaving me unprepared when she actually did.

"Brooke, what's wrong?" She read my voice like a book, my tone sending her into a panicked frenzy… my bad.

"It's… it's just… I was just wondering… are you free right now?" I tried to make my voice sound as normal and composed as possible but that was a feat easier said than done considering… recent circumstances.

"Of course I am. Brooke what's wrong? You sound upset?" She urged me on, her question confirming that I was indeed a crappy actress and that I should just stick to my day job. I could literally hear the sound of her breathing coming through my ears in short bursts as all of the worse-case scenarios made circles around her brain.

"It's just… Sam… I'm having a hard time with her…" My confession sparked a twinge of embarrassment over the fact that I didn't know what I should be doing for my own daughter. I paced a hole in the floor, spinning in circles as tears threatened my eyes and all of the strangers glanced past over their shoulders to take a second glance at this freak show in front of them, shuffling their feet faster to quicken the pace past me as if they thought that craziness was contagious or something…

"Brooke, I'll be right there. Hang on."

And that is the exact reason as to why I loved Haley Scott. Well, actually, there were a lot of reasons why I loved Haley Scott, but this was one of them. No matter what, I knew that I could rely on her. No matter what, I knew that she would always put her friends' needs and her family's needs before her own. No matter what, I knew that she would be at my side in an instant if I needed her.

I listened to the sound of the phone clicking on the other end as Haley hung up leaving me standing in the middle of the hallway where I let out a nice, big sigh of relief.

"Thanks Hales," I muttered to nobody in particular, hanging up my own phone and taking a couple more seconds before I gathered up the courage to turn back to Sam's room.

I sauntered to the doorway. The girl was now standing up, her hands placed firmly against her hips with a serious look on her face as she chatted away with Julian about something that looked very important… three guesses as to what that was.

His back was turned to me but I could see Sam as she looked past his shoulder, locking eyes with me as a look of pure remorse made its way across her face.

She walked passed Julian, using his shoulder as leverage, approached me, and wordlessly threw her arms so abruptly and so unexpectedly around my body that I staggered backwards, almost losing my balance before I righted myself back up, tensing momentarily before finally relaxing and returning the embrace around Sam's small body.

"I'm sorry Brooke." She mumbled into my shoulder as I felt the tears pooling into the fabric of my t-shirt as I pulled her closer into me, rubbing large circles across the width of her narrow back.

"Don't be Sam. I'm the one that should be sorry." She didn't respond; she didn't have to; there was a comfortable silence for the remainder of the time that she sat in my arms. We held that position for a long time so that when she finally did break away from me, I had to resist the urge to cling back onto her, resist the desire to keep her in my arms forever. It was after all, the only place that I felt I could properly protect her from all of the horrors that life had to offer.

She dragged her feet back across the floor before throwing herself down in the armchair beside her, letting out a deep sigh as she stared straight ahead at the wall and mumbled to nobody in particular; "I need to get out of here."

I could tell that she was getting restless. Not five seconds had gone by after she sat down that she changed her mind, pulling herself back to her feet where she resumed her pacing back and forth around the room before she got bored of that and made a bee line straight for the door.

"Where are you going?" I asked when she showed no signs of stopping at the doorway, her plan to continue on straight into the hallway becoming evident.

"Just down the hall, I won't go far, I promise."

"Okay…" I pretended like I was completely okay embracing her sudden adventurous side and shrugged my tentative shoulder towards Julian. I agreed, Sam did need to just get the hell out of this room for a minute or two… but that didn't mean that I had to be comfortable with it.

"I'll go with her." He caught onto my hint, stepping past me to catch up with Sam, assisting the girl into the hallway, leaving me standing solo in the middle of the now empty room.

"Sam," I called her back, watching as both her and Julian swiveled their necks to look back to me. My eyes momentarily searched for, and connected with Sam's.

"I'm gonna find you a way out of here." There was a second of silence, but then, for what I knew was the first time in hours, the first time since Logan had died, her mouth twitched upwards in the faint ghost of a smile as her head gave a quick jerk in the motion of a nod.

"I know," She told me before she turned back around, leaning into Julian's arm wrapped safely around her shoulder before disappearing from view.

I took a deep breath. I had expectations for myself to stay true to my word. I was determined to get Sam out of here; how I was going to that, I had no idea, but all I did know was that I was definitely going to do it.

I don't know, maybe I just needed some help. Maybe there was somebody, something that I could go out and find to bring back here with me, somebody who would hold my hand through the entire process, tell me exactly what I was supposed to be doing, how I was supposed to do it…

The thought was nice, but I wasn't about to get my hopes up. But what was the harm in asking, right?

I closed my eyes, raised my head up to the sky, took a couple deep breaths, and finally whispered.

"Is there anybody out there?"

* * *

**HALEY**

I wasn't quite sure exactly what was going on, per se. In fact, the only thing I did know was that Brooke had curled me in a frenzy; that Brooke had sounded nervous, and that Brooke needed my help… and by the sound of it, needed all of my help that she could get.

I barged into my kitchen unannounced. Nathan was leaning over Jamie's shoulder as the boy sat at the counter struggling through his math homework despite Nathan's best efforts at assistance.

"Hey Jamie, how about you take a little break from that, huh?"

"Yeah!" Eager to put the torture of homework aside, a trait that he did not inherit from me, he jumped away from the counter so quickly that he was at my side before Nathan even had time to process what the hell had just happened.

He looked at me, confusion written across his soft features as I pulled my jacket up around my arms and threw my bag over my shoulder, reaching to the hook on the wall for my car keys.

"We're going to the hospital to visit Aunt Brooke and Sam, so get your coat Jamie." I told him, listening as the boy shrieked in pure delight before running from the kitchen. I could hear his little feet scampering down the hall as he darted for the closet in the foyer, leaving Nathan to step away from the counter and cross his arms over his chest, looking down at me in search of an explanation.

"Brooke just called me." I told him watching as he stood up a little bit straighter, his face tilting to that nervous lines appeared in his forehead, his eyes softening with realization.

"Is everything okay with…" His voice trailed off, just to ensure that the prying ears of our sneaky five year old wouldn't hear the fact that something had potentially gone very wrong.

I shrugged my shoulders. The reality of it was that I had no idea if everything was okay with Sam; but I figured I would at least try to act nonchalant about it as my mind raced with the unknown possibilities. "I think so," I told him, "Brooke didn't really give me any details. She just said that she's having a hard time with Sam so I figured that she could probably use all the help she can get."

I watched Nathan bob his head up and down in agreement, opening his mouth to respond to me, but getting cut off before he had the opportunity to speak as Jamie bound back into the room without a care in the world, his ruffled windbreaker already on as he dragged Nathan's oversized coat from his arms over to him.

"I got yours too daddy." He extended the coat into Nathan's awaiting arms where he took it from his son with a thanks and a ruffle of the boy's hair before we were off.

Nathan and I maintained the ride in a comfortable silence. It was easy. Considering neither of us had any clue as to what was going on within the confines of Tree hill Memorial, we chose not to bring up any of the possibilities for fear that Jamie, and his over-sensitive hearing would hear something that he shouldn't have and get all the wrong ideas.

I had made Nathan drive. He had a talent, I would call it… he was really good at being a bad driver; so not only did I know he would get us there fast, I knew he would get us there in one piece.

He pulled into the main entrance of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital and I watched with a confused look on my face as he made the first left towards the doors of the main entrance as opposed the first right to get to the parking lot.

"Nate, where are you going?" I asked as he rolled to a halt right outside the front doors.

"I'm letting you out here." Nathan nodded as if it were his final say. "Go get Brooke, Haley. Jamie and I will go park the car and catch up."

I nodded my head eagerly, leaning over to give him a quick kiss, eternally grateful for his acknowledgment of just how much of a rush I was currently in to get to Brooke, to see what the hell was going on.

I jumped out of the car and practically sprinted through the doors. I had long out grown even bothering to stop at the front desk to ask for directions. Instead, I had a perfect map of this hospital written permanently across my brain, and I planned on using it, slipping past the receptionist booth without a second glance headed straight for the elevators.

When I finally did get to Sam's room, the first thing that I noticed was the fact that Sam wasn't in it and I froze, feeling as if my heart had just done a free fall into my stomach.

Brooke was standing alone in the center of the room, her back facing me and her arms wrapped around her own body as she stood stone still, just staring ahead of her at Sam's empty bed.

I could feel my legs shaking. I took my first step forward… Okay Haley, it's okay, this is not what it looks like, everything is going to be okay.

"Brooke?" She jumped about a foot in the air, whipping around at the sound of my voice. Her face had an expression that made her look exactly how I felt… I froze momentarily, unsure of what I should do next when before I even knew what hit me, her body was wrapped around my own and she was silently sobbing into my chest.

"Oh my God Brooke, what happened?" I stumbled over my words, making me sound like I had a bad stutter as I pulled her away from me so that I could look her square in the eyes. My mind was racing; there were a million possibilities darting through my deepest of imagination; each one worse than the other… and it didn't help that Brooke wasn't answering my questions.

"Brooke, where's Sam? Is Sam okay?" I asked again, speaking in slow, well-annunciated fragments so that Brooke could understand me through her tears.

I watched as she sniffled and nodded her head, attempting to straighten herself up and compose herself as she reached up and wiped the tears away from her eyes.

"She's fine, Sam's fine…" I let out a deep sigh of relief as I brought a shaking hand up to my chest. But then I got to thinking; if Sam is fine, then what the hell else could it possibly be?

"It's Logan… Sam's roommate," Brooke finally said. I have to say, out of all of the possible scenarios that had flashed through my mind; that had not been one of them… but given the nature of our last meeting, I'm not sure why I didn't think of it.

"She… she died and Sam, well… she's taking it pretty hard."

"Oh my God Brooke, when did it happen?" "This morning," She told me, "Sam found her, and… and…" She drifted off, allowing me to put the rest of the story together on my own as I reached up and dragged a shaking hand through my hair… I couldn't even imagine…

"How are her parents holding up?" Brooke shook her head, unable to offer nothing more than a shrug over towards me.

"I don't know; I haven't seen them; I'm not sure whether or not they'll stop by and see us, you know…" I knew. I wasn't so sure that I would want to go back into the room that my child had died in either if I were them.

"So look," I tried to pull the subject out of this somber, depressing trap. "Nathan and Jamie are just outside parking the car, they'll be right back up." Her head bobbed up and down in time with my speaking but her stare was so blank, so empty, that I couldn't quite be sure that she was listening.

"Uh… where's Sam?" I finally asked, allowing the curiosity of the girl's whereabouts to finally get the better of me.

"Um… she went for a walk around the hall with Julian… that was about 15 minutes ago though, I should probably go find her." I nodded. I was slightly shocked at the revelation that Brooke had actually let Sam out of her sight for 15 whole minutes, especially under these circumstances, but I refrained from speaking my mind. Instead, I followed Brooke into the open halls, trailing behind as we walked slowly up the corridor, stopping every once in a while so that Brooke could peer into a random room or two in search for Sam.

"We got in a fight." She finally mumbled out of thin air. I looked up at her upon her revelation but didn't say anything. After the confirmation that Sam wasn't in any immediate danger, my second thought as to why Brooke had called me down here had been something like that… "She was upset about Logan and started telling me that what happened to Logan is just going to happen to her too… I think I might have snapped at her."

"Oh, Brooke…" I started, trying to buy myself some time to figure out what to say next. "Don't feel too bad. She was upset, you were upset… I'm sure that you both said things that you didn't mean. Don't blame yourself; nobody wants to hear their kid talking like that."

"Thanks Haley…" Brooke sighed, her head facing towards the floor, "I was starting to think that maybe I was just going crazy." She faked a laugh as we rounded a corner into a small room that I'd never been in before. It was a nice little alcove; there was a computer, a TV… it was a nice little set up designed for the older kids on the ward that had long since outgrown the play room, and low and behold, there was Sam, sitting in front of the TV with her legs propped up against the desk, her back facing the doorway, transfixed on the screen in front of her as she played Madden Football on the X-Box with Julian.

"Hey Sam…" The girl instinctively pounded at the pause button at the sound of Brooke's voice and turned herself around. I watched as the dull look that spanned across her brown eyes brightened slightly as she recognized me standing there next to Brooke and she instantly pushed herself away from her chair and stood, walking over to me with no hesitations before throwing her arms around my shoulders.

"Haley, hey… it's been a few days." Her words sounded enthusiastic but underneath the surface I could hear an undertone of emptiness, a void somewhere inside of her.

"I know, I'm sorry I couldn't stop by before but… listen Sam, I'm really sorry about Logan, I know that the two of you were friends."

Sam broke her eye contact with me the second she heard Logan's name.

"Brooke called you in for reinforcements, huh?" She asked, sinking back into her seat as I turned towards Brooke who offered nothing more than a brief shrug in response.

"Yeah…" I said, pulling up a chair next to her, forming a little triad between myself, Sam, and Julian.

She refused to meet my eyes from there on out leading me to believe that she wanted nothing to do with discussing Logan. I knew that it wasn't my place to push her, I knew it wasn't my place to force her to tell me exactly how she was feeling but you know what, it sure as hell was my place to try, and that's what I was going to do.

"Look Sam, I know it sucks, and I know that you probably don't want to talk about it and that you're still grieving but when the time comes, I'll be here for you, okay?" I lowered my eyes, my chin dropping against my chest as I took a few seconds to extensively study the tile pattern on the floor. I could feel Brooke and Julian's eyes staring a hole through the two of us waiting to see what would happen next.

"Thanks Haley," She finally said after a few more seconds of silence, finally bringing her face up to look at me.

I nodded, reaching out and gripping her shoulder in a firm grip in my own attempt to emphasize the fact that I would be there for her no matter what.

"Sam!" A shrill voice broke our moment as all heads turned to the door to find my son, looking like he was dragging Nathan by the hand into the room in his own effort to get to Sam faster.

I watched Sam; her features lifted and her face physically glowed in response to Jamie's presence as Nathan finally released his hand leaving him to bound into the room, sprinting right past me, Brooke, and Julian without a second glance, straight to Sam.

"Hey bud," Sam greeted him, pulling the boy into her lap as he looked up at her with pure admiration in her eyes.

"Sam, I missed you. I've been waiting… this many days to see you." The boy tilted his neck up to Sam, holding up nine fingers proudly, searching for praise in his ability to keep count.

I felt a twinge of guilt pulling at my heart strings. I hadn't meant to keep Jamie and Sam apart for so long, especially when I knew that the visits made his day, and I know they made hers too.

"Jamie," I called his attention away from Sam as he looked up at me with his big doe eyes. "Aren't you forgetting something?" I asked him and watched as he twisted his face in an attempt to try to figure out what I was talking about as I gave him a hint, nodding towards Brooke and Julian.

I watched Jamie as his eyes lowered to the ground, his ears drooping like a scolded puppy. "Hi Aunt Brooke, hi Julian," He waved quickly but other than that, he hadn't even given them the opportunity to respond to him before he turned back towards Sam.

"Do you feel better yet, Sam?" He asked, desperation in his voice as I snuck a nervous glance towards Nathan and let my face droop at the comment. It was frustrating sometimes. I understand that Jamie is a kid, that he was beyond means of understanding what was going on… hell, I was beyond means of understanding what was going on, but sometimes I couldn't help but wish that Jamie would just understand that it was going to be a long time until Sam felt better again…

He'd taken to walking around the house, setting up his room and making lists of activities that he could do with Sam when she came home, I just couldn't bring it to myself to tell him not to get his hopes too high, to tell him that it was going to be a while before he would be able to do any of that…

"I'm starting to now, buddy." She smiled down at the boy, wiping her hand through his spiky hair, "Thanks Jamie."

"You're welcome," He replied, sliding himself off of her lap… "Sam, can we watch TV?" He asked, his miniscule attention span getting the best of him as he looked up at the paused video game with desire in his eyes.

"Jamie, I think that Sam is playing a game right now." I told him, trying to put a tone in my voice that taught him that he was being rude.

"If you can call it playing," Nathan said, stepping forward to finally greet Sam and Julian. "Julian's getting his butt kicked." He shook Julian's hand despite the fact that he'd just made fun of him and I sighed at Nathan's lack of help in trying to teach his son right from wrong.

I looked up at the TV; the 27 – 0 score displayed in front of my eyes still made me smirk despite my annoyance.

"But momma, you always let me watch TV after I do my homework." He whined, and I sensed a tantrum on its way.

"Yeah, well you didn't exactly finish your homework did you, Jamie?"

"No…" He twisted his face, trying to understand where I was going with this, but before he could figure it out, Sam butted in.

"I don't mind Jamie. Julian probably needs to take a break from getting his butt whooped anyway." Sam gave her stereotypical sarcastic smile over towards Julian who returned it right back, probably too grateful to see Sam smiling again to really care that he had just gotten his ass kicked in a video game by a teenage girl.

The girl reached up and flipped on the TV for Jamie, making the mistake of giving the boy the remote control, leaving us all stuck watching some stupid Nickelodeon cartoon that blasted on max volume through our ears as Sam's eyes faded duller and duller with every moment that passed.

I let my eyes linger on Sam's sunken features for a moment. To me, distracting Jamie with the television seemed to be a perfect opportunity for me to maybe get Sam to herself so that I could talk to her, at least attempt to get her to open up to me… but I could tell by her refusal to look in my general direction that she had different plans.

In fact, she refused to look at anybody, distracting herself with the tile pattern on the floor in her efforts to cut us all out.

I looked over towards Brooke; she was leaning hard against the door frame, her arms crossed and her eyes sad as they met mine, giving me a look that told me that she was thinking the same exact thing as I was.

Nathan was propped up next to her. I had learned how to read his facial expressions years ago; the way his forehead wrinkled slightly and his mouth thinned into a solid straight line told me that he was worried. He was worried about Brooke, he was worried about Sam, he was worried about me… he was worried about everybody, but that was just his nature, I guess.

I sighed audibly. I couldn't help but thinking that this one was something that was way beyond us, that we were going to need some help this time around, because I think that it was more than obvious that we were struggling to hold it all together our selves…

I looked to my right, I saw nothing, I looked to my left, I saw nothing… backwards, forwards, diagonal, up, down… no matter which direction I faced, I saw nothing, no one.

Jesus…

Is there anybody out there?


	21. It Gets Easier That Way

**Hey, hey, I know it's been a while, sorry about that but my 21st birthday was last Thursday and I've been vacationing and celebrating and have finally found myself at an appropriate state to write the next chapter. Anyway, it's not super long but I wanted to get something up so I didn't leave everybody waiting any longer so here you go! P.S. I'm reposting this chapter because I screwed up the dates because I'm a moron. Sorry if I confused anybody.  
**

Chapter 21: It Gets Easier That Way

**Tuesday, November 15th, 2011**

**PEYTON**

"Peyton, you missed a spot; everything in this house has to be completely cleaned before tomorrow." I think that pretty much summed up the majority of my day thus far… Brooke Davis ordering me around her house, yelling orders as I rubbed Lysol disinfectant wipes across every single crevice and square inch of the Davis home, which, might I add, is quite large.

I sighed and wiped over the aforementioned spot on the coffee table that Brooke was pointing a firm finger at, watching as my best friend paced up and down the halls of her own house with a frenzied look on her face and her eyes strained in an attempt to spot any offending germ that dared go up against the wrath that was Brooke Davis while she was on a mission.

"I've got it, I've got it, don't worry Brooke." I told her, but of course, telling Brooke Davis not to worry was like telling the world not to spin, so I just turned my back on my own statement and picked up an oversized lamp, wiping it with my wipe from top to bottom.

"Ugh, remind me why we're doing this again?" I asked, holding up the cloth in my hands, thick with gray dust, emphasizing the fact that Brooke hadn't spent more than a few hours in her house in nearly a month.

I watched Brooke as she stuck her head back through the door frame of her bathroom; the room that she had been floating in and out of for the past several hours in her own attempt at making sure that the dirtiest room in the entire house was turned utterly spotless underneath her firm reign.

"Because Sam is coming home from the hospital tomorrow and if she catches even a single germ, it can put her right back in there, and that's the last thing she wants right now so we're cleaning every single inch of this house for her." She finished her speech before she disappeared back into the bathroom.

I couldn't help but smile to myself and shake my head gently… the lengths that Brooke would go for this girl were absolutely amazing.

"And it's a surprise so you better not spoil it!" I heard her shout, her voice sounding echoed and distant as if she was sticking her face in the toilet bowl or something trying to make sure that she had cleaned it's every surface… but then again, I shouldn't joke like that because in all honesty, she probably was doing just that.

"Hey, don't worry about me, Julian is the one hanging out with her all day and you know as much as I do that he can't keep a secret worth a damn!" I yelled back, throwing my body on the couch, my sore muscles in desperate need of a break as Brooke came trudging out of the bathroom, her hair a frizzled mess and her forehead beaded with sweat from the hours of relentless cleaning that she'd just endured.

I watched as the worry lines creased across her forehead and she sunk herself into the seat next to me, sighing with the relief of finally getting off of her feet.

"Do you really think that he'll tell?" She looked up at me. "I just wanted to give her this… She hasn't really been talking since… you know, Logan died. I just wanted to surprise her and cheer her up." I laughed at Brooke's skepticism, clapping my hand against her back as I shook my head.

"No," I assured her firmly. "Julian is fine, Sam is fine, you're the only one freaking out. Relax." I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook playfully, but I was surprised when her face just sunk even lower.

"Hey," I turned my joking touch into a half-embrace, pulling her a little bit closer to me. "What's going through your head, B. Davis?"

"I don't think that I'm ready to take care of her by myself." I listened with poised ears as her voice dropped a couple of octaves and came out exceptionally raspy; a tell-tale sign that she was afraid and doubtful.

"What are you talking about?" I practically yelled because of how shocked I was at what I had just heard come out of her mouth. "You have been preparing for a month for this, B. Davis; if there is one person that can take care of Sam better than her doctor, it's you. You are doing an amazing job with her Brooke. That girl is lucky to have somebody like you to help get her through this."

"I just know that something gonna go wrong…" Tears stung at the bottom of her eye lids and my heart instantly stopped beating; it just hurt to see her cry, and I've been forced to watch it happen too many times for my liking. "She's gonna come home and I'm gonna do something wrong and something bad is gonna happen… I can feel it."

"Hey, hey, there's no crying here, Brooke. This is a happy time; they wouldn't be sending Sam home if they knew she wasn't ready and they thought that you couldn't handle it. You're an amazing mom and Sam is an incredibly strong girl; this isn't all on you, you know that, right?"

"I know I know…" She sighed and wiped her eyes off on the back of her hand, but even still, I could hear the skepticism strong and prevalent in the back of her voice.

"She's strong, Brooke. She's strong and I know her, she's going to fight this as hard as she possibly can. But listen, if for any reason you can't keep taking care of you, you know you still have me, and you have Haley, and Julian, and Nathan, and Lucas… trust me Brooke; not one of us are going to back out of this, and even though I know that you aren't either, I don't want you to worry about it because there's always back up."

I finished my motivational speech with a soft smile in an attempt to truly emphasize the message that I had just been trying to convey as she nodded back to me and gave me a false grin in return as she continued to dab at the tears that had formed underneath her eyes.

"I guess… I guess I just can't stop what if-ing." She admitted as I pulled her body deep into my shoulder, holding her there for just a minute so that this fell swoop of inadequacy could pass until she finally felt safe enough to lift herself from the comfort of my shoulder.

"Thanks Peyton," She nodded, finally rising to her feet.

"No problem," I followed her lead vertical. "Now come here." I said, holding my arms open in invitation, allowing her to sink into them before I wrapped them around her shoulders in a heavy embrace, pulling her deeper into me as I rocked her back and forth for a moment until she became the first to pull away.

I gave her a moment to clear her head and take a couple of deep breaths before I felt that it was safe to speak up again. "Come on, I think we have a kitchen to tackle next."

I lead her, and she followed me obediently into the room that we had both been putting off until dead last for fear of finding some moldy food in the fridge that had been untouched since October when Sam was first admitted into the hospital. I took a deep breath and dove headfirst in but I didn't find any moldy food or crusted plates… in fact, the only thing I did find was a pile of very official looking paper work splayed out across the counter top.

My curiosity started to get the better of me. I looked down, my eyes instantly landing on the official seal of the state of North Carolina stamped across the top left of the page, the words North Carolina Department of Social Services printed underneath it before the big bold letters across the center of the page caught my attention next; Petition For Adoption.

My eyes widened as an uncontrollable grin broke out across my face and I kept my eyes lingering long enough for Brooke to notice that I was staring so that she placed her body between me and the papers, shuffling them between her hands before paper clipping them together.

"I keep forgetting to mail these in…" She sighed, throwing the small pile into her bag in her final effort to jog her memory into stopping at a mailbox next time she went out.

"So… that's pretty big, huh?" I kept a neutral tone unsure whether or not I'd just intruded on something private or if I'd revealed something worth celebrating. When Brooke's face tipped into the first genuine smile I'd seen on her all day, I decided on the latter.

"It's huge," She nodded in agreement.

"So… how long until its official?" I stiffened my shoulders in excitement, pushed her, eager for details now that I was certain that I hadn't crossed some huge forbidden line.

I watched as Brooke shrugged, her gaze absentmindedly going back towards the small stack of paper's she had just shoved into her pocket book. "I don't know, they say I should give it a few weeks once I've mailed all the papers for them to get processed. I mean, I already did everything else the first time I petitioned to adopt Sam; the interview, the background check, the home inspection…" She ticked off all of the requirements on her fingers, straining to remember exactly what everything on that long list of requirements was.

"It shouldn't be more than a few weeks…" The final words of her sentence were drowned out by the sound of Brooke's cell phone ringing loudly from the depths of her pocketbook. She dug through it, searching for a moment before resurfacing with the device in hand, where she stared at the banner for a moment or two, furrowing her brow in concentration before she answered it.

"Hello?"

Through the silence that had suddenly permeated the thick air between us, I could hear the response coming from the other line.

"Brooke, hi, this is Cathy McGinnis." My heart clenched instantly in my chest, constricting in that feeling you always get when the sudden realization overcomes you that the upcoming conversation is going to be really, really awkward.

"Cathy hi," I heard Brooke respond as she brought her hand up to gently scratch at her head, perhaps in an attempt to jog her brain into thinking of something that she could say next. "Um… how are you?"

"We're holding up," I heard her say through the phone, followed by a brief pause. But the woman on the other end of the line didn't reflect on it for too long because a few seconds later, she spoke again. "Listen, we just ran over to the hospital to see you and Sam but Sam told me that you were home… I hope… I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"No, no, not at all," Brooke was practically yelling into the phone in her attempts to emphasize that fact as she dropped her tired body down into the stool at the counter. "I was just cleaning up."

"Yeah, I heard that Sam was coming home tomorrow… I uh, I remember the first time that Logan came home after her first chemotherapy round, the way I scrubbed the house before hand." Even through the phone I could hear the trace of a faint laugh as it appeared behind the woman's voice. "I was a nervous wreck."

Brooke gave an awkward laugh in response, rubbing a nervous hand through her hair before she subconsciously reached over and drenched her palms in Purrell, wringing them together nervously.

"I am a nervous wreck." She admitted… yeah, that was the understatement of the century.

"She'll do fine Brooke. You take good care of her." I have probably said that exact same phrase over a hundred times to Brooke this afternoon alone, the thing was, I knew that I could have said them a hundred more and it wouldn't have made any difference.

The thing was, now that Brooke was hearing it from a person that had actually been through it before… I could see it on her face; she was actually starting to believe it to be the truth; and as much as I would never ever want to for even a second consider me being in a place where I could relate to them, I couldn't help but feel a little bit jealous that a woman that Brooke barely knew could bring her comfort while meanwhile, I couldn't even make a dent.

I shook the thought out of my head; I guess that I would just have to learn from experience to expect that there would be things out there that I would never be able to understand… and maybe that was for the best.

"Thank you," I heard Brooke mumble into the phone, her stereotypical effort to protect her modesty coming out in full light underneath the embarrassment she faced in accepting a compliment.

"Um… actually I was just calling because my husband and I… well, we wanted to thank you… for everything that you and Sam have done for us and for Logan in these past few weeks… I know that Sam and Logan only knew each other for a little while but I know that they got pretty close in that time, and I know that Logan considered her one of the closest friends that she had during the time that she was in the hospital."

"They definitely were a match." Brooke replied; nodding her head absentmindedly in agreement before tapering off into more silence.

"Oh, before I forget," Brooke suddenly spoke up. "I was just wondering when… uh… when the funeral arrangements for Logan are." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as she waited for the answer with full understanding that this conversation had been uncomfortable enough already without her making it even more awkward.

"It's on Saturday at 11:00 at St. Peters."

"I'll see you on Saturday then," Brooke nodded slowly, her fingers drumming lightly against the marble countertop.

I couldn't hear what Cathy McGinnis had said to Brooke in return because she had mumbled it to the point that I wasn't even sure that Brooke knew what she'd just said.

"Um… I'm sorry to cut this short," She spoke again, this time her voice louder and more articulate so that I could understand her. "I uh… I just have some things I still need to get done before Saturday…"

"Of course, of course," Brooke responded, waving in mid air to nobody in particular. "I understand."

I eavesdropped on the conversation with arms crossed and face contorted in strict attentiveness as the two parted ways, Brooke hanging up the phone and sighing deeply as she leaned against the back of her stool in an attempt to get her thoughts back.

"You okay?"

She sighed, nodding as she stood back to her feet. "Yeah," She replied. "I just feel… bad." I nodded in agreement even though I didn't understand exactly where she was getting at. "Yesterday… uh… Logan's parents, they uh, they took her little sister down to the cafeteria to get some food… they came back and… you know."

Yup, I knew all right… yeah, I knew exactly how this story ended.

"It's crazy really," Brooke said, and I could tell by her voice that could have laughed if she was talking about anything different. "They don't leave her side for weeks, then one day their gone for five minutes and…"

She drifted off, and this time, didn't stick around long enough for me to respond; instead, she stepped out of the kitchen, moving at twice the speed she was before as she picked up a clean cloth and went back to her vicious assault against all things that were dirt and mold.

I wasn't sure what to say, I wasn't sure if there was anything to say, so instead, I watched as Brooke scrubbed the countertop stiff so that I was afraid that she would rub a hole through the marble, moving swiftly and silently in synchronized movements.

I stared until a sudden, random thought entered my head that I just couldn't shake. Brooke Davis is going to change the world someday; and I'm not even sure if she knows it.

The corners of my mouth tipped upwards on their own accord; I couldn't help but smile at her as the phrase repeated itself over and over again in my head just because I couldn't help but think about how much she already had.

"What?" She must have noticed that I had been staring at her because she suddenly stopped moving and stood upright, placing two stern hands on her hips as she stared at me.

"Nothing," I shook my head out of my daze, tearing my eyes off of Brooke as I picked up a mop sticking out of a large bucket full to the brim with Fabuloso, trying to make myself useful by wiping it back and forth across Brooke's wooden floors.

"Let's just get all of this done."

* * *

**BROOKE**

Today was shaping up to be a much longer day than even I had previously anticipated on. For one thing, I had woken up at 6:00 in the morning, which was never a good start to any day. For another thing, I had begun my impromptu cleaning spree of my house at about 7, another unfortunate activity, especially considering that it was now closing in on noon and I remained no closer to finishing than I had been when I'd started nearly five hours ago.

Currently, one would be able to find me buried waist deep inside of the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink, scrubbing every nook and cranny of the pipe lines clean of the mold collecting within the crevices.

I cursed myself as the sound of the doorbell ringing filled my ears causing me to jump in shock high enough to smack my face right against the underside of one of the pipes I'd just been cleaning.

"Peyton, can you get that!" I shouted to her, pulling myself out of the dark, damp cabinet back into the daylight, rubbing at the bump that already forming in the corner of my forehead.

I paused and kept my ears poised, listening out for a response from Peyton that never came. Instead, the doorbell just rang again, twice this time in a seemingly more urgent manner than it had the first time.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" I shouted, pulling myself to my feet as I began to shuffle towards the front door, swinging it wide open where I was met with sudden and instantaneous pandemonium.

"Aunt Brooke!" Jamie didn't even stop to say hello before he bounded into the house, running around like a hyperactive dog so that I became instantly suspicious that Haley had fed him sugar and coffee for breakfast… Speaking of Haley, she stood tiredly in the doorway looking a flustered mess with her frizzled hair pulled up in a half-assed bun and a hurried look splayed across her face as she attempted to balance her school bag over one shoulder and her laptop bag over the other as she reached out an arm in an attempt to snatch Jamie before he had the opportunity to wreck havoc upon the house I'd just spent hours scrubbing up and down; but her hand only clasped around air.

"James Lucas Scott, you get back over here this instant!" Her tone even intimidated me, which is how I was absolutely certain that it had worked its magic on Jamie. My assumption was ultimately proven correct when Jamie froze where he stood before slowly trotting back towards the door, burying himself underneath the protection of my arm.

"Hey Brooke, I'm really sorry about this…" She sighed, rubbing her hand through her hair in an attempt to control the loose strands that had somehow managed to slip out over her face.

"No problem," I assured her, "What's going on?" I was confused and somewhat overwhelmed to be completely honest as I awaited for Haley to answer, watching as her frantic eyes suddenly sank into an apologetic glance, indicating to me one thing and one thing only… she needed a favor.

"I'm really, really sorry to do this to you right now, Brooke, but I totally forgot that Jamie had a half-day at school today and I have a parent-teacher conference with his teacher in 10 minutes and Peyton and Lucas weren't home, and Nathan's in Texas… or Nebraska, or something like that, and… can you do me a huge favor and watch Jamie for an hour or two?"

I knew that I had a crap-ton of work that I had to get done before the day was over, and I definitely knew that having a hyperactive five year old running wild through my house would only make my current dilemma worse than it already was, but as I looked back and forth between Haley's desperate eyes and Jamie's big, blue doe ones, I knew that I couldn't say no.

"Yeah, of course I can, Haley. Don't worry about it." I assured her as I stiffened my arm, pulling Jamie a little bit tighter into my side.

"Ugh, thank you so much." She breathed out with a huge sigh of relief, wasting no time as she turned her back and practically sprinted back down the path that she had just walked up towards her car.

"I owe you one!" She shouted back to me as she ducked into the driver's seat, disappearing behind the metal, taking off down the street before I even had time to respond to her.

I stood inside of the doorway, waving her down the road until her car finally disappeared behind the curve up the road.

Turning back around, I released Jamie out of my grasp, watching as he walked further into my house causing me to wince as my eyes followed the mud that he tracked from the bottom of his shoes all over my freshly mopped wooden floors.

"Uh… Jamie, buddy," I called for his attention, my mind scrambling as I raced for an idea of something that I could do with him that would get him out of the house before the kid tacked on an extra hours worth of cleaning for me. "How about, uh… how about we go get some lunch?" I suggested, knowing full well that Jamie would never turn down an opportunity for food.

"Yeah!" It looks like I had been right. His face positively glowed in delight at the suggestion as he turned his back on the inside of my spotless house, running right back through my open doorway.

"Alright, how about you go ahead and wait in my car while I go get my shoes on, okay?" He was too pleased with the prospect of me taking him out to lunch to be anything even close to suspicious about my true intentions. I watched as he leapt out towards my driveway and got himself settled into the back seat of my car, confirming the idea that my devious plot had been a success.

"Peyton!" I shouted once I was certain that Jamie was clear out of earshot. "Peyton!" I shouted again after receiving no response, throwing my bag across my shoulders and digging through the closet in search for a pair of shoes.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming!" She finally responded to me as she made her way down the stairs, pausing at the bottom step with wide eyes as she caught sight of the muddy footprints tracking up and down the foyer.

"Woah… what happened here?"

I sighed and shrugged in exasperation of it all. "Haley just dropped off Jamie. I told her that I'd watch him for a few hours so I'm gonna go take him down to get some lunch just to, you know… get him out of the house."

Peyton laughed, instantly recognizing my intentions as she nodded in silent approval of my decision. "Alright," She laughed, taking the last step towards me, literally pushing me out of my front door. "Go; get out of this house for a while Brooke. I'll finish cleaning up around here." She gave me a small shove so that I almost went face first down the front stairs, but I righted myself, looking over my shoulder as I hesitantly made my way down the driveway.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" She was practically yelling at me, jutting out her palms making pushing motions with her hands in order to fully assure me that she was not only sure, she downright demanded that I got my ass out of my own house. "Now go, get out of here!"

"O… okay," I told her, still with a little bit of skepticism laced in my voice as I got to my car.

"And bring me back a surprise!" I heard her shout just as I ducked into the driver's seat. I gave her a little wave indicating that I had heard her request before I backed out of my driveway and took off down the street without a second glance backwards.

* * *

During the years I'd spent in New York, I found that I had developed a slightly unhealthy addiction; delis.

There was this delicious stop right Uptown, just down the street from my apartment called Giovanni's that literally makes the best Italian Combo sandwich that I have ever tasted in my entire life.

The thing was, the distance between New York and North Carolina was way too far to satisfy my craving, and the truth is, you can't find a descent sandwich shop anywhere outside of the tri-state area… and then I found the New York Style Deli.

Sure, it was 20 miles out of my way, and sure, ten minutes into the ride I had to listen to Jamie complain for the remainder of the trip about how hungry he was, but I had a lot of time on my hands these days plus I was more than certain that Jamie wasn't about to starve to death any time soon; a theory that was proven correct when we pulled into the parking lot and Jamie was still healthy and very much so alive in the back seat of my car.

"Okay Jamie, what do you want?" I pulled him by the arm through the entrance and dropped down to a squat to meet him at eye level.

"I want pizza!" He shouted, a smile beaming upon his face.

"They don't have pizza here." I explained, "Think sandwiches Jamie, what kind of sandwich do you want to eat?"

"Uh… peanut butter and jelly!" I sighed with the acknowledgment that I was getting absolutely nowhere with this one and decided to simply start spitting out sandwiches in hopes that I would eventually hit the jackpot.

"Um… how about ham, do you like ham?" He shook his head vigorously, silently voicing his very strong distaste for anything that was ham or ham related. I sighed again and raised my legs into a standing position as a familiar burn began to seep into my thighs from squatting for so long.

I opened my mouth, just about to ask Jamie what his opinion on turkey was when something caught my attention through the corner of my eye.

Just beyond Jamie's shoulder, stacked neatly on the top of the magazine rack next to the cash register, I caught a glimpse of my very own face staring right back at me. The photographed Brooke Davis had a tight set jaw and a look of firm attentiveness with each hand placed firmly against each hip in a picture that I recognized as being slightly outdated by about a year or two.

Right below, typed neatly across the thighs of the photo, bright silver, bold-type writing displayed the words; "Brooke Davis Speaks Out on the Tragedy Rocking Her New-Found Family."

Ugh, they couldn't even come up with a cleverer name… or at least a shorter one?

My eyes continued to linger on the magazine cover, my mind blocking out everything else, including Jamie's incessant wails of; "Aunt Brooke, Aunt Brooke, I don't like ham! Aunt Brooke!"

He jumped up and down right in front of me, desperate in his attempts to gain a hold of my concentration, but my gaze never faltered; I just couldn't stop staring straight into my very own eyes…

After a few seconds, which ultimately felt like hours later, I managed to shake my head out of my own thoughts, trying desperately to just forget the stupid magazine, and just as I had totally convinced myself that I would be just fine getting up, walking away, and putting this behind me, Jamie became suddenly very aware that something else was distracting me and he turned around, following my piercing gaze straight to the magazine rack before shouting;

"Look Aunt Brooke, it's you!" He pointed a short, stubby finger over towards the stack of magazines, springing over to it where he picked up the first one at the top of the pile, holding it up proudly in front of him displaying it not only to me, but to the entire store in front of me as well.

Acting quickly, I threw my body in front of him, shielding the sight from any prying, curious eyes as I snatched the object from his hands and flipped the top most magazine over on its front, suddenly much more eager to order my Italian combo and his ham and cheese, ignoring his constant protests about how much he hated ham and cheese as I threw the magazine onto the counter, making sure it was face down in an effort to avoid any awkward questions that would come from the cashier, tapping my toes obnoxiously until I was able to get the hell out of there as fast as I possibly could.

"Come on, Jamie." I reached out my hand and let him grab onto it as we crossed the street and made our way into the park, empty as expected on this cloudy, Tuesday afternoon.

"Aunt Brooke, can I play on the swings?" He asked just as I sat him down at a park bench, pulling sandwiches out of the plastic bag.

"Eat your lunch first Jamie." I insisted, unwrapping his sandwich for him before pushing it in front of his face. But I instantly felt like a hypocrite, because the second I reached my own hand into the bag, and I felt my fingers brush against the magazine at the bottom, my heart stalled with nervous anticipation.

I watched Jamie as he cautiously sniffed at his sandwich before taking a small bite out of the corner, instantly scrunching his face in distaste, swallowing before sticking out his tongue.

"I don't like this Aunt Brooke."

"Okay… uh… Jamie, you know what, how about you go ahead and play on the swings." His face sprung up in excitement as I hurried him away, making sure that his back was safely turned and his concentration firmly affixed on the swing set in front of him before I turned back to the bag, pulling the magazine out, flipping through the pages rapidly before finding what I was looking for; a full spread page, graced with an even larger picture of my own face than had been on the cover.

I sighed as the bolded title caught my attention; "Brooke Davis Opens Up on Tragedy That's Threatening Her Family."

Yeah, talk about inaccurate… assholes.

"Aunt Brooke, I'm going on the playground!" I heard Jamie shout, his short attention span already finished with everything and anything that was the swings.

"Yeah, yeah, okay Jamie, be careful!" I waved him off, barely looking up as he darted from one side of the playground to the other through my peripheral vision, all my attention focused firmly on the article in front of me as I read.

'Brooke Davis, 23, founder and co-CEO of the fashion empire Clothes Over Bro's had it all. With a fortune 500 company in her hands and a recent confirmation of her established relationship with budding movie producer Julian Baker, Davis also made the announcement that she was currently in process of completing the family she desired with the adoption of 15 year old Samantha Walker.

However, this rapidly developing family would soon be shaken to its very core.

Responding to persistent rumors being thrown towards Davis over her constant appearances at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital located in her home town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, Davis has confided exclusively to People magazine, confirming the reason behind the visits being that her foster daughter has been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells.'

I sighed and slammed the magazine shut in my lap, unable to endure this torture any further, cursing myself because I'd just wasted five bucks.

I made the move to shove the thing in my bag where it remain thoughtless and out of sight for the remainder of the day, brushing my fingers over the glossy envelope that I knew to contain those adoption papers I'd precariously shoved into my bag.

Withdrawing my hand I looked up and it was like fate… it was practically staring at me from across the park, silhouetted in bright, golden light; a mailbox.

Seriously, that was a sign if I've ever seen one, and if I didn't believe in fate before, I definitely did now… it was now or never, I guess.

"Jamie, will you be alright by yourself for a second? I just have to run to that mailbox right over there really quick!" I shouted to him, pointing a finger straight towards my intended target 50 feet in front of me watching as the child paused from his position dangling on the monkey bars.

"Okay Aunt Brooke!" He responded but I know that we'd all heard that one before.

"I don't want you to leave this jungle gym until I get back do you hear me?"

"Okay Aunt Brooke." He echoed his last response back to me a second time as he dropped from the monkey bars, exhausted from hanging for so long, his feet landing safely on the ground before he went back for more.

Satisfied that he'd adequately comprehended the seriousness of my statement, I began my quick trek over towards the intended mailbox, taking slow, heavy steps forward as I looked over my shoulder every few seconds just to make sure Jamie had actually been listening to what I'd told him.

My breathing increased exponentially with every step closer that I got before finally, before I even knew it, I was standing right in front of the box, watching as it taunted me to just do it already.

I pulled down the handle slowly, peering into the dark box as I held the letter at the mouth of the opening. It gleamed in the sunlight, the reflection of the ink emphasizing the words "North Carolina Department of Social Services" that I had written in huge letters across the front in perfect handwriting.

I took one final deep breath, slowly loosening the muscles of my fingers until finally, the paper slipped through my palm and took the plunge into the seemingly infinite darkness below.

The door of the mailbox slid shut with a satisfying clang. It was as if somebody had just lifted a 500 pound weight off of my shoulders. Staring at the box for an extra couple of seconds, the official sense of the moment suddenly hit me hard and I stepped away with a huge smile on my face, my only regret being that I had to go through this milestone by myself.

Walking back towards Jamie, I watched as the boy swung upside down from his knees, dangling off the edge of the monkey bars.

He began a worthless struggle to right himself back up, crunching his abdominal muscles with fury as he swung his hands up from underneath him, grasping desperately for a handful of metal bar only to come up empty.

My eyes widened as in one swift movement, Jamie's knees slipped out from underneath him and gravity sent him straight down, head first towards the Earth so quickly that he didn't even have time to blink his eyes as he performed an awkward front flip before landing ass first on the ground below him.

His face was neutral for a moment as he tried to process what had just happened, but once he did, he let out a loud wail, his face contorted in pain, but I knew that he would be fine. I guess that next time he would just know not to aim so high up… a lesson that I just wished that I could have learned when I was his age.


	22. Now That You're Home Won't You Rescue Me

**So I thought the last chapter was kind of short and I felt kind of bad so here you go; an obnoxiously long chapter (even for me) just for your reading pleasure, lol. I just couldn't resist myself, this chapter was fun to write, I couldn't stop!**

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Chapter 22: Now That You're Home Won't You Rescue Me?

**Wednesday, November 16th, 2011**

**SAM**

I woke up the next morning… excuse me, I was awoken early the next morning with a shooting pain piercing through my gut that caused me to shoot up out of bed so sharply and so suddenly that I got dizzy and was forced to sit still for a moment as I panted, completely out of breath, dabbing at the sweat that was beading on my forehead.

Of course, it would be that my first concern wasn't the current internal pandemonium I was facing but the fact that I was terrified that my actions had caught Brooke's attention, inevitably leading to a frantic state of concern by her.

But when I looked up, she wasn't there… in fact, nobody was there; I'd almost forgotten that Brooke hadn't even spent the night with me last night.

Of course, this seeming abandonment didn't do very well for my current emotional state, because that ache deep in my stomach had nothing to do the physical…

You see, I've been having this reoccurring dream lately, and every time I do, it scares me a little more.

In this dream, I'm just kind of floating around, I don't know, I guess in outer space or something… the point is there's absolutely nobody around me, no signs or anything to tell me what direction to go, no nothing; there's just me, and I guess I'm pretty lost, like, not just little kid who can't find his mom in the mall lost, I mean straight up, Jimmy Hoffa style, never to be found, gone forever, lost.

I'm starting to think that these dreams are a sign or something… I'm also starting to think that it's about time that somebody got their ass over here and told me exactly how to get rid of this nightmare, because the only time that it's worse than when I'm asleep, is when I wake up and it still doesn't go away.

I took a couple of slow, deep breaths before I felt it was safe to lay back against my bed, listening through the silence as my heart pounded in my ears and slowly began to fade back into its normal rhythm.

But still, there's an upside to everything, and mine came with the fact that I had somehow managed to sleep well past noon; amazing enough as that may seem.

Sleeping in wasn't even a bleep on my radar anymore. In fact, it hasn't been ever since that fateful day that I moved in with Brooke… let's just put it this way; without all of the interruptions, the nurse's visits, or the medications, I was already looking forward to this foreign-feeling, chemo-free lifestyle that I had going on here.

It was almost nice.

Almost being the key word in that sentence, because as nice as it was to have the entire room all to myself, I really did have absolutely no clue where Brooke was, or where Julian was… Haley and Peyton weren't even hanging around to babysit, and now that I thought about it, I haven't seen a single freaking doctor or nurse walking around; and trust me, after the night that I just had, waking up alone was just not in the cards for my mental stability right now.

Maybe I was still sleeping. Maybe I was still stuck in the bizarre dream, except this time, instead of floating around in space; I was doomed to the confines of this stupid hospital bed for the rest of my life.

I knew that the idea was stupid, but I had to go as far as to physically pinch myself to be convinced, and in a further attempt to prove to myself that the solitude didn't bother me, I casually flicked the brand new TV that they'd installed in my room yesterday after I'd made several loud complaints that I'd broken the last one on and flipped through the channels for a couple of minutes.

70 channels; this hospital prized itself for being one of the only in North Carolina that offered a full cable package; 70 freaking channels and I couldn't find a single damn thing on any one of them.

Eventually, frustration set in and I settled on a random channel that turned out to be the History channel.

My attention turned almost instantly onto this special that they had on and, to tell you the truth, at first, I wasn't sure why I was so interested, hell, I couldn't even piece together exactly what the damn show was about, but there I was; staring straight ahead, barely blinking throughout the entire hour, commercials and all.

Even after it was over I still probably wouldn't be able to tell you what the hell I'd just watched, but here's the basic gist of it all. Pretty much, there were a bunch of scientists that they'd interviewed, each and every one of them giving their own theory on what they believed the future held for our dear old planet Earth; and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty.

To be completely honest, the whole thing was kind of morbid and depressing; the thing is, they say they're not really sure when, but one day, the entire world will basically just shut off; the sun, the moon, the stars, life itself, all caput, just like that; anything and everything as we know it just gone.

Imagine, an entire universe, all going black.

But then I got to thinking, I mean, wouldn't it just be going back the way that it was before any of this showed up? Before any of us showed up?

And the more I figured it this way, the more I realized that maybe, like anyone of us, it just wants to go back to the way that it's supposed to be.

Who knows; maybe it was us that were all out of place.

Anyway, the enormity of it all started to make my head hurt after a while, and eventually the room spun in a way that didn't suite me, but the more I tried not to think about it, the more I did think about it, until suddenly, the very dimensions of the room around me seemed to be closing in until my chest was constricted to an impossibly tight dimension and I could barely breathe.

Sometimes I really do believe that I'm the only person that's going absolutely insane in here; and more times than not, that self-deprecation just tends to put the bad situation I'm already in to a more sticky place until finally, by the time everything is said and done, my biggest fear comes out and haunts me into believing that one day, my very soul is going to get sucked straight out of my body until the only thing that is left inside of me is a skeleton.

My head unconsciously twitched in frustration, my eyes accidentally glancing at the second half of the room that I had been avoiding staring at for the past two days mainly because I couldn't deal with it.

I couldn't deal with the fact that I no longer had my strongest voice of reason.

I couldn't deal with the fact that I no longer had the girl that was always there to tell me I was being stupid on those days I was feeling sorry for myself.

I couldn't deal with the fact that I no longer had the one person in the entire world that I believed when she told me that everything was going to be alright.

God, I missed her already.

I groaned and slammed my pillow over my head in an attempt to bash all these negative thoughts out of my head, but I knew it was worthless. These days, once I started thinking about Logan, I knew I wouldn't be able to stop.

I thought I'd passed this stage. I thought I'd convinced myself yesterday that there was no use crying because crying wasn't going to bring my friend back, crying wasn't going to make me feel any better.

But as I wiped the stray tears out from underneath my eyes, the only thing that I thought was that I had obviously thought wrong.

I pressed the pillow even firmly underneath my head to the point that I couldn't breathe and blocked out all the light so that all I saw was the subsequent darkness, but all that did was get me thinking about the universe again and here I was, right back at square one.

I tried to imagine where it all ended; the universe I mean, where it cut off, the impossible enormity of it all, and where in the hell Logan had ended up within the depths of it… I mean, they say its infinite right? With an impossible array of parallel universes and other solar systems out there, so it's safe to say that Logan has to be out there somewhere…

Ugh, I was just really starting to wish that Brooke would hurry the hell up coming back over here, because I could really use the moral support right about now…

Come on Brooke, where are you?

I'd gotten to a dangerous stage as I felt my mind making up impossible scenarios, each one more ridiculous than the last, as what so often happens when you're at a heightened state of stress and panic such as I am right now.

Here's an example; what if Brooke wasn't coming back? What if she'd just left with no plans to return?

Was it possible? Could Brooke Davis have just totally abandoned me?

Come on Sam, stop this. You know for a fact that there is a better chance of zombies invading as pigs flew and cheeseburgers fell from the sky than of that happening.

I forced myself to take a couple deep, steady breaths as I closed my eyes and pressed my palms flat against the mattress pushing myself into a seated position.

"Relax," I whispered quietly to myself as I breathed steadily; in and out, in and out. "Brooke didn't leave you, she just went out to grab some coffee. You feel good today, you feel better today."

"Better enough to go home, you mean?" I opened up a single, cautious eye, afraid that what I thought I'd heard had been too good to be true. In fact, I was so relieved to see Brooke and Julian standing in the doorway, that I almost didn't register what she'd just told me.

"Wait…" I screwed up my face, concentrating hard as I slowly pieced two and two together… did she just say… no, she couldn't have; that would have been impossible.

But still, I could have sworn that I'd just heard the words 'go' and 'home' laced somewhere within her sentence.

"Did you just say… go home?" My question was full of skepticism, afraid of getting my hopes up before a confirmation was delivered, but I was having a hard time containing myself; after all, I'd just been impossibly depressed twenty seconds ago, the slightest hint of good news would have been enough to send me into a frenzy; but this… this was huge; and as I watched both Brooke and Julian give me the tiniest of smiles, confirming everything I'd been waiting for in these past three weeks, I knew this was beyond huge.

I could practically feel the corners of my mouth touching my ears as my entire lower jaw stretched into a painfully wide grin.

"Really?"

"Really," Brooke confirmed, and I let out a small squeal of delight; a noise coming out of my mouth that I was pretty sure I'd never made before.

"When do I get to go?" I had practically leapt out of my bed; I had one hand on my duffle bag ready to throw all the crap I'd accumulated over the weeks into it when Brooke reached out a hand to stop me.

"Woah, relax, we'll leave in a few hours. We've gotta get some things sorted out first." My shoulders sunk a little bit, but you know, on the bright side, a few hours was better than a few weeks, so I figured I'd take it.

"Eager to go I see," Julian commented, stating the obvious as he took a couple more steps towards me, extending a single coffee towards my general direction.

"Hell yes I am." I responded, grabbing the cup eagerly. I hadn't had a cup of coffee in forever, and after a particularly painful bout of caffeine withdrawal, I was ready to start the cycle over again because if there was one thing that I really missed, other than actually enjoying the taste of food, it was actually enjoying the taste of coffee.

"Black with about forty pounds of sugar in it, even though I'm sure I'll get yelled at later for letting you consume this." He laughed, finally surrendering the little cup of golden delight, leaving me to sip casually with one hand as I threw away all of Brooke's advice and began my packing spree, tossing clothes, magazines, books… whatever I'd had on the floor into my bag with the other.

Unfortunately for me, throughout all the excitement it was difficult for me to remember that I was still sick; or that I'd woken up with an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach… but those blissful moments of forgetfulness only lasted a couple of minutes before it finally hit me.

The excitement, the activity, the emotional roller coaster I'd already been on in my less than two hours of being awake… well let's just say they all came together in a very, very ungraceful way.

It felt as if somebody had just dropped an anvil on my head. I was bought to a dead stand still; I could practically feel the color draining out of my face.

"Sam…" Brooke's tone sounded exasperated as if she was about to yell at me because she'd already told me once to cool it with the packing, and of course, I hadn't listened, and just look where that got me…

The bottom suddenly dropped out of my stomach… one of these days I was going to listen to Brooke, one day I was going to realize that she was always right no matter what… I guess that day wouldn't be today.

A loud, totally embarrassing rumble ran through my stomach, threatening a violent explosion with every shudder as that familiar feeling of nausea settled comfortably and any sign of happiness vanished just as instantly as it had come.

"Are you alright Sam? You just got really pale."

I closed my eyes tightly and swallowed hard as a second wave of nausea flooded me. I'd almost forgotten how bad it could get; these past few nauseous-free days had been nice to me… so much for that, I guess.

I was instantly regretting getting as myself as worked up as I did, leading me to over-exert myself to the point that I felt as if I was about to puke… note to self, stop being so stubborn.

Yeah right, maybe in another lifetime,

"I think I'm gonna puke." It was a simple sentence but that was all it took; the way that I watched Brooke and Julian as they glanced over at each other with mouth's open and eyebrows raised in urgency let me know that I'd gotten my point across.

I felt the familiar bubble as it formed at the pit of my stomach just as Brooke and Julian sprung to action.

By the time they were at my side, that bubble had already risen; quickly making its way up the length of my esophagus.

Crap, I wasn't going to make it.

But Brooke moved, and she moved fast, I had to at least give her credit for that.

She tugged brutally at the plug at the end of my IV pole that had until now, been tethering me to the wall, ripping it out of the socket so forcefully that I was surprised that she didn't freaking electrocute herself, or me for that matter, in the process.

But I guess given all the times we'd ripped that thing out of the wall, if we hadn't been zapped to death yet, we weren't about to be any time soon, so I really shouldn't be too shocked.

"Okay come on, let's go, let's go," Brooke hurried me towards the bathroom, taking advantage of my new-found mobility by practically lifting me herself and carrying me over as Julian scurried behind us, desperate to find something to do with his hands; locating a helpful task in dragging the IV pole behind me.

I have to say though, I was grateful for Brooke and the extra set of hands she had supporting me up, because as she grasped my shoulders tighter and tighter with every step and we rounded back into the painfully familiar bathroom, that bubble of vomit arrived within my pharynx, and I could tell that this one was a doozy… now the only thing I needed was for Brooke to carry me a little bit faster.

I assumed my usual position right in front of the toilet bowl, falling to my knees and hunching low over it. Oh yes, have I missed being here in these last few days… but not really though.

I took a strictly preparing deep breath as I curled my fingers around the porcelain that practically had indents on it by now; ready to let a rip as I felt the storm brewing just underneath the surface, awaiting to emerge in its full potential.

The dizziness consumed me. I felt like I had just been caught right smack in the middle of a rip tide and I was more than certain that if Brooke hadn't been firmly holding onto my shoulders as I lost sight of all daylight at the bottom of the toilet bowl, I would have fallen over sure, and, with my luck, it would have been right into the water below me, but I guess at this point, I didn't know what would be better; my life now, or drowning in toilet water… how's that for perspective?

It took a couple more seconds of using those slow, steady deep breathing exercises, and a couple more trips of my head spinning around the room, but eventually, I felt the dinner I'd eaten last night slide up to the point of no return…

But even puking loses its novelty after a while, so I was un-amused.

Brooke was standing behind me, rubbing my back just like she always was but still, it impressed me every time because a month ago, Brooke Davis couldn't even handle the word vomit. She was one of those people that saw somebody else puke, and then puked herself five seconds later.

Well let me tell you this, that Brooke, she was a trooper boy, because she had somehow managed to handle her own throughout all of this and beyond. I happen to know for a fact that I only made her puke once… and that was the first day so that doesn't even count.

I couldn't complain too much though; this round ended up being a little baby one compared to what I was used to, so I was satisfied when, only a few minutes later, I lifted my head, wiped my mouth, and sunk against the wall.

It wasn't too bad; kind of like when you wake up really, really hung over from a long night before and puke up everything you'd consumed until you feel instantly better… not that I've ever done that or anything.

"Here you go," I felt Brooke come over to me after I spent a few seconds against the wall, resting a hand on my shoulder as she handed me a large, Styrofoam cup full of water that I took graciously, gargling a generous gulp in my mouth before leaning back over the nasty puke-toilet in front of me, depositing the water into the collection.

"Do you think you have any more in you?" She asked, planting herself firmly against the wall and bending at the knees until she was squatting at my eye level, watching my face closely as I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.

"I don't think so, not right now anyway. I'm just tired."

"Alright, come on then, let's get you back to bed." It's kind of strange sometimes; how you never actually realize just how tired you are until you stand up or until you're doing some sort of pressing physical activity... like walking five feet across the room such as what I was doing now.

We moved slower than we did on the way there; a combination of the fact that I was suddenly not as pressed for time as I was before and that my exhaustion simply wouldn't let my feet move beyond a steady shuffle.

By the time I got back to bed, my uncomfortable, lumpy mattress and scratchy blankets never felt so good then they had in this moment as I threw myself down and practically sunk into them.

I didn't move an inch as Brooke set me back up, pulling the blankets high above my shoulders while simultaneously hitting the small self-administration button attached to my IV pump that they'd given me weeks ago specifically for moments such as this one when I needed my anti-nausea relief instantaneously.

"Need anything?" She asked, leaning closer over me so that my fuzzy vision could just make out her outline.

I just shook my head, even though in reality, I needed a lot; mostly, I needed to thank her for being way too good to me than what I ever deserved. I needed to tell her just how much it meant to me that she always stuck around no matter what. I needed to tell her how much I loved her.

"Okay, then just get some sleep honey." I felt her rub her hand over my head and I unconsciously leaned into the touch, something ringing in the back of my mind that was telling me that there was a part of me that was kind of glad that I was sick, as strange as that may sound, just because sometimes I really did like this preferential treatment that I got from Brooke.

I mean, was it wrong to just want somebody to take care of me for once? Especially when that somebody was as close to a mother as I've ever had before… I didn't think so, and it felt nice, especially considering I had been denied that privilege for so long now.

"Hey Brooke," I could feel my babble-mode switching the on switch as the medication seeped through my veins and weighed down my body; my head swimming and my eyes drooping in and out of focus as I danced through the varying stages of consciousness.

"Yeah honey?"

I fought the sleep. I couldn't understand why it was such a difficult task, I mean; I was wide awake and completely fine less than fifteen minutes ago. In fact, I'd been awake for less than two hours after I'd slept nearly twelve hours the night before… ugh, typical.

"Thanks for taking care of me." The words tumbled out of my mouth seemingly on their own accord, my voice getting groggier and groggier with each passing syllable as my eyes shut completely.

"Thanks for taking care of me too." I heard her whisper, even though I wasn't sure if it was intended for me to hear it or not.

"Hey Brooke," I asked again, fighting speech through a large yawn.

"Yeah?"

"What if I sleep all day and then don't wake up and can't go home?" I was quite sure that whatever I had just said had been incomprehensible due to my sudden lacking in my ability to form complete sentences, but Brooke seemed to pick up what I was getting at anyway.

"Don't worry Sam; our house will still be there when you wake up."

"Good," I yawned widely, "Because I think I can use a break right about now."

"Me too Sam, me too," Brooke whispered to me, and it was the last thing that I heard, because as soon as her words of assurance filled my ears, I deemed it safe to embrace sleep and allowed it to hit me hard right upside the head as I buried my face in my pillow and passed out cold.

* * *

**BROOKE**

I was right smack in the middle of a particular juicy climax sequence in the book that I had been reading when I heard the distant shuffle of sheets as Sam rolled over in her bed, marking it as the first time that she'd actually moved in what seemed like hours.

I instantly marked my page, taking her motions as my queue to stand up as Sam groaned slightly underneath that breaking wall of sleep before finally allowing her eyes to flutter open and blink slightly with confusion as the world focused around her.

"Feeling better?" I asked after giving her a minute or two to struggle with consciousness and to properly identify her surroundings. "You look better anyway."

She gave me a small 'ugh' in response, indicating to me her blatant disapproval towards my tendency to hover over her every time she woke up these days.

Maybe I should have been a bit more sensitive… oh well, too late now.

"I guess so." She finally answered after a few more minutes of silence, stretching her arms high above her head and opening her mouth in a wide yawn.

"That's good kid, because I don't know about you, but I'm really starting to get sick of that bathroom." I smirked at her, instantly making up for the fact that I'd all but woke her up from a cozy, drug-induced haze, and I knew instantly that she'd spoken the truth when she told me she was feeling better because when she responded to what I thought had been a very well placed joke, she did so with a small laugh that made even my face light up.

"Yeah," She nodded in her agreement, "I know what you mean."

I opened my mouth to respond but was interrupted when a knock on the door stole all of me and Sam's attention.

"Sam?" It was Dr. Miller, leading both herself and a nurse into the room; Mary, her name was, who stepped past the doctor straight towards Sam, greeting us enthusiastically and seemingly pleased that Sam was sitting up in bed rather than passed out and souped up on medication like she had been the last time the two had met.

"Hey Sam, you look better than you did a few hours ago." She commented, wasting no time before starting Sam's routine vitals check.

"I feel better than I did a few hours ago." She told the woman, but I couldn't help but notice the way she kept glancing up at her doctor as she emphasized every syllable in her attempts to woo Dr. Miller into truly believing that she did indeed feel fine and, more importantly, get her to believe that she was ready to go home.

I sat down at the end of Sam's bed, watching as they set the girl up before chatting in hushed whispers with each other in the corner as they waited for everything to beep and whir and announce that we were all done so that we could carry on our merry way…

"Where'd Julian go?" Sam asked after a moment of silence, attempting to speak between the barrier of the thermometer firmly clamped between her teeth.

"I sent him home real quick while you were asleep; now don't talk for a minute." I offered her the brief explanation followed by a semi-strong scolding that resulted in a brief eye roll that I couldn't take too seriously judging by the brief smirk on her face that emerged behind it.

But I'd told her the truth; I had indeed sent Julian home, the task I'd assigned to him being a bit of "light cleaning" after I'd had a few second thoughts about the thoroughness of my nearly twelve hour scrub down of the house yesterday.

She was just about to make one of her classic wise-ass comments subsequently ignoring everything I'd just told her when an obnoxiously high-pitched beep filled the room and four heads simultaneously turned to the small box that was currently putting all of Sam's vitals out on display.

The two of us held our breaths until we were blue in the face, watching with intensity as the nurse surveyed the numbers and jotted them down on Sam's charts before passing it to the doctor who scanned over them at a torturously slow pace and a neutral look across her face so that we couldn't even tell what she was thinking.

It was only when we were both convinced that our heads were going to explode in pure anticipation that she finally turned her head up and spoke.

"Okay Sam, everything seems to check out." I felt my heart stall in excitement. I turned to Sam as the girl pulled her body a little straighter and her face fell into a stunning disbelief.

"So…" Sam egged her on, yearning for the woman to continue to the end of the sentence, just hoping that it would be something she was willing to hear.

"So I was thinking you may prefer spending the next couple of weeks recovering at home instead of being pent up in here."

I could tell that Sam was accepting the offer the instant it came out of the doctor's mouth, I mean, judging by the way her face lit up like a Christmas tree when she'd told her and the way she stammered when she said;

"You mean, like… seriously… I mean… I can go home for like… the whole time?" She was breathing so heavily that she couldn't even bring herself to formulate complete sentences without the need for a break. Her eyes widened exponentially with each passing word, and by the time Dr. Miller nodded her head with the confirmation, I thought they were literally just gonna pop right out of her head.

"I figured you would like that one."

My eyes widened in a shock surprised when I watched Sam fly up out of her bed so quickly that I blinked and missed the period of time that she got from her bed to her doctor, because the next thing I knew, Sam was throwing her arms forcefully around the unsuspecting doctors' shoulders, followed by the even more unsuspecting nurse's, before finally falling right into my always awaiting arms where I held onto her for a little bit longer than the rest had, pulling her close into my chest.

"I'm proud of you, Sam." I whispered so that only she'd be able to hear it before she finally pulled away with a broad grin on her face, sitting herself down in her chair before she excited herself straight into a repeat of this morning.

Seventeen days; seventeen straight days of solid white walls, being tied down to a bed, confined to lines and wires and chemo… I knew that it had gotten to Sam's head, and I knew it because it had gotten to my head and I didn't even know the half of it.

To Sam, I knew this news felt like the second coming of Christmas… hell, it was probably better.

"When do I get to go?" She asked to be polite, because honestly, she already had one foot out of the door.

"We have to get a couple things straight first… and then I can send you off." The woman took a couple of steps forward, towering over the seated Sam with her hands on her hips, giving off the effective demeanor that she meant what she said.

Of course, I knew exactly what to expect; the woman had pulled me to the side about three days ago with the announcement that she was considering allowing Sam to get out of the hospital a little early; we'd already gone over all of the terms and conditions, and we were both prepared to make sure that Sam knew that they were not to be broken under any circumstances.

Sam nodded her head, sitting up a little taller and putting the most attentive look on her face possible, eager to prove that she was more than ready to listen.

"So I know that you know how careful you have to be while you're at home." Dr. Miller began, choosing her words carefully as Sam's head bobbed up and down in time with her voice. "You know that catching even the slightest infection is gonna bring you right back in here."

Sam was looking up at her doctor and nodding her head up and down in accordance with her words but I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was spacing; her mind was racing with the prospect of home in her near future. There was a daze of delight behind the façade of seriousness, and all I could think about was how lucky it was that I was paying attention so she could get it from me again later.

"You'll come back to the hospital every five days for blood tests. Here me; five," She emphasized, holding five firm fingers up to Sam's face just so she got the hint. "Your first one is on Monday. We'll keep doing that for a few weeks, monitor the results, and when your counts are high enough, we'll be able to do another bone marrow biopsy and hopefully get you started and your second round of chemotherapy."

"Okay," Sam agreed, "I can do that."

She paused briefly, looking between the three women standing above her, and when nobody said anything, she risked asking her next question.

"Erm… is that it?"

Her eyes lingered on me as she awaited confirmation, but I just put the sternest look that I could muster on my face, silently indicating that she should just sit back, relax, and keep listening because when I was done, she would know it.

"There's one more thing," I told her, ready to dish out my own personal set of rules. "First of all, while you're home, the house stays spotless, and I know you're gonna help me keep it that way." My effort to be strict in enforcing the rules with her earned me the slightest of eye rolls; one that was barely noticeable, but I'd caught it anyway.

"Second," I spoke with an extra firmness in my voice, just to let her know that I'd seen the move she'd just tried to put on me. "Whenever you're even considering leaving the house, you tell me. I want to know if you walk out the front door to get the mail, do you hear me?"

For the past day or two I couldn't help but allow my mind to wander back to those days that seemed so long ago now when Sam had developed a sudden and strong tendency to climb out of her bedroom window and sneak off into the night. And even though I knew she was well past that stage, and even though she knew that if she even thought about pulling a stunt like that on me now I would probably throttle her to death, I figured I'd mention it just in case.

Her head snapped to attention at the authority in my voice so that I instantly felt kind of bad for practically yelling at her. She nodded her head vigorously in agreement of my terms and conditions trying to let me know that she knew that even though she didn't have the best track record in the world, she wasn't about to pull any of those shenanigans with me.

"Okay," I finally nodded, deciding to lighten up a bit just because I was starting to feel bad and she was giving me those big puppy-dog eyes that always ensured she got what she wanted. "That's it."

"Cool, so when do I go home?" Her face perked up and her shoulders broadened indicating to me that she had been half way out the door before she'd even asked.

"Let's see, does right now sound good to you?" Dr. Miller asked as Sam's mouth slung open with a mixture of shock and overwhelming joy and she leapt out of her chair, completely forgetting that she was still attached to a bag of antibiotics via the IV port in her hand until she'd damn-near ripped the entire thing out.

"Woah, slow down there slugger," I told her grasping a firm hand onto each of her shoulders, pushing her back into her bed as she winced and subconsciously looked down to make sure the needle was still secured firmly. "What the hell did I just tell you about being careful?" I was half joking but at the same time, the other half of me was completely serious.

"Sorry…" She focused her vision down on her feet trying desperately to make herself appear as feeble as possible to me so that it ensured that I couldn't get too mad, and let me tell you, I must have been a pushover or something because it definitely worked.

I shook my head; I couldn't help but laugh at her.

"Whatever," I shook it off, reaching out a hand and pushing over her head playfully. "Let's just get you out of here."

"Sounds good to me,"

"Alright, give me that." Mary beckoned towards Sam as the girl obliged more than willingly, extending her arm towards the nurse who immediately got to work on detaching Sam from the burden of the IV that was bleeding steadily as an immediate result of Sam's less than glamorous attempt at removing it herself.

The two of us watched in silent intrigue as the woman ripped the tape off of Sam's arm causing the girl to wince slightly as it took some of the hair on her arm off with it.

"Jeez, relax; I'm trying to hang onto all the hair I have left, I'm running kind of short if you haven't noticed."

"Crybaby," The nurse joked back as she slid the needle out of the prominent vein in the back of Sam's hand and disposed it in the hazardous waste container, coming back with two boxes; one displayed in each hand.

"Well at least you get a cool Band Aid; Barbie or Pokémon?"

"Barbie, hands down." Sam insisted as the nurse handed her a pink Band Aid adorned with several blonde dolls performing various activities, allowing her to place it over the small hole left in her hand by the needle.

"Alright let's see; your discharge vitals are all done, the law has been laid down, and Brooke as all of your prescriptions… do you guys have any questions?" The doctor asked as she ticked off the list of accomplishments we'd made in the past five minutes off on her fingers, turning her head and waiting for either me or Sam to say something, but when both of us came up with nothing, she indicated it with a small nod of the head and a word of congratulations.

"Then it looks like you're all set."

I think that it was safe to say that neither me nor Sam had noticed that Mary had ever left the room until she came back into it, dragging a wheelchair alongside her that I couldn't help but notice that Sam was eyeing with distaste as she parked it right next to her.

"Hey come on, it's just downstairs. Just think of it as a free ride." She tried to convince Sam, indicating to me that apparently I wasn't the only one that noticed the look on Sam's face as she sighed, but still managed to heave herself up out of her chair and into a standing position.

"Okay, do you have everything?" Dr. Miller asked as Sam scanned over the room with her eyes looking for any stray one of her belongings that could have been lying around because you would be amazed at the pile of crap that could add up over the course of a couple of weeks; but I was pretty sure I'd gotten everything during my packing spree while Sam was asleep.

"I think so," She responded, making herself comfortable in the chair as she threw her duffle bag onto her lap.

"Wanna get changed while I go over to the front and sign your discharge papers?" I offered as she instantly looked down to survey the legitimacy of her outfit; a plain gray t-shirt and light blue scrub pants, and I guess she decided that it was good enough for her because all she did in response was shrug her shoulders and let out a small "Nah,"

I watched her as she threw a sweatshirt over her head, pulling the hood up to hide her bald scalp, smoothing out the fabric, and finally, declaring her readiness to leave.

"Okay," She breathed, "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Aw, what's the matter, don't you wanna take one last look around before we go?" I taunted, watching as she shook her head vigorously at me in order to let me know that joking around like that wasn't even funny.

"Absolutely not," She responded without a single moment's hesitation and gripped onto the wheels of her chair, steering herself out of the front door because apparently, I wasn't moving fast enough.

"Okay, okay, slow down," I caught up to her, afraid that, at the rate she was going, she was just going to put herself right back into the hospital before she even had the opportunity to get out.

Positioning myself behind her, I grabbed onto the handle bars jutting out of the back rest of the seat, pushing her slowly down the hall towards the reception desk with her doctor following closely behind me.

"Okay, don't move, I'm gonna go sign those papers." I parked her in the corner, kicking on the breaks before risking stepping away and leaving her unattended.

"And when I came back here, Samantha Walker, you best still be in that wheelchair!" I shouted the order sternly over my shoulder when, the second my back was turned, I caught her trying to make a move to stand up out of the corner of my eye.

Satisfied when I watched her slump back into the seat, I turned forwards where I was instantly greeted by Patricia, the receptionist behind the front desk who greeted me with a clipboard jammed with a stack of papers as thick as my wrist clipped firmly to the top.

I skimmed through them quickly in an effort to keep Sam from having to wait longer than she already had to, pausing every once in a while to sign my name where applicable and turning my head every twenty seconds or so to check up on Sam who had chosen to occupy herself by drumming her fingers impatiently against the armrest of her wheel chair.

"You'll do fine Brooke." I heard the words of confidence come from somewhere behind me when I'd let my eyes linger a little bit too long on Sam.

Was I that obvious?

"Huh?" I turned back around, facing the doctor who'd just addressed me, asking her to repeat what she'd just said not because I hadn't heard it but because, in all honesty, I just wanted to hear those words of reassurance again.

"You will do fine with her. She's gonna be okay." The resulting smile I put on my face was half genuine, but at the same time, half fake considering I couldn't bring myself to fully believe it all, even though I wish I could.

But instead of plastering all of my feelings out across my face, I just took a deep breath and smiled and nodded my way through it.

"Thank you, for everything really." I told her, scribbling the last of my signatures at the bottom of the last page of paper work before standing fully upright and pulling the older woman into a firm hug that even surprised me.

I expected her to pull away almost instantaneously, expected her to be horrified by my sudden actions, but I received a welcome surprise when she held on for as long as I needed her to, ultimately allowing me to be the one to break it up.

"Thanks," I said again as she smiled and nodded towards me.

"That's what I'm here for," She assured, "And look, I want to make sure you guys know that even while Sam isn't in the hospital, I'm still here. If either one of you need anything at all, you know where to find me."

"I know," I nodded. The woman had given me her cell phone, work phone, pager, and fax number weeks ago, all of which I had instantly stored in my cell phone and set to number one on speed dial because, well… you never know.

"Okay then, go, take Sam home. It looks like she's getting antsy over there." I turned my head over my shoulder, back to watch Sam who was now rolling herself back and forth across the hallway as a means to occupy her; the ADD moment she was currently embracing starting to get the best of her.

"Hey, are you ready?" I called out to her, but I knew the answer to the question before I'd even asked it.

She halted in the wheelchair mid-push, sat herself taller, and put a smile on her face that made her look happier than I'd ever seen her in my entire life.

"I'm ready when you are," She told me. "Take me home."

"Come on then," I approached her rapidly, Dr. Miller following close in my wake; the woman who I knew had just gotten us through the past three weeks crouching in front of Sam as she put an arm out laying a gentle hand on top of Sam's bony knee.

"You'll do fine Sam; just make sure you watch out for your mom for me." Sam smiled and let out a small laugh, apparently under a similar impression as her doctor that I was going to need more help in these upcoming weeks than she was.

"I will," She promised.

"Good; then get yourself out of here. I'll see you on Monday; just make sure I don't see you until then, you here?"

You gotta love that classic hospital humor, I guess… Sam's smile disappeared from my eyes behind the barricade of her doctor's shoulder as the woman leaned in to deliver Sam a small hug.

"Thanks Dr. Miller," She mumbled softly into the woman's shoulder before they pulled away, Dr. Miller leaving her hands firmly clamped on Sam's shoulder, rendering me impressed mainly at her ability to hold such an uncomfortable squatting position for so long.

"Hey," She responded, giving Sam a casual shrug and a soft smirk. "It was all you. You're a strong girl Sam; you'll do just fine at home… I'll see you on Monday." She repeated making it official; it was time for me and Sam to get the hell out of there.

I reached down with my foot, kicking off the break of the wheel chair as I swiveled Sam around, turning my head back one more time towards the doctor, mouthing a simple 'thank you' which she responded to with a nod and a wave, finally sending us out the door.

"Here we go," I mumbled, mainly to myself as I wheeled Sam into the otherwise abandoned hallway.

We got to the elevators in silence. I could practically hear her heart pounding in anxiety with every step forward that we took; the lethal combination of excitement and nerves sending a torrent of adrenaline through her veins that exponentially increased her heart rate with each passing second.

Of course, she had every reason to be nervous.

The thing was, within the confines of an oncology unit, the fact that Sam had cancer didn't really make her any different because the fact was, every person on that floor was facing similar problems to one extent or the other. Basically speaking, we were all in this together.

But once we were back outside in the real world…

People would stare, that much was obvious. They'd ask questions, and they'd walk past real slow, eyes wide, sympathetic looks on their faces…

A teenage girl with no hair and a giant tube sticking out of her jugular vein, Jesus, of course people were gonna stare, it was like a freaking circus act. No, I don't think that's what was bothering Sam the most, because if there was one thing that Sam has learned to but to the side in these past few weeks, it was her modesty.

So I guess the problem wasn't that these people were going to stare at her, no, I think the problem was that these people were going to know about her.

I mean, how would you feel if you had all of your life's problems written plain as day across your face?

"Are you alright?" I finally couldn't take the silence anymore, so I broke it, simultaneously reaching out with one arm to jab the down button on the panel on the wall, sitting impatiently and bouncing on the balls of my feet as I tried to figure out whether or not I should be eager for the elevator to come.

"Am I that obvious?" She answered back, and at first I considered saying that she wasn't, but then I just realized that if I did, we both would have been caught lying to each other, so I changed the motion of my head mid-shake and turned it into a nod, because to be completely honest with you, a half brain-dead chimpanzee would have been able to recognize the fact that Sam just wasn't all with us at the moment.

"People are gonna stare at me, Brooke." She started, taking a deep exhale as she went. "They're gonna know…" It seemed like the two of us were thinking along the lines of the same thing; and now, I was stuck trying to come up with a plausible solution to the problem.

I looked up towards the display box right above the elevator doors that had the floor the elevator was on illuminated in a bright red LCD light right above our heads.

Seven; one floor to go.

With the main source of our problem destined to arrive any second, I found my mine scrambling, forcing me to think and to think fast.

"Fuck 'em." I told her simply and plainly, and I watched as Sam swiveled her body around in her wheel chair, facing me with her jaw dropped in a look of pure astonishment.

Seriously though what did she think I was, some sort of angel?

"Seriously?" I knew I'd said the right thing when that nervous, jittery look that had been on her face five seconds ago dissolved; replaced by a profound smile.

"Absolutely," I assured her. "Well… not literally or else I'd have to crack some skulls. But you know what I mean." She gave me another laugh, this time accompanied by an eye roll so that I was pretty sure she was laughing at my lame attempt at stand-up then what I'd actually said, but now that I had her full attention, it was time to get serious.

"Listen," I changed my tone, "The only people that matter are your friends and your family, and trust me, it doesn't matter how you look to us… even if you do closely resemble Mr. Bubble."

I reached down and pulled the hood across her head down over her eyes just to play around as relief flooded her features and her face settled with a new-found confidence as she turned back around in her chair, facing herself forward and taking a deep breath just as a sudden dinging noise filled our ears indicating that the elevator had arrived at our floor.

"Ready for your first test?" I asked as the doors began to slide open; it was now or never.

"Ready," She assured me, taking a deep breath as the doors opened wide… only to reveal a completely empty cart beyond it.

Sam let out the breath she had been holding, nearly choking on the snort of laughter that had built in the back of her throat as she rubbed shaking hands through her bald head before subconsciously pulling her hood lower over her brow line.

"I was so ready too." She told me as I pushed her inside and hit the 'L' button before we began our descent into the lobby.

"Well now you've got a couple of more seconds to prepare yourself." I told her, tensing up my own muscles as we passed down to the fifth, the fourth, the third… in fact, we'd made it all the way to the lobby without a single interruption, Sam giving off a laugh with every floor we passed uninterrupted, the comic relief affectively soothing her nerves as we arrived at the lobby.

"Do you think we'll keep this lucky streak up and they'll be nobody in the lobby?" Sam asked me as we awaited the doors to open.

"Yeah right, not unless the world ended while we were cooped up in here."

"Hey, I would never know if it did." She told me as I wheeled her back into the open hallway that, much to Sam's disappointment, was jam packed full of employees, and patients, and visitors, all scrambling to get where they belonged; but that didn't seem to matter; the one minute elevator ride seemed to lighten Sam's heart enough to the point that she didn't even care.

Yeah, we caught our fair share of stares. People would sneak quick glimpses before looking away, some would snap back for a double-take as if to confirm what they'd just seen to be real. We got the curious eyes, the sympathetic looks, and even the people that looked like they didn't want to touch either one of us with a twenty foot pole… but come on now, was this a hospital or not? Surely they couldn't be too shocked that a sick person was roaming around these halls.

…But apparently they were. And in fact, by the looks on most of the people's faces, they were really, really surprised.

"Are you alright?" I whispered to Sam as we reached closer and closer to our destination of the front door.

"I'm fine," She assured me. "Fuck 'em, right?" I was glad to hear that my motivational "speech" had done its duty, but still, I was the mother here.

"Language," I was half serious when I'd said it, but still, Sam rolled her eyes so hard that I could practically feel her entire skull circling along with them.

I pushed her out passed the Emergency Room that I'd dashed her unconscious form in only three short weeks ago and forced my head away from the glowing red ER sign to avoid any unwanted memories as we finally reached the so-very-longed-for outside world where my car was already waiting for us front and center.

Gotta love that valet service.

"Sam, are you okay getting in the car by yourself?" I asked her, slipping the man that had pulled my car up for me a ten dollar bill, watching as Sam, determined to embrace her new-found independence to its fullest, nodded and helped herself into the passenger's seat of my SUV.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She assured me, throwing the seatbelt over her shoulder as I rushed around, climbed into the driver's seat, threw the damn thing into drive, and tore the hell out of the hospital parking lot.

The GPS system that I always had plugged into my dashboard for comfort purposes was shouting out directions to me with every turn that I made, but I was well beyond the need for it at this point.

I considered shutting it off, but every time I did, I couldn't help but catch a glimpse at Sam's mesmerized face every time the thing would spit out a new direction that sent us one step closer to home, so I left it on.

The brief ride was spent in a comfortable silence. The thing was, there wasn't that much room for talking because Sam simply couldn't peel her face away from the window; the outside world that she'd been unfamiliar with for three weeks making even the most every-day of sights absolutely astonishing so that she looked like a little kid in a candy shop.

By the time I pulled up into the driveway, I was afraid that she would positively drop dead with excitement… literally though, I was starting to get kind of nervous.

I helped guide her up the front path, my aforementioned nerves refusing to let my grasp on her arm go.

But even my nerves couldn't sustain themselves as Sam's face positively beamed with delight as she opened the door to reveal the spotless interior in front of her.

"How does it feel?" I asked trying to balance Sam in one hand, and all of both my bags and her bag in the other.

"Awesome," She breathed, stepping into the foyer, her eyes widening as she tried to take in every missed detail all at once.

"Julian!" I shouted through the house, throwing the bags on the floor in front of me. "We're home!"

I stepped inside and followed Sam into the living room. Even to me everything seemed suddenly different.

Somehow it was all brand new, and as I stepped next to Sam and wrapped my arm around her shoulder, I couldn't help but notice that the floor, the windows, the rugs, the couches… even me, it all seemed perfect.

I smiled at her; sure the two of us had been left tired, beat up, blistered, bruised, broken, and battered, but for right now, it was suddenly alright because we were home.


	23. Nothing's Gonna Hold You Down

**Hey guys, here's the next chapter for you. Just a note, this chapter skips a day. I didn't do it on purpose but I'm dumb and I already have the next couple of chapters kind of written out so changing the date again would mess things up so I'm just gonna leave it. Sorry if it confuses you!  
**

Chapter 23: Nothing's Gonna Hold You Down

**Friday, November 18****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

Even now, long after I'd allotted a generous amount of time for myself to sit down and really think about the past twenty-four hours, I still don't think that I'd be able to tell you just how me, Sam, and Julian all survived that hectic first day of Sam being back home.

In all honesty, the thing that surprised me the most wasn't how Sam had managed to survive the first milestone without so much as a cough, or how Julian pined over the two of us as if we were both queens, but it was how I still managed to somehow keep my sanity intact throughout the entire experience despite the constant worry and mostly overbearing concern… I guess it helped that the fact of the matter was nearly forty eight hours have already passed and we have yet to have anything close to a dilemma, emergency, fiasco, or, now that I thought about it, any sort of problem at all.

Knock on wood.

Of course, the understanding had been that the next couple of weeks having Sam home had been arranged solely for the purpose of being less hectic on all of our teetering emotional stabilities… that's what I had thought it was supposed to be anyway, but I guess that was my first, and my biggest mistake because I had almost forgotten how freaking hectic the real life could actually be… especially considering I'd spent the past month living an alternate reality confined to the walls of a hospital.

And I'm just going to be straight up honest right now; as the new day threatened my peaceful sleep with a sun that peered obnoxiously through the blinds and straight into my eyes, that chaos didn't look like it had any plans of slowing down straight from the beginning.

Now, I couldn't tell you how it happened exactly; maybe I had woken up without realizing it to shut my alarm off only to go right back to bed, maybe I set it to the wrong time or something; hell, maybe I just straight up never turned it on to begin with; but whatever it had been, I found myself awaking the next morning strictly on my own accord as opposed to underneath the stern rule of my beeping clock.

I rolled my entire body sideways, finding relief as my head landed square on the comfort of Julian's naked chest; that perfect combination of firm muscle and soft padding that I loved to bury myself in so much.

I heard him grown as my sudden motions pulled him from his haze of sleep and I rolled my full body weight on top of him, dragging my hands up his chest before delicately tracing his firm jaw line with my fingers.

"Morning," I offered with a small kiss as he opened his eyes with a grin that could even crumble Mount Everest.

God, I had almost forgotten how much I missed waking up like this.

"Good morning." He yawned heavily and I felt his legs stretch out underneath my own in an effort to rid his body from all of the kinks of sleep.

I leaned into his touch as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer into him before he tilted his neck forward so that our lips were close enough to meet.

I pushed my head forward to accept his offer; eager to indulge in the affection that I had been missing out on for so long now as I buried myself so deep into his mouth that it was difficult to distinguish where his skin ended and mine began.

"Indeed it is." I smirked a single corner of my mouth upward, straining the muscles in the back of my neck so that our lips parted ever-so slightly, just enough so that the sensitive skins barely grazed each other, teasing him just enough to really get him going.

And just when I thought I had finally gotten the upper hand on him, he pounced forward, attacking the sensitive nape of my neck with his firm mouth so that I arched slightly against him and closed my eyes.

Groaning, I opened my eyes again to half lids, subconsciously bending my neck backwards in order to present my entire throat to him. My eyes darting across the top of his head, my attention focusing briefly on the bright green florescent numbers of the clock staring back at me and…

"Shit!" I screamed so suddenly that the subsequent shock I gave Julian caused him to reflexively bite down and almost rip my freaking jugular out with his teeth. Great… now I was going to look like one of those stupid vampire kids I always made fun of.

I pushed myself off of Julian's body, my knee accidentally connecting with his groin as I scrambled off of the bed, leaving me the brand new world record holder for fastest person to ever change from a passionate sex goddess to a hot mess.

I raced over to the alarm clock and clutched it in between my hands, staring at it with wide, disbelieving eyes as if I stood there staring long enough, it would start to move backwards as opposed to the other way around.

But no; it was written all across my face, clear as day – 11:00; it was 11:00 in the morning and I was four hours behind schedule.

"Shit!" I yelled once more for affect as I jumped out of my bed, ripping the sheet away from Julian to cover myself as I scrambled around my bedroom in an attempt to figure out just what I should be doing, subsequently getting nowhere thanks to the fact that I was currently a frantic mess.

Through my mad dash across the room I heard Julian as he sighed heavily and threw himself harshly against the mattress that he now occupied alone; eyes wide and mouth turned down; the ghost of what could have been an excellent morning lingering on his features for an extra second before disappearing completely.

And as he cursed himself for his latest case of blue balls, I cursed myself for missing breakfast, for missing making sure Sam got all of her medication, and for missing picking up Jamie so that I could babysit as he enjoyed a week-long break from school while Haley was still forced to dance her way around a group of teenagers anxious for their start of the Thanksgiving holidays.

"Crap!" I continued my exploration through the world of exploitative phrases as I tripped over my jeans, coming damn close to toppling flat on my face with one leg in and one leg out as I struggled to dress myself ; a task that I'd wrongly thought I'd mastered when I was four.

"How the hell could I have slept so late, I could have sworn I set this… stupid alarm." I finished dressing myself and picked my clock between my hands again, smashing it hard against the wood a couple of times in an attempt to jolt it back to life, but upon further investigation, it didn't appear to be broken at all.

I couldn't seem to identify any sort of problem at all… that is, until Julian spoke up.

"Relax Brooke," He told me, rolling off of the bed and standing in front of me clad only in his boxers. "I shut your alarm off this morning. You needed your sleep."

"But… but…" I stammered stupidly, my brain scrambling to decide whether I was grateful or whether I was pissed.

"But what about Sam; she needed to take her medication at 8:00… and Jamie, I was supposed to pick up Jamie this morning…" My head felt like it was about to explode with all of the frustration building up inside of it as Julian gripped onto my shoulders trying desperately to assure me that everything was going to be okay, probably just to be sure that I didn't turn around and kick his ass here on the spot.

"Sam is fine, Brooke. I woke up when your alarm went off and you didn't and I didn't want to wake you up so I took care of it. Haley dropped Jamie off and him and Sam are watching TV. I checked on them about a half an hour ago; they're both fine."

Good, great, I was glad that he was concerned for them, really I was; and I know that he had done it with all of our best interests in mind, but the fact of the matter was that Sam was a special case and simply making sure that she was alright just wasn't good enough.

"But her pills, she needed to take her pills at 8:00."

"She got them. Really Brooke, she's fine. She marked it down for you and everything because she knew that you wouldn't believe her." He spun a piece of paper out from behind his back like he was some sort of freaking magician or something, handing me the Excel checklist that I had made for Sam to keep track of her medicine, watching as I dragged my finger down the box that was labeled "11/18: Morning", scanning the row of check marks written off in Sam's characteristically sloppy handwriting.

Antibiotics; check,

Dexamethasone; check,

Zyloprin; check,

Femiron; check,

Atenolol… everything seemed to be in order, but still, in my defiance, I became determined to find something wrong based on principle alone. I mean, I hadn't been there to over-see it, so something had to have gone wrong, right?

But the more I looked for a problem, the less successful I became in finding one so I settled; letting my guard down and deciding that Julian had saved my life this morning.

"Are you okay?" He asked me with hesitancy written in his voice because I was going through such an extreme change in emotion at the moment that I could physically feel my facial expressions changing into a look that made me quite sure that Julian was having a hard time telling exactly what I was thinking… of course, now that I thought about it, I was having a hard time telling exactly what I was thinking too.

"Yeah, I'm fine… sorry Julian." I apologized with instant remorse flooding through my veins. "I guess I'm still a little bit uptight about Sam being home."

"Hey, don't worry about it." He accepted my apology, wrapping me up into his arms so that I could bury my face into his chest again and inhale his scent.

"Wanna go check on them?" He asked, understanding laced through his question as I nodded my head against his enlarged deltoid muscles.

"Alright," He said, stepping out of my grasp so that he could throw on a pair of sweat pants before beckoning me to follow him out of my bedroom.

"Let's go," He lead me out of my bedroom door; my feet moving as fast as they could without running as the first thing that came into my vision was Jamie who was propped up on top of the kitchen counter looking no worse for the wear although he did have a rather large ring of chocolate around his mouth; one that looked mysteriously like it had originated from the bowl of ice cream sitting in front of him.

"Hi Aunt Brooke," He greeted me enthusiastically enough, but I couldn't help but notice that he was simultaneously trying to hide the bowl he had under the cover of his folded legs.

"Morning Jamie," I replied, eyeing him suspiciously, cocking my eyebrow so that he knew that I knew that he was up to something funny.

He gulped and looked up at me wide eyed, hurriedly wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his sweatshirt as if I hadn't already noticed what he was up to.

"Now who did you charm into feeding you ice cream at 11:00 in the morning?" I threw an accusatory glance towards Julian who tried to play dumb by focusing on a particularly interesting spot in the ceiling.

"Julian told me that I could have whatever I wanted, Aunt Brooke, and besides, this isn't ice cream, it's uh… a new cereal." He attempted to pull a fast one on me as Julian, from his position behind me, threw a small thumbs up in Jamie's direction to indicate that he'd done good in attempting to get the both of them out of trouble; the key word in that sentence being attempting.

"Oh is that so?" I asked coming up behind Jamie and grabbing onto his shoulders, giving them a small squeeze as I leaned into his ear and whispered, "Just don't tell your mom on me, huh?"

The boy was so relieved that he wasn't about to get in trouble that his face brightened to the point that he looked as if he were actually glowing.

"Thanks Aunt Brooke!" He shouted, scooping another generous spoonful of ice cream into his awaiting mouth.

"Yeah, yeah, just remind me… who's your favorite girl?" I pestered him, the thought of that point in time where he had chosen to pick Sam over me still fresh in my mind; so at this point, I just needed a little assurance.

"You are!" The energy behind his voice was enough to convince me, and even though I knew that the only reason he'd picked me was because I'd just approved of his abysmal eating habits, well, let's just put it this way; I could live with that.

"That's the answer I was looking for, buddy." I told him, patting the top of his head with approval. "Just make sure that you tell Sam that exact same thing the next time you see her, alright?"

He bobbed his head up and down in agreement upon the terms and conditions that would allow him to continue his ice cream breakfast.

"Where is she anyway?" I'd managed to sneak the question that had been on my mind for the past five minutes or so casually underneath the context of the conversation; my stealth somehow managing to even impress me.

"She's watching TV. She didn't want any ice cream."

"Maybe later, bud." I told him without bothering to elaborate any further. "It is still pretty early for ice cream anyway, right?"

He blushed a faint pink that blended horribly against the mask of chocolate around his face as he sunk a little bit lower in his chair and I gave his shoulder a final firm squeeze before letting go, turning to walk towards the direction of the family room where Sam was inevitably sunk into the cushions of her favorite arm chair, continuing her tradition of rotting away her brain with day time soaps.

"Hey," I found her just the way I expected to; curled up in the fetal position on the couch, the reflection of _The View_ bouncing off of her glossy eyes.

"Mmm…" She mumbled back as I sat myself down on the other end of the couch.

"Have you been up long?" I asked, causing her to merely shrug at me, eyes still firmly attached to the glowing box in front of her.

"I woke up at seven," She finally spoke, "Actually Julian woke me up at seven… he's more of a Nazi then you are, Brooke." She finally turned her head away from the TV; the serious look that had suddenly adorned her face as she voiced her displeasure of the Julian Baker morning train making me laugh more than the actual comment.

"Not that it mattered really; I've that natural alarm clock going off in my head waking up at seven ever since I moved in here." There was accusation laced in her voice, but behind it, a hint of a joke… I hope.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I tried to put my best "I don't know what you're talking about" face on as I crossed my arms and stared down at her.

"Come on Brooke, you do know that you're like a freaking slave driver in the mornings, right? Every single day at seven; seriously? I got more sleep in the hospital and the orphanage combined than I do when I'm here."

She spewed out the rant that I knew she'd been dying to get off of chest since she'd moved in here, but when she ended her speech with a laugh, I knew I shouldn't be taking her too seriously.

"Whatever, you should just watch your mouth before I decide to make it 6:00. Now come on, somebody out there has something to tell you."

She looked up at me in confusion but still, accepted my offer when I stood from the couch and extended a hand out to her to help pull her up to her feet.

She lead the way into the kitchen where Julian was continuing to watch Jamie with admiration as the younger boy literally began to lick his bowl clean before slamming it down upon noticing me and Sam's reentrance, instantly racing to us.

"Sam, Aunt Brooke told me to tell you that she's my favorite now instead of you."

Okay, so it hadn't exactly been the delivery that I had expected, but I've learned to take what I can get, so I gave him a small nod of approval that he returned with a big grin that showed the gap between his bottom teeth from where he'd lost his first tooth last week.

"Oh is that so?" Sam asked, swiveling around to eye me suspiciously as I climbed innocently atop the counter. "So is this what you do when I'm not around?" She asked me, "Bribe little kids with ice cream to tell lies?"

"Breakfast!" I shouted, slamming my hands down onto the counter top, changing the subject so suddenly that even Sam had missed the transition. "Are you hungry Sam? I've got a special today; chocolate _or_ vanilla ice cream with syrup and sprinkles." She looked up, giving me a look like she thought I was some crazed escapee mental patient or something.

"I think I'll pass on the ice cream. I will take the cereal though."

It seemed like a fair enough compromise to me; as far as I was concerned, she was eating and that's all that mattered.

"Your loss," I shrugged, tossing her all of the essential ingredients for a perfect bowl of Raisin Bran and watching slightly transfixed as she poured and picked at it modestly.

"So…" She poked a jab at casual conversation, obviously noticing that I had been staring at her. "What's on the schedule for today?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, "I was thinking about going to the mall. I need some new pants."

Actually, I needed no such thing. The fact was, I probably had enough pants for both myself and every person in the entire United States of America, but the truth was, I hadn't had a good shopping day in over a month, and I knew that nothing could relieve my stress like a nice shopping spree.

I hesitated for a moment and conducted an internal debate between my free spirit and my over concerned mother mode, ultimately deciding to spit out the question before I had the opportunity to change my mind.

"Do you wanna come?"

She shrugged; but I couldn't help but notice the suspicious way that her eyes instantly turned downwards or how she became suddenly very interested in tracing patterns in the milk of her cereal with her spoon.

"Sam?" I repeated, deciding it would be easier to simply pretend she hadn't heard me the first time, but the truth was, I knew she had heard me, and I also knew that the instant the question had come out of my mouth, Sam had retreated back into her recent agoraphobic tendencies that I knew stemmed off of the insecurities posed by her drastic change of appearance.

The fact of the matter was, I was starting to get nervous that Sam was avoiding stepping into the sunlight until the day all of her hair finally grew back again… whenever that may be. That's why I was shocked when her voice finally spoke –

"That sounds good," Of course, I couldn't help but notice that the confidence behind her voice was very forced, "I think I'm gonna be needing some hats anyway." Her attempt to pass some humor could have been successful if her voice didn't quaver, but who knows, maybe a bit of fresh air was all she really needed… let's just keep our fingers crossed.

We fell into an uncomfortable silence, one that I think even Jamie noticed. I watched in a hypnotized awe as Sam made soft circles in the milk with her spoon, developing small whirl pools that captured the Raisin Bran which was getting soggier and soggier with each passing second.

"You should eat you know. You need your energy for later." I spoke only when I couldn't stand the silence any longer and watched as all eyes instantly turned to me.

"I'm eating." Was all she said as she piled all of the cereal into the corner of the bowl, trying to create an optical illusion that made it appear as if she'd been eating more than she actually was.

"Is it stale?" I pushed, even though I knew it annoyed her to know end because she knew that I knew that her sudden bipolar mode switch had absolutely nothing to do with the food in front of her.

For a moment she didn't answer. Instead, she simply pushed the bowl away and stood from her seat.

"I'm not so hungry anymore." She told me, turning on her heels and making the move out of the kitchen back towards the living room.

"Where are you going?" I shouted after her.

"Bathroom, you wanna come?" She responded sarcastically without so much as a second glance backwards. But still, my e yes lingered on the back of her head so that I knew she would be able to feel me staring a hole through her.

"I'm just getting ready to leave Brooke. I'm fine." Huh, I was right; the staring technique always does seem to work.

"Okay," I nodded, but I still wasn't convinced. "Just make sure that you don't take too long, I wanna get going soon." She acknowledged me with nothing more than a small wave before she disappeared behind the corner where I heard the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut, leaving Julian and I to stare at each other with concern written across our face while Jamie, oblivious to the world, was only concerned with the chocolate syrup he had spilled onto the counter as he tried to lick it off the formerly sterile surface with his tongue.

* * *

You know that there's a problem when Sam takes longer to get ready than I do.

That was the first thought that ran through my mind when, a half an hour after the debacle in the kitchen, I was stepping out of my bedroom dressed, made up, and ready to go, and Sam was still locked firmly shut in her bathroom.

Needless to say, I became instantly concerned when I came dazzling out of my room only to find a very bored looking Julian and Jamie tapping their toes and looking more than ready to leave and no Sam in their wake.

"Sam still hasn't come out yet?" I asked, fully aware that there was a strong hint of worry laced in the back of my voice.

My mind raced straight to worse-case-scenario as it has become so prone to doing lately as I envisioned Sam locking herself in the bathroom in a fitful tirade, overworking herself, and was now lying unconscious somewhere on the tile beyond the wooden barricade of a locked door.

Congratulations Brooke, you'd almost made it an entire forty eight hours with Sam being home without having a single thought of Sam being in mortal peril… so much for that I guess.

I watched Julian shake his head in response to my question with a soft 'no' that made my eyes widen with worry before I decided to take immediate action, walking up to Sam's bathroom with a confident step even though my knees quivered violently, wrapping my knuckles loudly on the door.

"Sam, are you in there?" I asked, and I'm not gonna lie, when I didn't hear her respond to my beckoning within a ten second time frame, I started to freak out a little bit; the what-if's playing through my mind like wild fire.

So I barged into the room; hoping that Sam wasn't sitting on the toilet or anything, but hoping even more that she wasn't in an unconscious heap on the floor.

I was relieved to find neither of those two scenarios playing out in front of my eyes.

Instead, Sam was standing in front of her mirror; dressed in a pair of jeans that had been snug not so long ago but now hung loose around her hips and a baggy t-shirt. She held her arms straight out in front of her, gripping firmly onto the basin of the sink, her eyes ceaselessly attached to her own reflection in the mirror in front of her.

Her expression had changed drastically from that healthy glow I had seen in her cheeks for the first time in a month at the breakfast table. Now, well she was back to the pale, skeleton-like, straight up depressed Sam that I had gotten so used to… in fact, I wasn't even sure if she'd heard me come in.

"Sam?" I called out gently, watching as the girl jumped a little before turning away from the mirror towards me, ducking her catheter line back underneath the hidden protection of her t-shirt as much as she could, despite the fact that it stuck out predominantly no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

"I don't have any hats." It was the first thing that she said to me as she turned her face back towards the reflection in the mirror. I furrowed my eyebrows into a frown; I just couldn't understand how she could think she was so ugly when I thought she was so beautiful.

"I don't have any hats and those stupid scarf things that you got for me just make my head itch."

"Well honey, I have some that you can borrow if you want." I told her, inching my feet forward slowly until I got close enough to reach out and grab onto her shoulders, slowly guiding her away from the mirror before she had a nervous breakdown.

But apparently that had been the wrong thing to say, because before I knew it, she ducked out from underneath my arms in a forceful spin before she sat herself down at the edge of the bathtub with a huff.

"I don't think I wanna go anymore, Brooke."

I knew that that wasn't exactly true. The thing was, life is never that simple. Going back out and doing all of the things she used to before her life screeched abruptly to a halt was something that she wanted more than anything else in the world. It was the people that I knew had made her hesitant. The people who would stare, the people who would gawk, the people who would make her life a living hell without even realizing what they were doing…

"Come on Sam, you can't just hide out in your room forever." I knew that I couldn't be a pushover with this one. I needed to get her out of this house. I needed to get her to understand that sitting here for the next God only knows how long until her treatment was over, hiding behind walls in fear of what people would think wasn't healthy. I should know; been there, done that.

"I don't want to go." The second time she said it, she spoke with a force that hadn't been there the first time. In fact, her voice almost came out as a yell, her outburst echoing through the halls of the house. I knew that Julian had heard because the shadow of his body appeared in the doorframe a couple of seconds later.

"Hey are you guys alright in here?" He asked, skeptic as to whether or not he should have butted in on this one laden in his voice.

I ignored his question instead staring down at Sam as I put my hands on my hips and decided to roll up my sleeves on this one; because even though I knew that Sam wasn't going down without a fight, I was ready to fight. Now it was just a matter of who could hang tough the longest.

"Fine, but I want a legitimate reason why you don't want to come with me." I folded my arms stubbornly.

"Don't you get it Brooke?" She shouted back, shooting up from the edge of the bathtub so that I could see the tears that laced the bottom of her eyes, making me instantly feel bad for being so harsh on her. Maybe I'd pushed her too soon… maybe I should ease up a bit.

"I'm hideous, Brooke! Why would I go out in public? Why should I give people the satisfaction of having a free ticket to a freak show?" My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open in shock. Even though I had known what this was about all along, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that much self loathing to come out of her mouth.

"I'm a freak Brooke, and I know it." She continued when my sudden burst of cotton mouth prevented me from speaking. "I'm sick, and I'm tired, and I'm hideous."

I could hear the tears leaking out from her eyes, dumping buckets as they splattered against the tile floor.

How the hell was I supposed to respond to that?

How the hell was I supposed to stand up here and tell her that she was wrong; that nobody would stare at her, that nobody would say anything to her when we both knew that I would just be lying straight to her face?

I looked up to Julian for support but he looked the exact same way that I felt. He held my gaze for a second longer but then I noticed something change; a flick in his eyes that made it look as though the light switch inside of his brain had just been turned on.

Hurriedly, he broke eye contact with me and turned his back out of the door.

I looked towards the abandoned frame where Julian once stood, curious as to what his intentions were. But I only let my thoughts linger for a moment before I turned the focus of my attention back towards Sam. I lowered myself along with her as she sunk down against the bathtub again and I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, pulling her body close into my own where I could feel the dampness of her tears leaking through the fabric of my shirt.

We stayed like that for a moment; and then, suddenly, that moment was lost as the sound of a loud vibrating noise coming from the direction of my own bedroom filled my ears, effectively distracting both me and Sam from what we were supposed to be thinking about at the moment.

Sam looked up at me, wiping her red, puffy eyes away from any remaining tears as she strained her face in curiosity, turned up to me, and asked –

"What is that?"

* * *

**JULIAN**

I guess that it's pretty safe to say that I've been waiting for just the right moment to pull this one out of my hat even though the idea has been on the back of my mind for a few days now, prepared at a moment's notice to break out and be used.

Of course, I only wanted to do this as a complete and absolute last resort, but let's be honest here; desperate times call for desperate measures, and this was as desperate a time as any.

I won't lie to you, I didn't particularly want it to have to come to this, but the truth is, Sam's mental stability and well-being is much more important than any of my hair anyway… or at least, that is what I'll just keep on repeating to myself over and over again until I actually manage to convince me.

Suffice to say, even though I knew that it was completely and totally rational for a teenage girl to be concerned with her appearance, I also knew that it wasn't completely and totally rational for a teenage girl to be bald and one step shy of emaciated, which is why I also knew that it seemed as if not all of us were lucky enough to factor in on the normal side of the spectrum and that Sam seemed to have drawn the short straw… again.

Of course, I was just surprised that it took her this long to let it all out.

And that is how this idea magically happened to land atop my shoulders.

The first time that I told myself that I was ready to do everything and anything, even at the expense of myself, to help get Sam through this god awful experience, it had been over something so minuscule, so microscopic, so unthinkably small, that I had almost missed it.

It was the way that her face would linger for a couple of extra seconds on her own image every time she would pass by a particularly reflective glass or a mirror that first got me thinking that Sam wasn't as okay with all of this as it initially appeared on the surface.

It was the way that I would take her for her daily walks through the courtyard and I noticed her turn a blank head away from all of the stares and the questions as her face turned into somber embarrassment that first made me decide that maybe she would need somebody to walk with her side-by-side to collect some of those stares for her.

It was the way that I had just witnessed that devastating interaction that took place between Brooke and Sam only moments ago that first made me realize that it was finally the right time to man up and do this.

I found myself stomping away from Sam's bathroom, pushing off the doorframe so hard that it left a small, bleeding splinter within one of the cracks of my palm that I ignored and allowed to bleed openly as the particularly loud interaction that continued between Brooke and Sam faded softer and softer into the background.

In my urgency, I tripped over the rub in the hallway, stumbling into Brooke's bathroom and adding a nice sized bruise on my forearm to my list of injuries as I righted myself up, swung the door open with a forceful urgency, and dug around the cabinet underneath the sink for a few short moments before finding exactly what I had been looking for –

My electric razor.

I stared down with a slight hesitancy for only a second more before I lunged out my free hand and grabbed onto it, plugging it in carefully and turning it on, breathing deeply as I felt it shake forcefully in my palm, telling me with every vibration to just get this over with already, because the longer I waited, the more likely it was that I would back out and leave Sam as disappointed as ever.

I took one final deep breath, closed my eyes so tightly that tears involuntarily leaked from the corners, and blindly drug the razor right down the middle of my scalp.

I felt the tickle of the blade run along my scalp, followed almost instantly by the feeling of my hair falling away, blanketing my bare feet with my own thick brown locks.

I risked opening my eyes. The reflection in front of me definitely was not me, there was no way… I knew this because _I_ would never be stupid enough to have just voluntarily shaved some stupid little reverse Mohawk thing right into my very own head… completely sober, might I add.

Jesus, what the hell had I just done?

"Jesus Julian, what the hell did you just do?" That Brooke, she always knew how to make me feel better at my greatest time of need.

I turned my head; Brooke, Sam, and Jamie were all cramped in the doorway, craning their necks and pushing each other to the side in order to get a closer look at what I had done to mutilate my head however, none of them wanting to come any closer, probably for fear that I was rabid or something… I mean, why else would I have just done what I just did?

Hm, maybe I was rabid.

"What?" I asked Brooke as if nothing was out of the norm here. "Don't you like it?"

"No way," I heard Sam's shocked voice breathe out in between my question and Brooke's answer as she finally got her head past Brooke's shoulder and caught a glimpse of the new me.

"Yeah way," I told her, taking an inaccurate second swipe at my head with the razor, hacking further into my perfectly manicured, movie-star-styled hair that was now half gone, doomed to a small pile building up at my feet.

"Can I do one?" She asked, becoming the first of the three to be daring enough to push herself forwards towards me.

"Be my guest." I told her, handing her the razor that she clutched in both hands as if it were some priceless treasure.

She stood on her tip-toes as I bent at the waist so that my massive 6'4" frame could meet the accommodations of her smaller body and I squinted my eyes in nervous anticipation as Sam hesitated, letting out audible "hmm's" so as to let me know that her pause had nothing to do with her being nervous about participating in my balding and everything to do with the fact that she was contemplating the perfect place to cut into next.

I gave her the honor of finishing me off as she worked diligently for nearly ten minutes, guiding the razor over my naked scalp with an obsessive compulsion until she was sure that she had gotten every last hair fiber off of my head and I was just as bald as she was.

I took a deep breath and rubbed my hand over my head, trying to get used to the feeling of nothing but skin underneath my palms. Suddenly, I could see exactly where she was coming from… but unlike Sam, I knew that I would have a healthy buzz growing back in its rightful place in just a matter of days.

I chanced the opportunity to shift my stare upward where my eyes instantly met with Brooke's which were damp with tears of the utmost approval and she gave me a soft wet smile, her face falling into the most genuinely loving stare I had ever received in my entire life, making my ears turn red with embarrassment and forcing me to look back down at my feet again before I started to get too cocky about it.

But still, just between you and me, I knew that I had done well, and for Brooke and Sam, that seemed to be all that ever mattered anyway.

Sam craned her neck upward to get a better view of her newly bald counterpart with admiration smeared across her face. I was glad because of course, the point of all of this was just to make the kid's day a little bit less miserable and, truth be told, I would have thrown myself into a pit of fire to make her happy again. Of course, I'm glad it didn't have to come to that but you know what I mean…

"You look ridiculous." Sam told me, reaching up with her hand to brush a few loose strands of hair off of my shoulders.

"Yeah well, I got a call this morning and as it turns out, hair is so last week so really you're doing me a favor."

I laughed before it got cut off by a loud grunt that escaped my mouth as Sam unexpectedly through her arms so tightly around my middle that it seemed to cut off my very oxygen supply.

I only allowed myself to be taken aback by the suddenness of her movements for a second or two before I relaxed into it, folding my arms across her back, patting gently at the skin underneath my palms.

"Thanks Julian."

"No problem kiddo. Just remember, if you ever need anything, I'm here for you." I whispered the last bit in her ear before I pulled out of the embrace, locking her eyes as she smirked the edge of her mouth into an upward slant.

It had been the closest to feeling like a father that I had ever experienced before in my entire life. I can't say that I'd ever felt like this before, hell, I can't say that I'd ever imagined feeling like this before; that sudden rush that told me that I was ready to do anything in all of my power to keep this girl from feeling any more pain than she already had been in during her short life.

I liked it. No, I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much, that I was almost disappointed when Jamie barged in between the two of us and ruined it all.

"Julian, can I go next?" He pleaded with me, hopping up and down like a hyped up bunny rabbit.

I didn't respond to his question immediately; instead, I glanced up nervously at Brooke, locking eyes with her as the razor's heavy vibrations began to sink right down to my bones, effectively hurting my hand and silently asking her what the hell I should do.

"Please Julian, please?" He continued to beg, "I wanna look just like Sam too!" He must have sensed my hesitation because he continued to cry and plead and tug impatiently at the hem of my shirt so that I gave in before he ripped it to shreds.

"If your mom asks you Jamie, you did this yourself while we weren't looking, deal?"

"Promise," He told me, holding his tiny pinkie up in the solemn swear, watching closely as I wrapped my little finger around his own and gave it a firm shake, effectively sealing the deal.

"Alright big guy, come over here." I lifted him up from underneath the armpits, placing him in a seated position against the counter top where he rested down in a perfect position for my newly acquired barber shop skills, giddy with glee as I reached downward and lopped a generous chunk of hair off of the side of Jamie's head so that the blonde ringlets fell smoothly into the rapidly growing pile at my feet.

I concentrated hard, working with rapt attention and smoothly shaving until all of the hair that had been on the boy's head five minutes ago rested smoothly across its new home on Brooke's bathroom floor.

"Alright, you're all done." I told him, flipping off the razor and lifting him into the air, holding him against my shoulder for a moment so he could get a nice view of himself in the mirror where he admired my handiwork excitedly.

In all fairness, I didn't make him quite as bald as either me or Sam. I figured it was for the sake of his mother, who already had a big enough surprise in store for her when she came to pick up Jamie, finding there to be less of him than she had dropped off as he sported a closely shaved buzz cut.

"How does it feel?" Brooke asked him, rubbing her hand over the soft prickles that jutted out across the length of his scalp.

"Good!" He shouted his approval to me via the big toothless grin that he flashed in my direction. "Thanks Julian,"

"No problem, bud," I told him before turning up to Brooke, waving the motionless razor mockingly in her face.

"Hey Brooke, I think this think still has one more hair cut left in it." I was joking of course, but the look that Brooke gave me in return told me that that had been anything but funny. Luckily for her, Sam jumped in and saved her butt before I had the opportunity to harass her any further.

"Please god, no," She begged me, "I don't think I could handle seeing Brooke bald… or listening to her complain about it."

"Good point," I shrugged, finally conceding with the agreement that if I surprise-shaved Brooke's head in this moment, not only would the ass kicking she would deliver me hurt and the sidewalk that I would be kicked out onto be cold and uncomfortable, but also, the 24/7 complaining that we would be forced to endure sealed the deal in making it not worth it.

I ducked the razor back into its home underneath the sink and out of Brooke's sight in order to prove to her that the area could finally be deemed a safe zone before I straightened myself up.

"Well, I'm ready to go." I announced, placing my hands on my hips and surveying my eyes between the three people in front of me waiting for some sort of response.

"How about you, Sam?" I asked when no such response came.

I held my breath for a moment, but when Sam gave me a shy smile and a small nod, I knew that the ultimate goal of this entire plan had worked.

"Yeah, I think I'm ready to go now too."

"Excellent," I responded as I guided her by the shoulders, the two of us leading the way out of the cramped bathroom and back into the hallway, heading back towards the kitchen so that Brooke could get her bag and her car keys.

We were all set to go; I watched Brooke take Jamie by the hand over towards the front door before Sam made the move to follow, but before she could get too far ahead, I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder, effectively stopping her in her path.

I used my strong hand to pull her a little bit closer to me as I bent over, leaning down into a medium squat so that our faces were at the same height allowing me to get closer to her and whisper into her ear –

"Just remember Sam. If anybody messes with you, now they'll have to answer to me first."


	24. Dum Spiro Spero

**Okay, so this may just be a record for the fastest time I have ever updated this story ever but the good news is I have been a writing fiend these past few days so I've already got the next couple of chapters already written they all just have to be edited and stuff so get excited!**

**And just a little side note, I decided to change things up a little bit, I threw in Peyton and Lucas's POVs in there for two reasons; the first being I was getting bored of writing the same characters over and over again and the second being I needed dark, depressing characters for this chapter and let's be honest, whose more dark and depressing than Peyton and Lucas?**

**Hope you enjoy! (Even if this is kind of a depressing chapter haha)**

**

* * *

**Chapter 24: Dum Spiro Spero (While I Breathe, I Hope)

**Saturday, November 19****th****, 2011**

**PEYTON**

I hate funerals.

I mean, not to say that anybody particularly enjoys them, but given my track record combined with the fact that I was pretty sure that I held the Guinness World Record for the most funerals ever attended in a twenty three year time frame, I think that I had a more than legitimate reason for being just a little bit hesitant about being present at the one that I had stupidly promised to attend today.

The only thing that was keeping me from turning back and running now was the fact that it had been Brooke that had asked me; a Brooke with tears in her eyes and a devastating frown across her face; a Brooke that I just couldn't say no to as she casually mentioned that her and Sam were to attend Logan McGinnis's funeral this afternoon and that she really didn't want to have to do it alone.

And let's face it; I wasn't about to be the one that said no to my best friend and her cancer-stricken child; besides, they both needed me right now. In fact, they both needed all of the help that they could get; and that's why I had decided to round up the whole crew, calling in reinforcements and getting the reassurances from Nathan, Haley, Mouth, and Millicent that they would be accompanying me and Lucas to the funeral to be there for Brooke.

So here I was, the girl that hated funerals more than any other person in the entire world, dressed from head to toe in black, standing outside on Brooke's doorstep all by myself as Lucas had taken it upon himself to drop Sawyer off at Nathan and Haley's house where she and Jamie were going to be watched by their babysitter.

I waited impatiently, tapping my feet on the concrete ground in nervous anticipation, allowing a couple more moments of silence to pass before I reached out and rang the doorbell for a second time, stifling a steep yawn as I did so.

Earlier this morning, before the sun came up, or the newspapers were delivered, or any of those annoying, over-achieving joggers woke up to beat out the heat of the midday sun, I myself managed to sneak out of my house, retreating to the comfort of my car where I drove blindly for over an hour or so with nowhere to be, nowhere to go, and no particular destination in mind.

Somehow or another, through all of the unconscious twists and turns of the wheel that I took my car done, I had managed to find myself at a very familiar beach spot that me and my parents used to own a beach house on when I was a little kid.

It was one of those unusually warm November nights, you know, the ones with just enough breeze so that I needed a sweatshirt, but just enough of that residual hot front counter-acting it so that I could still sit comfortably in the sand…

I only wound up staying for an hour or two, but the entire time that I did I found myself sitting stock still up on top of one of the raised dunes watching as the waves broke smoothly against the crest lines of the sand and the sun slowly rose from behind the infinite ocean horizon.

The only thing I could think about all morning was about how unusually quiet the coastline was that morning as I watched run smoother and smoother with each passing wave, almost taunting me as I even more quietly, slowly began to lose control of myself.

And that's about the time that I started sobbing.

"Hey,"

My thoughts finally registered back to where I was and why I had been there as Brooke finally opened the door and greeted me, the full image of her disheveled appearance only registering with me after I'd had a few extra seconds to focus my eyes.

Her hair was still soaking wet, but she was already wearing a short black dress with only one shoe stuffed onto her feet.

It was a stereotypical picture of Brooke Davis getting ready to go out somewhere important, and if the situation had called for it, I probably would have laughed.

Of course, it didn't, so I didn't either.

"Sorry I'm running a bit late." She apologized to me, hopping up and down on her stockinged foot so that she could properly fix her lonely shoe securely on her other one as she simultaneously moved out of the way of the door in order to make room for me to see myself inside.

"Don't worry about it," I assured her, "Luke is running late too. He's off dropping off Sawyer at Haley and Nathan's. They're all meeting us over there."

I subconsciously found my eyes wandering across the room, surveying the scene carefully until they finally landed on Sam, who had been sitting in the living room on the couch so silent and unmoving that I hadn't even noticed she'd been there until now.

I couldn't help but notice that she was still wearing her pajamas. Her arms were crossed and she sported a look on her face that told me that she wanted to do anything but what she knew she had to go do as she stared straight ahead at the TV which was shut off.

"Hey Brooke, relax; finish getting ready. I'll hang out with Sam."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," I told her, amazed that she even thought she had to ask. "Go, come on, you've got plenty of time to get ready. I've got her, alright?"

I practically pushed her into her own bedroom, watching her closely until I was sure that she had safely shut the door behind her with the intention of getting ready to leave, only convinced when I started to hear the sound of a savage shuffling coming from beyond the veil of her bedroom door, telling me that she was currently ripping her room to shreds, probably in search of her other shoe.

I finally allowed myself to step away and headed towards the living room towards Sam, whose expression hadn't changed at all since the last time I'd seen her, leaving me to believe that she hadn't even known that I had come in.

"Hey Sam," I plopped down onto the couch right next to her, but when she turned her head to look at me, she didn't say anything. In fact, the look on her face told me that she was in absolutely no mood to talk about anything at all.

But she was a polite girl; Brooke had made sure of that, so instead of remaining silent like she wanted to, she took a deep breath and responded,

"Hey,"

"How are you holding up?"

She shrugged but refused to vocalize to me that she was feeling like shit. And even though I knew exactly how she was feeling right now, mainly because I had been in the same place as her time and time again, and even though I knew how much she didn't _want_ to talk about it, I also knew from plenty of experience that unless she wanted to find herself spiraling into an uncontrollable downward spiral, she would have to, so I shifted gears and moved into Plan B.

"You know, I've been in your shoes before Sam; trust me, I know exactly how you're feeling right now. So if you ever want to talk to anybody, and Brooke just isn't cutting it for you, I'm always here too."

As expected, she looked up at me with those wide, doey, brown eyes contorted into a look that I wanted to believe looked like consideration towards my statement as she began to process what I'd just told her.

"My mom… well my real mom," I continued when Sam didn't immediately say anything, just letting my mouth take over for me in an effort to find something, anything that might bring some comfort to Sam right now. "Well, she died of breast cancer a little while after I met her."

"I'm sorry," She whispered quietly, shifting her head downward, looking at her feet as she began to nervously tap them gently across the wooden floor out of habit.

"It's okay. And do you know why?"

She finally looked up to face me, shaking her head as she stared with intrigue written across her eyes.

"I did a lot of things to honor her memory, to make sure that everybody knew what a great person that she was. It definitely made things a hell of a lot easier; and I know that you didn't know Logan for very long, but I didn't know Ellie for very long either and still, I had a lot of really great memories to remember her by and that helped me out a lot."

"What kind of things did you do?" She asked, curiosity laced in her voice so that I could tell that she was already wracking her mind for ways that she could remember Logan and all of those times that they had shared together that was better than the one she was currently experiencing right now.

"I finished a benefit CD that she helped me start. Got a bunch of bands to play on it and raised a ton of money for cancer research… that's kind of how I ended up starting Red Bedroom Records, you know."

She stared at me for a moment before looking back to the floor; then back to me, then, just for good measure, back to the floor one more time, but I had already caught the glimmer of confusion in her eyes that made me nervous that I hadn't exactly gotten through to her in the way that I wanted to.

"So… you want me to make a CD?"

I laughed, but instantly felt bad about it when I realized that I couldn't tell whether she was being serious or not.

"Not exactly," I told her, "Just do something that you know that Logan would have loved. Trust me, it will make you feel a lot better, and I know that wherever Logan is right now watching over you, it will make her feel pretty good too."

Her expression relaxed and finally softened against her face. I knew that my words had gotten to her in the best context possible, and, at the very least, I had made her feel at least a little bit better about the prospects of the day to come.

"Who knew the two of us had so much in common, Peyton," Sam laughed to me, "Haley should have given me to you."

I laughed and stood to my feet, grabbing Sam by the hand to pull her up right alongside me.

"Yeah well, don't tell Brooke that I told you this, but I'm a much cooler mom than she is."

"Hey! P. Traitor, stop poisoning my kid's mind with lies why don't you!" The sudden reappearance of Brooke in the living room caught me by surprise, but the fact that she was fully clothed, fully made up, and finally, fully ready to go all in under ten minutes caught me even more by surprise.

"Are you ready?" She spoke again without even giving me enough time to respond to her previous comment.

"Ready as I'll ever be." Sam responded for the both of us, mumbling mainly to herself than to anybody else as she finally found enough strength in her lower body to drag her feet away from me and towards the outstretched arm of her mother.

I watched from behind with a soft smile on my face as Brooke guided Sam out of the front door with her arm around the younger girl's shoulder, simply marveling at how perfectly the two seemed to fit together in each other's arms.

"Are you coming P. Sawyer?" Brooke shouted, turning her head around when she noticed that I hadn't moved an inch and in fact, was standing in the same exact place I had been before she invited us all to leave.

"Yeah, sorry," I shook my head as I stumbled back into reality and followed them out of the front door, ultimately deciding that if the two of them were ready for whatever lay beyond the wooden protection of their door, then so was I.

Breaking out into a short jog to catch up, I stepped out into the bright sunlight, feeling it beat hotly against my face as I turned and pulled the door shut behind me, taking a deep breath as I went.

You see, the main reason that this funeral for a girl I barely even knew was hitting me so hard lay a little bit deeper than the surface.

The last time that I had found myself unwillingly on the lawn of Tree Hill's St. Peter's Cemetery, I had made myself a promise; a promise that I had kept… until today.

'I will never come back here again.'

I remember just repeating those words over and over again the back of my mind as I watched another impossibly young teenager, senselessly lost to a crazy man's bullet get lost into the ground below me.

But then again, now that I thought about it closer, the idea that I would never have to go to that cemetery ever again was nothing more than wishful thinking on my part; after all, I have been sleeping with ghosts all my life, and as I made myself comfortable in Brooke's car and found myself on the way towards the place I swore I'd never step foot in for the rest of my life, I realized just how stupid I had been for ever thinking that any of that could have possibly changed.

* * *

**LUCAS**

I've been to a lot of funerals in my life and I think that it's safe to say that I had already spent more than my faire share of time within the confines of Tree Hill's local graveyard; you know, the one that had been conveniently situated only a few blocks away from my house; so close in fact, that I could walk from my home to the cemetery just about as fast as I could walk from my bedroom to my bathroom…

Sometimes, on the days that I found my mind wandering away from me more so than usual, I got to thinking whether or not the geography of it all really was just some kind of bizarre coincidence, or whether it had all been some sort of sick plot all along; a joke played on me by the town people in the year 18-hundred-and-whatever when St. Peter's Cemetery had actually been built.

The image that I got trapped in my head of all those old men in their tail coats and pantaloons mapping out the blueprints of the town as they laughed and carried along saying, "Oh, well Lucas Scott, yeah, he'll be living here in about a century and you know, when he does, we'll make sure to build this graveyard real close because he's going to lose a lot of relatives" was so obscene and ridiculous that it was almost humorous.

Almost being the key word in that sentence… yeah, real funny.

But, in all fairness, I didn't exactly _know_ Logan McGinnis per-se. I mean, I'd met her briefly only once while I was at the hospital visiting Sam and Brooke, but now that I think about it, I'm not even sure that I'd said a single word to her…

You know that feeling you get, the one when you lose somebody that you only faintly knew and suddenly, you find yourself wishing that you would have said a little bit more to that person?

Yeah, that's exactly the way that I was feeling right now, and I couldn't help but wish I'd said a little bit more to her, because from the way Brooke and raved and ranted about the girl, she was pretty fun, pretty easy to get along with, and now… well the only thing that she was, was well… dead.

But despite what I had and had not said to her, and despite the fact that I had barely known her, the fact of the matter was that there was still a mother out there in this world that had just lost her child; and that is a tragedy that is always worth grieving; no matter who the person is or whether or not you'd ever met them.

But I had gone into this day with the expectation if it being strange.

I'd known that way before I woke up this morning only to find my entire bathroom covered with sand from Peyton's impromptu morning beach trip.

I'd known that way before I began to dress myself to go to a funeral,

And I'd known that before I arrived at Haley and Nathan's house; Sawyer in one arm and Sawyer's bag in the other as Jamie answered with a smile on his face and a Spiderman t-shirt emblazoned across his chest that made me instantly aware that he had absolutely no idea where his parents were about to go.

"Uncle Lucas!" He shouted, wrapping his small arms around the base of my knees, damn-near knocking me to the ground. "Are you going to the dinner party with momma and daddy too?"

I hesitated; Haley and Nathan had lied to Jamie, apparently told him some story I was supposed to play along with about the two of them going out to a private dinner party that I was guessing, they made a point of telling him was for adults only… at 12:00 in the afternoon.

But I guess I couldn't blame them; because even though Jamie had already been acclimated with our cultural concept of the funeral, it still wasn't easy to explain death to a five year old, hell, it was hard to explain it to a fifty-five year old, so until I had all of the answers, I decided to keep the criticism to myself.

"Yeah buddy, I am." I hated lying to the kid, but sometimes I guess the situation just calls for it; and this was as much one of those times as any.

"Why are you going to dinner when it's only lunch time?"

I guess that ridiculous concept had crossed his mind after all. I swear, more times than not, that kid was way too smart for his own good.

"Well buddy, sometimes adults, we like to do things a little bit differently. Mix it up a bit, you know?"

The lie had been a mediocre one at best, but it seemed to be enough to satisfy him because he didn't bring up the subject again.

"Hey Jamie, is your mom and dad home. We've gotta get going soon or we're gonna be really, really late to uh… to dinner."

"Yeah… MOM! DAD! UNCLE LUCAS IS HERE!" He turned his back to the door and bellowed so loudly into the depths of the large house that Sawyer let out a brief wail in her sleep before, to my pleasure; she just rolled back over in my shoulder and fell back into a deep, peaceful oblivion.

It was times like these that I was glad that Sawyer had inherited the Scott-family sleeping genes.

"James Lucas Scott, what did I tell you about yelling in the house?" Haley barged into the foyer with two stern hands on her hips; her appropriately black, knee-length dress accompanied by equally as black leggings making her appearance look even more threatening, effectively scaring Jamie into never yelling in the house ever again.

"Lucas, hi," She breathed, struggling to control Jamie as she simultaneously attempted to throw her straight her back into a pony tail. "Come in, come in," She waved and I stepped forwards into the house, watching as Jamie bounced over towards his father who had just slid into the hallway from the main living room, walking with that exact same flat-footed wattle and hunch in his shoulders as I did when I got nervous; his jaw set in a similar frown, the lighting set over his features so that you could just catch one of those rare moments where you can actually see the strong resemblance between the two of us.

"Hey Luke, how are you doing?" He pulled me into a somber handshake that I accepted with a nod of the head and a narrowing of my eyes to acknowledge the fact that this was not a happy visit.

"Not bad…" I drifted off, the fact that Jamie was standing at his father's heels listening up intently to every word that I said becoming more and more obvious with each word I spoke.

He nodded with an understanding of my intentions before pulling his hand away, freeing it so that he could help me get Sawyer set up to spend the next couple of hours with the babysitter and Jamie; but no matter how hard I tried, and how many times I'd told Nathan and Haley that I had to reposition Sawyer in her crib to ensure she was more comfortable, it eventually got to the point that I could no longer hold the inevitable off any longer. It was time to leave.

I guess that's why, as I sat in my car in silence and drove on forwards with Nathan besides me and Haley behind me, my best suit crinkling with every flex that my foot made against the accelerator, I found myself going obnoxiously below the speed limit to the point that drivers were beeping and flying past my left with their fingers in the air and anger written across their faces.

But it wasn't until after I had turned a five minute drive into a twenty minute drive, and I pulled my car into the familiar parking lot where I should have my own parking space assigned to me by now, I realized that I simply didn't have the power to freeze time, as much as I wished that I did.

I had always pictured my own funeral to be this big, elaborate affair; you know, the bag pipes and thousands upon thousands of flowers, and the guests lined up so far back that the police would be forced to barricade the streets just to prevent a mob…

Yeah, in the deepest of my imaginations that would be nice and all, but I knew that it couldn't be a reality. In fact, the more the depressing thought of what my funeral would _actually_ be like rather than what I wished it would be like filled my head, the more I got to thinking about whether or not anybody would even bother to show up to my funeral at all.

But of course, I had woken up this morning with the expectation of Logan McGinnis to be this big, elaborate affair; you know, the bag pipes and thousands upon thousands of flowers, and guests lined up so far back that the police would be forced to barricade the streets just to prevent a mob… I mean, communities like Tree Hill are usually good at rallying together for two things and two things only; an elaborate celebration, or the death of one of the children, because you know what they say; it takes a town to raise a child, and when one of those children is lost, everybody feels it.

That's why I guess you can say that when I arrived, I arrived only to be unpleasantly surprised.

In fact, I could have counted the amount of people that were there using my fingers.

I guess that being the girl that had grown up surrounded by cancer all of her life, Logan McGinnis didn't really have any time to make friends.

I found her parents easily although they were two people that I had, like Logan, met only briefly once before. To their left, Brooke, Sam, Julian, and Peyton stood in a still straight line; to their right, there were two older people that I didn't recognize but, based on their nearly identical features to Logan's mother, I immediately assumed them to be her grandparents.

And then there was her sister; her little sister, probably around the same age as Jamie, if not younger; a girl barely old enough to understand why something so cruel had taken away her biggest hero so early; she was hugging close to her parents' legs, clutching on the bottom of her father's suit jacket like a security blanket, staring unblinkingly at the small white box in front of her that I knew that she knew housed the big sister that she would never get to truly know.

"Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis, I am so sorry," I spoke with my best, well-practiced, somber funeral voice as I took each of their hands in my own and delivered a firm shake.

"Thank you so much… um, it's Lucas, right?" I felt instantly worse than I already did about my inability to remember either of their names, so I just smiled and nodded, confirming that they were correct before I retreated away from this awkward meeting and lined myself up along my small group of friends off to the side.

I stood straight up, stock still, and staring straight ahead of me with my hands folded gently across my front as Nathan twitched nervously to my left and Brooke shook with suppressed tears to my right.

My ears were open the entire time but still, I barely heard a word as the funeral progressed onward; the tiny priest, an ancient Irish man with a strong accent speaking poetically to the tiny white coffin.

"_In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we comment to Almighty God our sister Logan and we commit her body to the ground."_

Her mother was a sobbing ball of emotion. Every time my eyes would accidentally glance over towards her I couldn't help but wonder what it felt like to carry the burden of being a mother that had lost her child; whether that extra nine months of knowing a human being before anybody else had mattered when it ranked in the scheme of things.

Her husband was supporting her strongly by the shoulders even though I could tell that he had been barely holding on himself. I could see it in his face; the only thing that was getting him through this day was repeating over and over again in his head the knowledge that there always had to be heroes out there in this world like Logan; those people dying way before their time was up just to try to keep all of the others alive.

"_Earth to earth,"_

I always thought that it was stupid to be afraid of dying. It was like saying that you afraid to go to work every morning, like saying that you were afraid to go to the bathroom; the common nature of all three of those things being that they were totally unavoidable; they always happened, whether or not you were ready for them to come.

So like I said, it was stupid to be afraid of dying; but that didn't mean that I was in any sort of a hurry for it to happen either.

"_Ashes to ashes,"_

I wonder if that's the same way that Logan felt; that Sam feels now.

I bet that there comes a time in every person's life when they just decide that they'd had enough and flip the off switch to give up.

I guess that's a pretty difficult concept for some people to grasp; I mean, how can somebody just want to go ahead and die?

But I guess, now that I really think about it, it's probably also a concept that nobody truly understands until it happens to them, and when it finally does happen, well who really cares because you'll basically be dead so what does it matter?

I wonder if those are the last fleeting thoughts that go through your mind right before you die… I wonder if it will all form together or if it will all just fall apart… I hope not, because at the end of the day, I'd like my last thought to be about how great my life was, and even if everything goes straight to hell starting tomorrow, I'll still have twenty three years of beautiful memories to keep me occupied for those final couple of minutes.

"_Dust to dust,"_

Maybe it's because I'm one of those stereotypically pessimistic writers or something, but I went through a pretty intense phase that I guess every teenager goes through at one point in their lives; you know, when they just decide to stick it to their parents who had forced them to church every Sunday and go ahead and claim that they just don't believe in God, that they don't believe in heaven or hell, that they don't in fact believe in anything at all.

Well, my mom wasn't exactly the type that made us get up and go to church every Sunday but still, I found myself going through a pretty intense atheistic phase starting at about the age fourteen or so; that angsty fit of rebellion where I audibly claimed that the only thing that meant anything to life was death; that there was no such thing as heaven or angles or hell and demons…

And then, a few months after I had made this very open declaration, I started to get really into exploring all of the old abandoned buildings that manifested themselves around or town; all of those old ghost stories and supposed haunting intriguing me endlessly as if they were the coolest thing in the world.

On those rare days that I didn't spend my entire day at the River Court, Skillz, Fergie, Junk and I would sneak off into this old building that was located deep in the center of the forest where, as legend went, an old farm hand went crazy one day and killed his entire family and stuck their bodies in the meat freezer before he went into the backyard and hung himself from a tree branch.

The three of us took to searching for ghosts for a long time up at that old house; and then one day, it just kind of hit me.

How the hell could I believe in ghosts if I didn't believe in anything else?

"_The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make her face to shine unto her…"_

I guess that it's fair to say that there's a lot of people still out there who don't believe in an afterlife; they say things about how it's improbable, impossible, and just straight up crazy.

But the way I see things these days, the entire concept of Earth, of human life in general is so absurd and wildly science fiction that if it wasn't embedded so deeply in our everyday lives, if we somehow lived some other type of existence, we would think that the entire concept of Earth was completely and utterly ridiculous.

How did we get here?

How did we become us?

How do I know that when you die you don't just float around in heaven or wherever waiting until your soul can find the next body to possess for the next lifetime?

What the hell do I know that can make me say that as soon as you die that's just it; everything is suddenly over for the rest of eternity…

But really though, the concept of heaven and hell isn't as difficult to process as most people think it is.

Maybe people are skeptical because they realize that it's kind of like when you're going out to a place for the very first time and you find yourself leaving your house an hour early just because you're so worried that it won't be there or that you'll get lost.

People just have a tendency to over analyze things when they have absolutely no idea where they're going to end up… all they can do is hope that that something will be out there waiting for them while they hope even more that even if there is, they'll be able to find it.

"_And the Lord give her peace."_

And just like that, as the priest's voice faded out of my ears and the coffin began to descend into its new home deep within the ground below, an eerie feeling like a cold wind sweeping through my veins passed through my body before it dissipated into nothingness, much like what Logan McGinnis had just become, much like what myself, and the very world around me would one day become too.

"_Amen."_

I know all of the ropes around here, and I know how this story ends, but I also know as well as anybody else around here that even the best plans of both mice and men have a strong potential to go terribly, terribly wrong… and that we better keep our seatbelts fastened, because more times than not, they do.


	25. Take These Broken Wings and Learn to Fly

**Alright guys, so I'm continuing my writing streak so here's the next chapter. Just a quick note, a few people pointed out that I left Julian out of the last chapter and as it turns out, I'm a dumbass who just completely forgot about him (sorry about that) so I may rewrite it a little bit just to throw him in there and reupload the chapter. I guess that's what I get for writing at 3:00 in the morning. So sorry about that again, but I tried to make up for it by being fast about putting the next chapter up :)**

Chapter 25: Take These Broken Wings and Learn to Fly

**Sunday, November 20****th****, 2011**

**HALEY**

One thing that you should definitely know about the drastic changes that partake in your life once you become a wife and a mother is that you suddenly realize that God created Sunday afternoons solely for the purpose of cleaning up your house.

It's something that you kind of just have to get done no matter what you do or how hard you try to avoid it. In fact, ever since the day I married Nathan… hang on, let me rephrase; ever since the day I started dating Nathan, on most days, not even just Sunday, I could be seen hustling and bustling around the house like a wild woman just trying to salvage it from a week's worth of filth that had been created by a messy son and an even messier husband.

But today stood out a little bit differently from the rest; today, I was in even more of a rush than I usually was mainly due to the fact that today, I had Brooke and Sam coming over for lunch… in about a half an hour mind you; a half an hour that I would spend scrubbing down the kitchen that I haven't even started to clean yet.

It's not that I'm particularly picky on how some of my closest friends viewed the state of my house. In fact, to be completely honest, I could care less if Brooke or Sam saw that I still had some dirty, leftover dishes in my sink from breakfast or if they saw the inch of dust that had been steadily building up underneath my coffee table… well, okay, so maybe I cared a little bit but that's not the point.

The point is, if the state of my house gave Sam even an inkling of sickness, and if I became the one whose fault it was if she got sent right back to the hospital trying to fight off an infection, well then I'd just never be able to forgive myself.

So here I was; dousing my entire house down to the very floorboards with buckets full of antiseptic, covering every visible, and even some invisible, surface with Lysol and harshly snapping at anybody who so much as considered walking through my house with even just a speck of mud on the bottom of their shoes which, when you're living with a five year old boy, happens a lot more than you may think.

"James Lucas Scott, what did I tell you about coming in here dirty?" I shouted at him, watching as his shoulders instantly fell and his chin drooped so low that it touched his chest, standing in the middle of the hallway, still doused in mud, but with his tail between his legs so that he instantly made me feel badly about being so harsh with him.

"Now come on, Sam and Aunt Brooke will be here any minute and you need to get yourself cleaned up… ugh, NATHAN!" I shouted across the house, recognizing my need for reinforcements as I finally realized that there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to finish cleaning the rest of this house while simultaneously trying to clean my son as well.

The good news is, Nathan must have noticed the fact that my nerves had somehow crept through into my voice, because not ten seconds after I had shouted to him, I found him running swiftly into the kitchen, eyes wide and observant as he tried to figure out what he'd done wrong before I told him.

"Yeah,"

"Can you please take Jamie up to get a bath?" Nathan nodded, instantly grabbing Jamie by the hand, recognizing that I was in a dangerous state and it was for the best that he got both himself, and Jamie out of my way as quickly as he could.

"And make sure you clean him up really, really well!" I shouted after them as they disappeared out of the kitchen.

I heaved a deep sigh, listening as the sound of their footsteps climbing the wooden stairs gradually faded into the distance, leaving only me alone with my mop as I dunked it into the soapy bucket I'd had at my side all morning and swiped vigorously across the spot on the floor where Jamie had just left a muddy Nike sneaker footprint.

It was nearly an hour later before I had finally convinced myself that my house was the closest thing to the inside of a giant plastic bubble that we were gonna get and I finally allowed myself to relax, sinking down onto the couch and sighing with relief as my sore muscles loosened up against the comfortable cushions and I closed my eyes, all together enjoying my very rare moment of peace when suddenly, just as quickly as it had started, it was gone again when, not five seconds after I'd closed my eyes, the doorbell rung, effectively interrupting me from all previous thoughts of rest that I had once been stupid enough to have.

Crap, was it 1:00 already?

"Coming, I'm coming!" I shot instantly upright from my seat, shouting loud enough so that Brooke and Sam would be able to hear me from outside, rushing down the hallway and ripping the door open to reveal Sam and Brooke standing shoulder to shoulder in the door frame, bundled up from head to toe and bouncing on the balls of their feet in an effort to keep warm against the chilly November air that surrounded them.

"Hey, come on in, don't wait around outside in the cold." I ushered the two into the foyer quickly, the feeling in mind that leaving Sam to stand outside in the 45° weather wasn't going to get her any healthier any time soon.

"Nathan! Jamie! Come down here, we have guests!" I shouted up the stairs, instantly flipping the switch in my brain that turned me into a crazed hostess.

"Jeez, what are you in a rush to get us out of here Haley?" Sam laughed with what I hoped was sarcasm laced in her voice at my desire to be hasty.

I stumbled over my response, stuttering out a feeble "Of course not," as Sam sunk into the spot in the couch that still had my butt print on it from my extremely brief moment of rest, staring graciously up at the television screen which had been automatically tuned into ESPN news and some sort of basketball story… story of my life, right?

"Relax Haley, I was only joking." Sam spared me the need to make a save out of that one, and I guess I was feeling lucky today or something, because at that very second, Jamie kept the rescue rolling, bounding into the room at exactly the right moment with his hair slicked back with dampness from the bath he'd just received, proudly sporting his favorite pair of dinosaur pajamas that he'd decided to put on to show off to his Aunt Brooke and Sam even though it was barely even the afternoon yet.

"Sam!" He bounced up and down through the living with both legs stuck together like some sort of human kangaroo, making his way straight to Sam without so much of a passing glance to anybody else as he planted his feet on the ground, springing into an impressive long jump that launched him right onto the couch next to Sam.

"Jamie, don't be rude," I scolded him, "Get up and say hi to your Aunt Brooke."

I glared at him with a stern discipline prominent in my eyes as he slowly slid himself off of the couch with a little less spring in his step than there had been ten seconds ago and dragged his feet across the room towards Brooke and I where he wrapped her into a polite hug around the waist, mumbling something that I couldn't exactly make out, but figured sounded as a good enough greeting to me, so I decided that at this point, I'd take it.

"Okay you guys, I've got lunch out on the table already and it's starting to get cold so come on," I clapped my hands together for dramatic effect, you know, just like how they always do it in all of those cooking shows I always watch. "Let's eat."

* * *

I would have been completely satisfied simply to end the day and be able to call our little get together descent. But as the afternoon progressed without so much as a hitch, I think it was safe to say that descent would have been an understatement.

The lightness in the air was a nice alternative to the normally thick covering of smog that seemed to be constantly hanging over our heads these days. The mood of the afternoon remained calmly paced over our home grilled barbeque laced with casual conversation, but honestly, what really stuck out to me the most was just how damned good if felt to see our little non-conventional family slowly starting to piece itself back together again.

The thing is Sam and Brooke's lives weren't the only ones that plummeted into a dramatic downward shift upon Sam's diagnosis. I mean, of course it had hit them the hardest, but I think that it was safe to say that we had all shattered underneath the burden of disease, so I also think it's even safer to say that it was a nice change of pace for all of us to feel something in our lives going in the right direction for a change.

My eyes subconsciously glanced up towards Sam as thoughts of the girl entered my mind. She was sitting at the opposite end of the table between Nathan and Brooke, picking slowly at my homemade macaroni salad, laughing at something that Nathan had just told her.

But I still managed to catch it, even through her laugh, that tiny, hidden gleam deep within the center of her eyes; that look that told me that she had something important that she wanted to announce, the look that let me know that today's little lunch date hadn't solely been for the purpose of coming to visit me… as much as I liked to tell myself it was.

Of course, I already knew exactly what the something was… but Sam didn't quite know that.

I had received the phone call from Brooke late Friday night.

I'd literally been about thirty seconds away from shutting of my phone for the night and heading up to bed when the call came in.

The second I'd answered it, I found myself getting trapped in a corner, forced to listen to Brooke as she delivered this painfully long shpeel all about how as Brooke had been driving Sam, Jamie, and Julian home from the mall the other day, they had gotten stuck behind this school bus pulling over to let a bunch of kids off.

Clad with their heavy backpacks and tired faces, Brooke continued to explain that she'd noticed Sam, who had apparently been watching them with a hidden admiration in her face from her position in the passenger's seat as these teenagers, who looked about her age, sulked and pouted, complaining about being forced to spend another long day within the confines of a classroom while poor Sam looked on practically green with the envy over what these kids took for granted every single day of their lives, what Sam could only dream about these days.

And that's about the time that wheels started churning in Brooke's mind, they ideas flooding in like they so often did with her.

You see, Brooke and Sam obviously had a lot on their plates these days. In all honesty, the thought that Sam still had her school work to consider probably hadn't even crossed their minds… it sure as hell hadn't crossed mine.

The thing was, now that Sam was spending a lot less time being stuck sick in a hospital all day, and a lot more time adjusting back to her normal home life routine, which, strangely enough just involved a lot of lazing around on the couch all day doing absolutely nothing, I think that Sam was starting to get overwhelmed with all this extra time on her hands, leaving her with nothing more to do than sit in deep thought all day, emphasizing her sudden insistence that she did not want to be left back an entire school year.

And that is exactly where I came into the picture.

Brooke, in her undying efforts to always keep Sam as happy as possible, alongside a budding fear that the poor girl was starting to get a little depressed being forced to sit at home all day long, had decided to place her phone call to me with the hopes that I would possibly be able to help her work out some sort of special arrangement for Sam so that she would be able to continue to keep up with her schooling throughout this entire ordeal.

And as our phone conversation grew steadily longer, passing the one hour, then the two hour, and finally the three hour mark in what seemed like a blink of an eye, we had managed to work out a suitable plan that involved me placing a visit over to Brooke's house three times a week for a few hours a day where I would basically home school Sam, watching her with admiration as she attempted to conquer both cancer and the 10th grade all at the same time.

And, just because we're us, Brooke and I also figured that this small little celebratory gathering at my place would be the best way to let her know what we were up to. And considering we'd spent the majority of yesterday at a funeral, we had set the date for Sunday, and that my friends, is exactly how we ended up in the exact place that we were all at right now.

"What's on your mind, Sam?" I had been the one to open the door for conversation, mainly because as time passed on slower and slower, I couldn't help but notice that poor Sam was practically turning blue in her efforts to keep her mouth shut and I was honestly afraid that if we made her wait any longer, her head would literally explode with the anticipation.

She looked up at me upon my addressing her and I watched as she took breath, her eyes narrowing with what looked like a little bit of nervousness at placing her request.

"Well, um…Haley… Broke and I have kinda been talking about it for the past few days… and, well we were thinking… well, I was thinking… I… I wanna try to go back to school." She stuttered over her own words so that the simple sentence took her a good minute or two to finally come out.

I raised my eyebrows in an uncontrollable reaction to this new development that had apparently found its way into the plan since the time that Brooke and I had spoken.

On Friday, this whole set up simply involved me going over Brooke's house to tutor Sam… maybe occasionally I would head over to the hospital on those days that Sam was stuck up there and she wasn't too sick to move; but now… actually going back to school? Well that was a horse of a different color if I'd ever seen one.

"Sam, that's great." I congratulated Sam despite the surprise, but then I caught a glimpse of Brooke's face, her expression telling me that apparently, Sam's desire to physically go back to attending school came as much a shock to her as it had for me indicating that Sam had waited until the very last possible second to spring this one on her.

I could see it in Brooke's eyes. She was trying her hardest to look happy for Sam, but I could tell by the way she was struggling to form a smile on her face that she was too busy biting her tongue so hard that it was practically bleeding.

"Uh… that is great, isn't it?" I directed the question towards Brooke, retracting my previous approval towards Sam's announcement, making sure to add a little bit more hesitancy to my voice this time around.

"Brooke's a little bit nervous about the prospect of letting me out of her sight for more than two minutes."

Sam spoke with an obvious hint of annoyance gleaming in her words, and I watched as the two of them began to stare each other down for a moment before their heads slowly turned towards me with the intention of using me as their own personal mediator between the two of them.

Here's the thing; I know that I'm everybody's go-to-guy for this type of thing but that's only because I'm really good at making myself look strong when the weight of the world isn't resting on my shoulders. But that all changes once it actually is… now what the hell am I supposed to do?

I couldn't side with Sam; my loyalty to Brooke was way too important to do that, and besides, I knew that you never, ever, under any circumstances challenge a mother's decision, but then again, how was I supposed to sit here and deny a sick child something that she wanted more than anything.

I glanced casually over towards Nathan desperate for some help here but when all he did in response was widen his eyes slightly and give the smallest shake of his head, I knew that he was going to be absolutely no help here.

As you can see, I have kind of found myself in a conundrum.

"I'm thinking about it." Brooke corrected Sam's previous statement, but I couldn't help but think that by the look on Brooke's face, her decision had already been made, and it wasn't one that Sam was gonna want to hear.

"Listen Sam," I started, "Brooke and I were talking the other day about maybe tutoring you on the days that you felt up to it…"

"But I want to try actually going back to school, Haley." She cut me off before I even had the chance to finish my sentence, and I could hear it in her voice; she was getting defensive and determined in her endeavor to get exactly what it was that she wanted.

"I think it's a good idea Sam, really I do. I think that it will do you well to get out of the house for a while and to get your mind on something other than being sick, but…" I automatically looked towards Brooke. Sam knew as well as I did that the decision didn't lie with me. I guess she just thought that if she could manage to convince me, it would automatically convince Brooke too… Sam was a lot smarter than most people ever gave her credit for.

"Yeah, did you hear that, Brooke? It will do me good to get out of the house for a while and to get my mind on something other than being sick." She repeated my argument with nearly a word-to-word accuracy, however, she'd cut out the most important part. I guess she had conveniently forgotten to put the 'but' I had ended my sentence with into her argument.

"But," I emphasized again just to make sure Sam heard me this time, "Sam, you're still under some pretty strict guidelines about what you can and can't do and I mean, you and Brooke know your limits more than I do so…"

All eyes turned to Brooke instantly. We sat with bated breath, staring up at her waiting as if we were watching a world championship basketball game with ten seconds left in the final quarter and a tie score…

I watched as what looked like genuine consideration passed across her features for a moment and she scrunched up her face and furrowed her eyebrows in thought.

"I don't know, Sam…" She drifted off, shaking her head slightly with skepticism.

"Haley will watch me!" Sam practically shouted, pushing her chair harshly away from the table so that the wood scraped painfully against the wood with a noise that made me cringe, but it didn't look like Sam had even noticed; she was too busy having a staring contest with Brooke, the idea in her mind that maybe, if she locked those large doe-eyes with Brooke a little bit longer, it would force her to ultimately concede and give Sam what she wanted.

Meanwhile, there was me, not totally sure that I wanted to pile on the weight that the task of watching over Sam for the day required, but I knew how much it meant to the girl, so I looked over towards Brooke, put a smile on my face that looked more like a grimace, and nodded.

"Brooke, you know how much I care about Sam. I would watch her like a hawk. Promise,"

There was an extra moment or two in which Brooke sat silent and in deep thought, adding up the benefits that sending Sam back to school would bring and trying to figure out whether or not they outweighed the potential severity of the consequences.

"We're setting something up with the school nurse." She said slowly after another very tense moment.

"Of course," Sam nodded in agreement, her face slowly beaming as the realization that she'd won this argument slowly sank in.

"And if you so-much as sneeze, you're coming home immediately."

"Even if I just feel like I'm going to sneeze." She promised Brooke, but I had the strangest thought that that wasn't exactly true; Sam was notorious for trying to cover up any ounce of weakness she was feeling and holding it off until the very last possible second, so I spoke up to make sure she knew that that wasn't going to work this time around.

"And I will be talking to every single one of your teachers just to make sure that they know that." I told her seriously. "You're not even going to be able to go to the bathroom by yourself do you hear me, Sam?"

"Jesus, you can come in the stall with me if you want." She was persuaded easily; now I was just trying to figure out whether that was a good sign or a bad one.

I watched Brooke's eyes carefully. She turned her head slowly over towards me, lingering for only a second before focusing back on Sam, and then back to me before finally, just for good measure she turned back to Sam again.

This pattern literally continued on for a solid two minutes but finally, maybe after Brooke's neck muscles started getting too tired to continue their rotations, she spoke up again.

"Fine," She stated firmly, trying to make it so her voice sounded more confident than I knew she felt; but I knew that the instant smile that had just broken out across Sam's face was all the confirmation that either of us needed to know that Brooke had made the right decision.

Brooke tried her hardest to keep that stern look on her face just to make sure that Sam knew just how serious she had been about everything she had said to her beforehand, but I noticed that she couldn't help but show the smallest of grins as Sam literally leapt out of her seat, jumping up onto the floor, literally pumping her fists in triumph.

"Wow, I never thought that I would ever be this excited to back to Tree Hill High."

"Yeah well, listen," Brooke stopped her before she got so excited that she made herself sick before she even had the opportunity to go back. "I think that maybe, when you're feeling up to it between your chemo rounds you can go to school for the day, or for a half day, or whatever, and then maybe when you are in the hospital or during your treatments, Haley can come to tutor you at home…"

Brooke halted Sam's celebrations, going back to serious mode as she laid the plan out on the table, trying to piece all of the confusion together before turning to me in search for a confirmation that throwing me into this mix would be alright.

I gave a short nod, one that Brooke returned to me appreciatively while meanwhile, Sam, who I'm not sure heard a word Brooke had just said, and who definitely wasn't even taking the time to process the lay out Brooke had just planned for her, simply agreed, shouting her approval to everybody around her.

"Sounds awesome,"

"And," Brooke added, holding a stern finger in the air so that it dangled right in front of Sam's face, "You are not taking that bus to school tomorrow. It's a freaking disease waiting to happen."

"I'll drive her." I spoke up immediately because I noticed the way that Sam scrunched up her face and opened her mouth in response to Brooke's statement, looking as if she was about to dish out the most sarcastic reply humanly possible so that I knew that I would have to intercept her comment before she had the opportunity to say something stupid that might cause Brooke to change her mind.

"Thanks Haley," Sam told me, throwing her arms so hard around my neck that she nearly knocked me straight off of my chair and onto the floor flat on my ass.

For a sick kid, Sam sure as hell still had a lot of strength left in her.

"Of course," I replied to her, quickly regaining my bearings, returning the hug lovingly as I patted Sam's narrow back gently.

I had a lot of faith in Sam, really I did, and the majority of my brain was telling me that I had made the right decision, helping me to believe that everything would work out tomorrow without so much as a hitch, but as I looked over Sam's shoulder, locking eyes with the less than confident ones Brooke as she stared at the two of us with concern running rampant in her face like wild fire, I couldn't help but listen to that minority portion of my mind that was screaming at me, telling me that I had just made one of the biggest mistakes that I had ever made in my entire life.

* * *

**SAM**

I'm pretty sure that it's been a while since I had allowed myself to get this excited. I'm pretty sure that it's been a while since I really had anything to be excited about.

I mean, let's face it, the last bit of excitement that I had in my life ended up with me being diagnosed with leukemia, but as we all know, that is a different type of excitement.

You see, to me, there were two types of excitements one could have in their life; the one that you embraced wide with open arms, and the one that you didn't.

"You look unusually happy tonight." My head snapped up at the sound of Brooke's voice as it lifted me suddenly from the daze that I had allowed myself to fall into.

"Huh?" I asked stupidly with my mouth hanging slightly open to give away the fact that I had just been daydreaming and seemed to have missed everything that Brooke had just said to me.

"I was just saying that you look happy tonight… it's nice."

I rolled my eyes because I never knew how else I was supposed to deal with compliments when Brooke delivered them to me and looked back down at my feet as I kicked them in midair as they dangled off of the side of the counter top that I was currently perched on t op of watching as Brooke prepared a bagged lunch for me that I was supposed to eat in the fortress of the school nurse's office tomorrow.

Yeah, that didn't excite me too much either, but considering that I was counting my blessings just by getting Brooke to allow me to go to school at all, I figured I would just leave this one be.

"I'm just glad I get to go back to school tomorrow is all." I told her.

"Wow, I never thought I would ever hear those words come out of your mouth." She laughed to herself as she slid an extra large steak knife through the center of the sandwich she'd been making for me, cutting it into perfect halves.

She laid the peanut butter and jelly sandwich carefully across a plastic-sealed Ziplock; I guess that somewhere in her thought process she had decided that she would make me the most normal sandwich that she could possibly think of, just so that she could balance it out against the completely abnormal bag full of pills that lay next to it that I would be swallowing as an after-lunch snack.

"God, I haven't done this in forever." Brooke ranted as she disappeared into the dining room for a moment only to come back out dragging one of the chairs from the dining room table along with her, positioning it directly below the cabinet above the sink before climbing carefully on top.

"I put all of the lunch bags up on top of here just to get them out of the way."

I watched with vague interest as she stood up on her tippy-toes and extended both of her arms as far above her head as she could reach, staring for only a moment before losing interest, looking away from her attempts, instead, choosing to focus my attention on a fly that had been buzzing around the window on the opposite wall of the kitchen, but I swear, I had only turned my head away for a split second, but I blinked, and suddenly, I heard it –

WHAM!

The crash was so loud that it shook the house, but the loud bang was immediately followed by an even louder scream of pain that had definitely originated from Brooke's mouth, causing me to instantly snap my neck so quickly back to where Brooke had just been standing that my neck cracked.

I blinked a couple of times at the scene that was currently in front of my very own eyes, just to make sure that this was real and I hadn't dozed off on top of the counter or anything to find myself having a very bizarre dream…

But no, there it was, real as it possibly could be; Brooke was laying across the floor, rolling back and forth on her back and clutching her shoulder into a vice grip as she scrunched up her face and gritted her teeth in pain, the chair that she had been standing on not ten seconds ago toppled over sideways at her feet.

For a moment I didn't do anything; the thing was, I still wasn't sure how real this was yet considering these days, it was difficult for me to distinguish between what was real and what was my imagination playing tricks on me, but after a couple of seconds that felt by hours passed and still, nothing changed, I realized that it had to be true, there was no other explanation… Brooke had just fallen off of the freaking chair.

"Shit Brooke, are you okay?" I hopped down off of the counter landing gracefully on both feet and rushing the last couple of steps towards her, squatting down to her side and watching as she attempted to roll over and respond to my inquiry only to grind her teeth harder and moan in pain even louder.

"Crap, my shoulder. I think I messed up my shoulder." She cried out after taking a couple steady, deep breaths to in an attempt to calm herself down.

I let my mouth drop open and my eyes widen. What the hell was it exactly that I was supposed to do in this situation?

"Should I call 911?" I asked her stupidly. I've never called 911 before… well, actually there was this one time when I was six years old at a birthday party. Some kid dared me to prank dial them as a joke… well, obviously I had done it, and it had ultimately lead to a false five alarm fire call and my permanent ban from all Chuck-E-Cheese establishments but that one didn't count.

"No, I don't want to make a big deal out of this." Brooke was a stubborn one alright, but I was pretty sure that making a big deal out of this was the least of her worries at the moment. Besides, considering how familiar I was with hospitals these days, I think I was more than qualified to make the decision of what warranted a visit to one, and I was pretty sure that this would definitely make the cut.

"Should I drive you to the hospital then?" I insisted, my voice laced with seriousness even though I knew, and I knew that Brooke knew, that I had never once driven a car before in my entire life.

But let's be completely honest, if you were the cop that pulled us over; an underage driver with cancer and an injured fashion superstar in the passenger's seat, would you do anything about it?

Actually, now that I thought about it, we'd probably get locked away in a freaking mental ward before we even had the opportunity to get arrested; so maybe that suggestion was out of the question.

"Samantha Walker you are not driving my car so don't even think about it."

Jeez, leave it up to Brooke to yell at me even while she was twitching on the kitchen floor in pain with a broken arm… I knew I would never be able to catch a break with her.

"Should I call Julian?" I continued to throw suggestions out of my hat, knowing that we couldn't just sit in the kitchen for the rest of our lives waiting for her to take herself to the hospital, and besides, I figured that would be the next best thing. I was sure that Julian, who was currently sitting in a Starbucks somewhere trying to get at least some work for that movie that I'd damned near forgotten he was working on done, would just love to receive this phone call:

'Uh yeah hi Julian, well, your retarded girlfriend was just trying to stand up on the wobbliest chair in the entire house and fell her ass off and hurt herself so now I don't know what to do so can you come home?'

That sounded good, right?

"Ugh… yes!" Brooke let out another loud moan of pain as she practically yelled at me. But I didn't take it personally.

I scrambled to get my hand into my jeans pocket, my brain, for some reason or another, choosing now to feel like not working properly. But I eventually managed to achieve my task, my fingers finding, and grasping around my cell phone that was buried deep within the confines of my jeans.

I looked down, watching as Brooke struggled to get herself back into an upright position as I dialed the familiar number into my phone, listening impatiently to the incessant ringing on the other line.

"Come on, Julian, come on, answer," I mumbled to myself as heard nothing more than the phone ringing right back into my very own ear once… twice… three times…

"Hello?"

"Julian, hey," I breathed out with relief, trying to sound as casual as humanly possible in my approach but obviously failing miserably judging by the quick shuffle I heard on the other side of the line followed immediately by Julian asking me –

"Sam, are you alright?"

Wow, I really need to work on that whole sounding inconspicuous thing.

"Yeah, yeah, um… funny story actually." I watched Brooke look up at me and give me a glare at my poor word choice. Okay, so maybe it really wasn't that funny… I guess Brooke agreed.

"Brooke, uh… she kind of um… fell." I spoke, choosing my words carefully as I did so.

"Fell? Like fell how?"

"Like old lady fell down the stairs and can't get back up fell." It was the only way I could choose to describe Brooke's unexpected tumble, but, as she had gone right back to glaring up at me, I guess she was dissatisfied with my account of the story.

"But really Julian, I think she really hurt her shoulder and she won't let me drive her car to take her to the ER or call 911, so…" I drifted off, allowing him to piece the rest of it together, which he did easily.

"Okay, I'll be right there." He assured me, "Make sure she doesn't move it and make her put some ice on it like, right now." Did Julian ever tell you about the time he made it all the way up to Eagle Scout in high school? Well I'll tell you now, I have definitely made fun of him for it a time or two but I was eating my own words now.

I hung up with Julian, pocketing my phone and looking back over towards Brooke who had somehow managed to get herself back onto her feet on her own, clutching onto the counter with her good arm for support while holding the injured one close to her chest in an effort to keep it as still as possible.

"Julian's on his way." I assured Brooke, walking over to her and picking the offending chair up from off of the ground, moving it out of the way before Brooke tripped over it or something and broke her other freaking arm.

"Do you think it's broken?" I hesitated to ask, afraid of what the answer would do to poor Brooke who shook her head and subconsciously held her arm closer to her body.

"I don't know," She answered through her clenched teeth.

"Here, let me see it at least." I reached an arm out, barely grazing her injured appendage with the tips of my fingers but still, she grunted with the sudden pain, tensing her muscles and involuntarily ripping her body from my painful touch.

"Sorry," I mumbled, ultimately deciding that it would be best for me to keep my hands to myself as I stood on the balls of my feet to get a better look of her shoulder which looked, well… gross.

Through the halter top that she had been wearing, I could see that her entire upper arm was already swollen to the point that it vaguely resembled the shoulder size of an NFL linebacker. A dark black and blue that was so intense it reminded me of the nice one I had had underneath my eye at the time of my diagnosis stood out starkly against her pale skin, and a disfiguring lump sat in the place that had once held a perfectly functional shoulder less than five minutes ago.

"How does it look?" She asked as I swallowed the lump of bile that was rising in my throat as a result of my squeamish disgust.

"Uh… it looks great." I made the pitiful lie right through my teeth.

"You know, you could have made that at least a little more convincing, Sam."

"Yeah well, at least I tried." I told her, collecting one of the extra Ziplock bags that remained out on the counter alongside my half finished lunch, walking to the freezer and filling it with ice, extending my very own makeshift ice pack towards Brooke so that she could put it on her arm herself so she wouldn't be able to blame me when the pressure against her battle wound made her head explode with pain.

"You don't have any peas." I told her, sitting down on a counter stool as Brooke let a small squeak escape her mouth as she rest the ice pack against her shoulder.

"What?" She managed, looking back up at me with tears of pain stinging at the corners of her eyes.

"You don't have any frozen peas." I repeated, and when she continued to look up at me like I had three heads, wondering why the hell I would ever want to eat peas at a time like this, I explained.

"When I was younger I hurt my knee this one time playing roller hockey and this lady that I was living with told me that frozen peas were the best to put on when you're hurt because they like, mold to your body or something… Maybe we can pick some up on the way to the hospital."

To my surprise, Brooke actually choked out a strangled laugh at my comment, even though I'm not really sure what was so funny about it.

"What do you mean _we_?" She asked looking up at me with a suspicious glint in her eyes. I matched her stare with confusion as I shrugged my shoulders because I honestly had no idea what she was trying to tell me.

"Sam, there is no way in hell that I'm letting you come to the ER with me."

"What?" My objection came out of my mouth as a yell before I had time to stop it, the absolute ludicrous of her statement infuriating me. As if she honestly thought that I wasn't going to help take care of her when she needed me most, especially when she'd spent the past month waiting on me hand and foot.

"Do you have any idea what you can catch in an emergency room?" There was a slight laugh hidden in her voice as she spoke but it wasn't one of those; 'hey, this is really funny' type of laughs, no, it was more along the lines of a; 'I can't believe you ever even thought I would let you do that, you're an idiot' kind of laugh.

"Brooke, there's no way in hell that I'm just gonna sit here and wait for a freaking phone call to see how you're doing. I'm coming with you!" I'm not sure when it was exactly that the tables got turned around and I became the concerned parent and Brooke the sick child in this situation but let me tell you, I was actually kind of liking this role reversal for a change… even though I'm pretty sure Brooke was not.

I watched Brooke as she opened her mouth, closed it again, and then opened it one more time, looking like she was about to say something, but no words ever came out of her mouth.

Instead, before she had the opportunity to find her words again, the door burst suddenly open, and I heard somebody, who was inevitably Julian, barge through the house, running towards us.

"Brooke! Sam!" His voice rang throughout the house with an unusually high pitch as he searched for us, not really sure what he would find behind the veil.

"Julian, we're in the kitchen!" Brooke responded as the two of us sat in a tense silence, listening to the sounds of Julian's slamming footsteps followed by a skid that told us he was sliding across the hallway's wooden floors as he came into view inside of the kitchen where he stopped, stared dramatically between me and Brooke for a few seconds, opened his mouth wide, and finally spluttered out -

"Are you okay?"

You would think that after all this time the three of us would be better at dealing with unexpected catastrophe. Well my friends, you have thought wrong, because in the past ten minutes or so, all three of had had the experience of feeling like a chicken with its head cut off, and now, it was Julian's turn to react.

He finally gathered up the courage to walk up to Brooke, approaching her with caution as if she was some kind of breakable china doll, reaching out to delicately graze his fingers across her collar bone without getting close enough to the swollen, puffy appendage to put her in any more pain than what she was already in.

"Yeah," Brooke tried to assure him but the lie was clearly visible underneath the pain in her voice. "Stupid chair, I've been meaning to tighten that back leg ever since the summer. It finally gave out." She gave her briefest account of the story as Julian continued to observe her injury with the attentiveness of a trained professional.

"Okay, come on; let's get you to the hospital." Julian said, delicately wrapping her uninjured shoulder around the back of his neck and placing a hand around her waist to guide her towards the door.

"Come on, Sam," He shouted after me, my face brightening with Julian's invite in hopes that Brooke had somehow forgotten the brief argument we'd had only a minute ago, but my hopes were dashed when Brooke stopped Julian in his tracks.

"Julian, we can't bring Sam to the ER."

"Brooke, we can't leave Sam here by herself, and we don't have time to sort out where she can and can't stay; we need to get you to the hospital." Julian argued, providing a rational, well-thought argument that I certainly never could have come up with for myself. "Listen, they'll know how to take care of Sam in the ER; they've taken good care of her before, they'll be able to do it again."

Julian finished his mini-speech, leaving Broke to look between me, him, and the front door, confused between her unknowing about what horrible things may happen to me in an emergency room and her desperate desire to get to the hospital as fast as possible to heal her ailing shoulder.

But Brooke knew that Julian had a good point; there really was no other option.

"Fine," Brooke finally conceded, ultimately deciding that the option involving getting some pain killers into her system as fast as possible definitely outweighed the slight possibility of me contracting some sort of unheard of, deadly nosocomial infection.

"But we have to let them know that you're just off chemo and you can't be sitting in the triage unit with… with those… _dirty_ people."

I raised an eyebrow with surprise at her unique word choice and let out a small laugh that I managed to disguise as a cough as Julian and I lead Brooke out of the front door and towards the car.

"No problem Brooke," I assured her, pulling the front door shut behind me. "I'll be sure to make it a point to sit with the people that actually bathe."

* * *

I've never been to an Emergency Room before… well, okay, so we all knew that was I lie, I had actually been to an Emergency Room before, but considering the fact that I'd spent 99% of my last visit to the ER unconscious, I didn't count that one.

I watched from the safety of the back seat as Julian drove like a mad-man, but he was on autopilot; the route to Tree Hill Memorial so familiar to him that he could probably do it with his eyes closed.

I spent the majority of the brief car ride blocking out everything around me as I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that my first visit back to the place that had made my life a living hell these past few weeks wasn't that big of a deal, that it wouldn't affect me at all, that the second I stepped back into that god-forsaken building that I hadn't seen in nearly a week, I wouldn't be launched back into all of the memories of what had happened to me between those walls…

Of course, as the outline of the tall, gray building emerged from the hidden cover of the trees and Julian's car sped closer and closer towards the destination, I found it much harder to believe what my mind was telling me; that little flutter that was beginning to build up in the pit of my stomach letting me know that everything I'd spent the entire car ride telling myself was just complete bull shit all along.

I took a deep breath and just kept repeating to myself that at least this wasn't for me as the three of us crossed the double automatic doors that guided us through to the entrance way of the Emergency Room, slowly making our way up to the receptionist desk as I subconsciously pulled the brim of the hat I had been wearing down closer past my brow line, looking down at my feet as the barely out of college girl who had previously been picking at her fingernails behind the receptionist desk sighed, and spoke in an airy, monotone voice without even looking up.

"What can I help you with?" She asked before finally looking up, her eyes widening as they locked with my own in a reaction that I've so gotten used to these days before she waved down a male nurse walking past to come help me immediately, apparently not even noticing the giant deformity of Brooke's arm as a small group gathered around me.

"What happened?" The nurse asked me, getting as far as attempting to lift me up and onto a gurney that I swear just instantly freaking apparated out of mid-air; but that's where I put my foot down. There was no way in hell that I was getting back into one of those things before my time was up, so I put up my arms, forced him to back the hell off, and finally was given enough air to speak up.

"It's not me, it's her," I pointed my index finger over towards Brooke who had been standing feebly in the corner looking as if she was torn between being impressed with how quickly the staff had gotten to me and pissed that they had completely bypassed her in the process.

"Oh," He stepped back, hunching his shoulders high up to his face in an attempt to cover up the fact that his ears were glowing red with embarrassment. "What happened?"

He turned the question onto Brooke, who presented her arm to him in exasperation and sighed.

"I fell off a chair."

"Okay," He said, motioning with his hand for us to advance closer towards him. "Follow me,"

He lead us passed a straight line of curtained off cubicles and closed off trauma rooms before stopping us in front of a door labeled 'Orthopedics', leading us forward into the private room.

"Take a seat," The nurse instructed Brooke, extending his arm over towards the bed in the corner that I was grateful wasn't for me for a change.

Instead, I made myself comfortable over in the squashy arm chair in the corner, watching as Brooke sat down on the edge of the bed, legs dangling and eyes twitching in nervous anticipation as she watched the nurse snap a set of gloves on his hands and Julian take his ready position at her side just in case she needed a hand to hold… or squeeze to death.

"Okay," He started, bending low at the waist and putting his face right into Brooke's arm, reaching out to test its durability with one arm on her forearm and the other on the crook between her neck and her good shoulder so that from the angle that I was sitting at, it looked like he was trying to place some sort of awkward move on her.

Of course, he wasn't; not unless his pickup line of choice was, "So it looks like you probably dislocated your shoulder."

He spoke with a matter-of-fact tone in his voice as he straightened himself up and looked down at her with his hands on his hips and a serious look on his face.

"What does that mean?" Brooke asked him nervously, the quaver in her voice making it sound more like the man had just diagnosed her with some incurable disease rather than a simple dislocated shoulder.

"Well, I'm going to call an orthopedist in here to confirm, but he'll probably want to do an x-ray, maybe an MRI just to make sure none of the tendons have been damaged, and then he'll set your shoulder back into place, and you'll be able to go home."

Brooke wasn't looking to excited about anything she had just been told, but the nurse seemed to be oblivious to her reservations, because he pulled the gloves off of his hand, turned to Brooke, and said without so much as a second glance, "Okay, so I'm going to go get you something for the pain and then call in the orthopedist. He should be here soon."

He dismissed himself politely, leaving Brooke, Julian, and I to ourselves as our brains scrambled to wrap themselves around Brooke's rapid diagnosis and treatment.

"You see Brooke," I caught her attention, lounging backwards into my chair, "And you didn't want to bring me here, because I'm pretty sure that because of me, you just got a room and a diagnosis all in under fifteen minutes."

I only gloated because it was true; the fact that the ER staff had decided to completely skip over the normal triaging process and send Brooke straight into the back was strictly based on the fact that people naturally took pity on kids with cancer, and let's face it, we were good at weaseling our way into special treatment.

"What can I say, Sam, thanks for taking one for the team." She said, sighing heavily in exasperation towards the news she'd just been delivered, throwing herself carefully backwards against her bed as we began the long wait for this unexpected visit to be over.

* * *

I must say, despite my previous reservations about coming here, I have found that I liked hospital visits from the visiting side of the spectrum a lot more than from the patient's side of it all.

It was a nice change of pace, being able to sit back and relax as I got to watch Brooke scream while a team of nurses placed an IV of morphine into the back of her hand, and then watch Brooke scream and have to get held down by three giant male nurses and an orderly as she thrashed and writhed against the orthopedist setting her shoulder back into place, and finally, watching Brooke scream as Julian leaned in to comfort her, only to hit her arm and almost freaking knocking it right out of place all over again.

And as much as it sucked to watch Brooke in so much pain, I was just too glad to find that it wasn't me for a change to be too concerned for her.

I stretched and yawned. I was curled up in the same seat that I had been in for the past three hours or so, flipping through the same magazine that I'd had since I'd gotten here as I waited for Brooke to return from getting an x-ray of her arm while Julian sat silently in the corner filling out the paper work that we had conveniently bypassed at the time of our entrance.

It was a ridiculously old magazine, one that I'd read weeks ago, right after I'd found myself trapped in the hospital with nothing better to do other than read gossip magazines cover to cover. Of course, there was another reason why it was so intriguing, and I was reminded of that reason every time I found myself flipping back onto page 77 where I would look down only to see a bright, shining picture of my ugly mug staring right back at me.

It was awkward really; kind of like looking in a mirror, but with the knowledge that millions of other people were looking at this mirror at you too. In fact, now that I thought about it that way, it was actually kind of creepy knowing that somebody had just randomly taken a picture of me and Brooke out on the streets without me even realizing it and went ahead and stuck it in a magazine…

My eyes scanned the article for what must have been the thirtieth time that night. It had come out only a few days after my admittance into the Tree Hill Oncology unit, back when everybody was still busy speculating on what the hell was wrong with me; their predictions ranging from drug addiction, to schizophrenia… one person even went as far as to assume that I was an AIDS patient that Brooke had adopted for publicity…

I guess this was what it was like to be famous or something. Well, it's the damn hell closest that I'm ever gonna get to it, so I might as well embrace it, right?

My ears perked up with attention as the familiar sound of a wheelchair rolling down the hallway infiltrated my senses, and I looked up towards the door before Julian even had an idea as to what the hell was going on as Brooke was wheeled back into the room.

Poor Brooke; her left arm was bandaged up, wrapped within the confines of its new home; a dark blue sling. Her face was looking slightly dreamy from the copious amounts of morphine that her now-absent IV had been delivering to her in steady amounts all night, and she was now busy trying to climb out of her wheelchair before the orderly pushing her could even stop moving.

I looked up at Julian and his eyes matched mine, saying the exact same thing that I was thinking. The two of us were about to be in for a long night.

"Okay, Ms. Davis, you're all set to go." Her orthopedist, whose name I hadn't even managed to catch followed her into the room, scribbling a fast prescription down on his pad, making the move to hand it to Brooke before he caught a second glance at her dazed eyes and dopey grin, leading him to retract his arm, instead, leaving the responsibility of the prescription to Julian.

"I wrote her a prescription for Percocet that should last her for the next two weeks. I would like for her to remain in the sling for at least the entire two weeks, but I would prefer if she kept it on for three. Once she does take the sling off, just make sure she makes an appointment with her regular physician just to be sure that her shoulder has healed alright."

I listened to the instructions, nodding my head up and down alongside Julian, determined to take in every last detail so that I would be able to help him take care of her before I turned back to Brooke, watching as she struggled against falling asleep in her wheelchair as the drugs she'd been on throughout the course of her hospital visit began to hit her hard.

I couldn't help but laugh silently to myself. I knew that feeling she was going through alright, but damn, Brooke sure was a lightweight.

It took a couple more minutes, but finally, Julian handed in all of his signed and filled out paperwork, handing the forms into the doctor in exchange for Brooke, allowing us to finally be able to make our way back out into the parking lot, where we struggled to wrestle Brooke back into the backseat of the SUV without causing any further damage.

Brooke spent the majority of the car ride home sprawled across the entire backseat bench with me underneath her legs, jabbering about how much she enjoyed being chauffeured around town by Julian as she tested out the weight of her arm within her brand-new sling.

"Sam, how am I supposed to take care of you with only one arm?" She kept asking me over and over again, her voice slurred with the residual morphine still floating through her veins as she struggled to remain awake.

"It'll be okay Brooke." I kept assuring her every time she asked, holding onto the secret knowledge that I knew that the time has come for me to return all of the infinite favors, for me to stop my life and take care of her just as she had done for me, for me to let her know that whenever she couldn't carry me herself, it would indeed be okay, because I would be fine simply flying.

Julian and I helped her back into the house, leading her straight into her bedroom with only minimal difficulty, but by the time we lowered her carefully into her bed and pulled the sheets high above her shoulders, strategically avoiding her injured arm, she was already beyond passed out.

"Come on, you," Julian directed me to follow him out of Brooke's room after we were both absolutely positive that she would be comfortable enough.

I followed him into the doorway but couldn't help but pause briefly as my eyes lingered back towards Brooke, worry laced in my expression as I wondered if she would be alright sleeping by herself tonight.

I have to say, I wasn't particularly fond of this feeling that was slowly creeping up my spine. I was starting to feel bad; I guess this must be what I put Brooke through all the time.

"She'll be okay, Sam. Come on, let her sleep." Julian guided me out of the room and back into the hallway where I automatically turned for my bedroom as Julian went for the linen closet, reaching in to pull out some blankets and pillows.

"You're not sleeping with Brooke tonight?" I asked him suspiciously, stopping him in his tracks as he headed towards the living room with his load piled up in his arms.

"Nah, I'm just gonna crash on the futon tonight. I don't want to hit Brooke's arm or anything while I'm asleep." I guess that logic made sense. Julian was notorious for moving around a lot in his sleep. The hole in the drywall next to Brooke's bed could vouch for that one.

I nodded before turning my back with the intentions of heading back to my bedroom, but I was stopped suddenly as my eyes accidentally glanced across the hall into the kitchen where my lunch still lay forgotten across the marble counter top.

A sudden pang of guilt began to flood through my veins as the realization that it was kind of my fault that Brooke had gotten hurt began to hit me hard.

I mean, she didn't even want me going back to school tomorrow. If I hadn't pushed her into letting me go, she never would have had to make that lunch for me, she never would have fallen over, she never would have been hopped up on morphine with her shoulder in a splint and her arm recovering from just being torn apart.

"Hey, don't beat yourself up over this." I whipped my head around; Julian had suddenly reappeared next to me, apparently taking notice of the guilty look on my face.

"Brooke's gonna be just fine. The two of you are both built like tanks, it's gonna take a lot more than that to knock down Brooke Davis."

He pulled me close into his shoulder, trying to serve the dual purpose of providing me with some comfort while simultaneously forcing me away from the scene of the crime.

"Now come on," He told me, tugging on the back of my neck to pull me along with him, dropping me off in front of my bedroom door. "You need to get some sleep, you've got a busy day tomorrow."

I nodded in agreement with Julian's words, saying my goodnights to him before finally retreating into the cover of my bedroom, throwing myself harshly down onto my bed without even bothering to take off my shoes.

I sighed heavily as I stared up at the ceiling for a moment, the complex array of emotions I was currently feeling overwhelming my brain into exhaustion.

But Julian was right; I did have a busy day tomorrow. So with that being said, I finally allowed my eyes to close, desperately trying not to think about all of the what-if's that tomorrow had in store for me but unable to stop them as they danced across my very eyes on their own accord, following me everywhere that I went, straight to my very dreams as I fell into a fitful sleep.


	26. I Was the Kid Against the World

**Alright, sorry this one took a little longer than the last couple but its a doozy, it took me a while to write. Hope you enjoy!**

Chapter 26: I Was the Kid Against the World

**Monday, November 21****st****, 2011**

**SAM**

Jesus, what the hell had I been thinking convincing Brooke that it would be a good idea for me to go to school today? What the hell had I been thinking convincing myself that it would be a good idea for me to go to school today?

"Sam! Breakfast!" The distantly familiar call of Brooke's voice shouting through the halls to wake me up filled my ears so that for a second I had almost been able to convince myself that I had just woken up from some really strange, really long dream and found myself right back in my room where I belonged simply getting ready to begin another normal day…

Of course, once that second was up I finally opened my eyes and remembered that wishful thinking such as that was impossible. But still, I appreciated Brooke's attempts at making things seem as close to normal as they possibly could be all the same.

I allowed myself to take a couple of slow deep breaths as I stood in front of my dresser mirror, hoping that maybe my reflection would be able to pass the confidence that I seemed to be lacking at the moment over towards me.

You can do this Sam. You're going to be okay. You can do this.

I repeated my motivational speech over and over again in my own head until I finally built up enough courage to convince myself that I was ready to step away from the mirror.

I took two large steps backwards towards the door, my held high, my mind swarming with certainty… but then, just as suddenly I had an abrupt change of heart.

Maybe I wasn't as ready to do this as I thought. Maybe I had been wrong all along; maybe I couldn't do this after all.

Great, look at me; doubtful to confident and right back again all in under sixty seconds… this had to be some kind of new record or something.

"Sam?" My head turned towards the door at the sound of Brooke's voice; my eyes automatically attracting towards the neon green numbers on my digital clock as the time changed from 7:00 to 7:01.

I guess that made sense; I couldn't help but notice the undertone of worry prominent in the back of Brooke's voice as she knocked on my bedroom door a little bit harder, my minute's hesitation in responding probably making her a bit nervous or something.

"I'm coming, just getting dressed!" I finally managed to get the cotton out of my mouth and shouted back to her.

Of course, the truth was I'd been dressed ever since I woke up this morning at around 5:30.

Sick of all of the tossing and turning that I had spent the majority of the night doing, that was about the time that I'd finally decided to abandon my futile attempts towards sleep and instead rolled out of bed to prepare myself for what was bound to be a long day ahead.

I was starting to feel sick. Actually, scratch that, I had already started to feel sick, I was just starting to feel sicker; the thing was, I knew that it had nothing to do with cancer and everything to do with the nerves that were currently running rampant throughout my stomach.

"Are you okay?" Brooke asked me, her voice muffled by the thick wood of my closed bedroom door.

"I'm fine!" I shouted back to her, but my voice faltered slightly so that I knew I'd given away my cover the instant I opened my mouth.

"Sam, I'm coming in." Brooke insisted, barely giving me time to prepare for her entrance before barging in. I guess she was just lucky that I wasn't naked or anything…

But no, she found me standing in exactly the same position that I'd been in for the past half-hour or so; hunched over my dresser, staring unblinkingly at my own reflection in the mirror in front of me.

"Hey," She spoke with a sudden gentleness in her voice as her reflection slowly appeared behind my own and she rested the hand that wasn't trapped within the close confines of a sling softly against my shoulder.

"Are you alright?"

I looked up at the two of our images as they bounced back into my eyes through the safety of the mirror; and for a moment, I remained silent.

We looked like one hell of a pair, Brooke and I did.

The slightly taller older woman's back was rigid but her shoulders were relaxed in an instinctive effort to keep her injured right arm, which I was sure still hurt like a bitch, as motionless as humanly possible; the dark navy of the cotton sling contrasting horribly against her pale skin.

And then there was me; white as a ghost and about ten pounds and a whole head of hair thinner than I had been the last time anybody at Tree Hill High School had seen me…

The two of us could have been the grand finale act at Barnum and Bailey's circus.

"I'm fine," I told her, trying to arrange my voice to sound as convincing as humanly possible. "I was just getting ready for school."

I mean, it was kind of true after all, and by the state of my room, Brooke could see that.

First of all, I had thrown practically every piece of clothing that I owned across the floor as a result of the mild panic attack I'd had this morning as I searched for a shirt that could hide the catheter popping out of my chest.

Second, there was my dresser which had all of my makeup… okay, all of Brooke's makeup splayed unorganized across the wooden surface to remind me of my failed efforts to hide the fact that my eyebrows had been thinning into nonexistence for days now and my face was about ten shades paler than normal.

But Brooke still managed to see the truth as it was; written all across my face. I should have known that she would; she's good like that, Brooke is.

"Listen Sam, you know that you don't have to do this today if you're not ready, right?"

I think what she really wanted to say was 'you know that you don't have to do this today because I'm not ready,' but I got the point, and I shook my head vigorously at her statement knowing full well that I in fact did have to do this today because I was starting to get nervous that if I didn't do it now, I wouldn't do it ever.

"No, I'm ready… really." I added that last bit when I saw her pass me a look of skepticism.

There was a moment of silence that literally lasted an entire minute as Brooke stared me down, looking as if she was attempting to x-ray my mind and gain access to all of my thoughts; but finally, she spoke.

"Okay…" She sung out her word making it so that it didn't exactly sound very convincing, but I gave her credit; I knew that she was trying here. "Well come on out then, I have breakfast on the table, are you hungry?"

Actually, now that she mentioned it, as surprised as I am that I'm saying this, and as much as my stomach had been bubbling in nervous anticipation all morning, I actually was.

Now it was just a matter of trying to decide whether eating a hearty breakfast would just come back and bite me in the ass later or not.

"Yeah, I kind of am," I told Brooke, throwing a tone of definite finality in my voice just to try and get her to relax a little bit as I allowed her to guide me out of my bedroom and into the kitchen where there was already an elaborate meal of eggs, bacon, and toast waiting for me on the counter.

I sat down, preparing myself to seriously compliment Brooke on her ability to procure such a meal with only one arm when I leaned over forwards slightly in my seat and caught a glimpse of Julian in the corner, slaving away in front of the stove as he stirred at a fresh batch of eggs within a giant skillet, hunched over the burners so that the only thing he was missing was an apron and a chef's hat.

"Hey Sam," He greeted me, the tone in his voice way to perky for me for this time of the morning. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," I told him, digging a fork into my eggs as Brooke barged back through the kitchen, pacing up and down like a wild woman so that I was actually starting to get nervous that she would trip over her own two feet and dislocate her other friggen shoulder.

But I knew as much as any other person who really knew Brooke Davis did that once you got her started, it was virtually impossible to slow her back down, so I just let her carry out her ritual as she attempted to unwind… I mean, who needs yoga when you can just stomp around the entire house, right?

"Okay, Haley has everything all ready for you." She wasn't looking at me when she spoke; in fact, I was starting to get the impression that she was kind of just talking to herself, desperate to hear something other than the bacon sizzling on the frying pan or my fork scraping against the plate as I slowly picked at my food.

Julian and I both locked eyes from our positions at opposite sides of the room. Neither of us said anything but I could tell we were both thinking it; Brooke had possibly just officially lost her damn mind.

She continued to talk and carry on, apparently oblivious to the fact that we were both eyeing her up with uncertainty as she began to pack my backpack for me.

"I just got off of the phone with her, she's talked to all of your teachers to let them know what's going on and trust me, Sam, she's also told them all of the conditions of you being allowed to go to school today, so don't try to weasel your way out of any of them."

"I know Brooke, I know," I was starting to get dizzy from staring at her as she darted rapidly about the entire kitchen.

"Yeah well… here, I got all of the medication you need to bring with you." She said, handing me an extra large Ziplock freezer bag which was full to the brim with a handful of those little orange pill bottles that I had become so familiar with in these past couple of weeks.

"The first thing that you do when you get to school is give these to the nurse, understand?" She told me seriously, looking straight into my eyes just to add a hint of finality into her order. "I called her this morning and she knows that you're coming… You know when you have to take all of these, right?"

I nodded; of course I knew when I had to take them, I've only been doing it every single day for the past month… But I bit my tongue against the plethora of sarcastic responses that her question could have bred, instead choosing to answer it simply just to humor Brooke.

"Yeah, I know."

"Okay good… Now you're absolutely positive that you're feeling alright, right? No headaches? Nausea? Anything?"

"No," I emphasized the single word with the hopes that it would finally convince her to relax a little bit.

But I had thought wrong. Of course, now that I really think about it, I'm not sure why I ever thought that could work in the first place.

"Are you nervous?" She asked after a brief moment's pause.

"No Brooke," I shook my head convincingly but still, I couldn't help but wonder if she noticed the way I wasn't able to look her in the eyes when I'd said it.

"Alright…" The hesitation in her voice told me that she had.

"You just remember what I said before, Sam; you don't have to do this right now if you're not ready."

"Brooke, relax, I feel fine."

"Yeah well, just make sure you keep it that way, do you hear me? And you know that if you need anything or if you start to feel sick you can call me, or talk to Haley, or the nurse, or whoever."

"Got ya," I promised, taking one final bite out of my half eaten breakfast before I pushed the plate away and swiveled off of the counter stool, my two feet landing gracefully on the ground below me.

"Okay, now hurry up and go take your medicine, Haley should be here any second."

I nodded at Brooke's order, not exactly disappointed to be leaving the chaos of the kitchen as I slid into the bathroom, quickly downing the cupful of pills that Brooke had put out for me the night before in one swift swallow as the sound of a car horn ringing through the silence of the bathroom distracted me.

That had to be Haley sitting outside waiting for me, signaling with a single horn beep that it was time.

"Sam, that's Haley!" Brooke confirmed to me with a quick shout.

"Alright, be right there!" I yelled back, quickly throwing a cup of water down my throat to wash down the pills I'd just consumed before taking one final glance at myself in the mirror and darting out of the bathroom back into the openness of the kitchen where I barely stopped to pause before making a beeline straight for the front door.

"Hey!" Brooke shouted towards me and I stopped dead in my tracks, turning to find her and Julian standing in the hallway approaching me quickly with weird expressions on their faces that made them look as if they were about to send their oldest child away for his first day of kindergarten.

"Good luck today, Sam." Brooke said gently, opening up her free arm and allowing me to fall into it, maneuvering myself strategically against her good shoulder so that I wouldn't bother the injured one.

"If you need anything at all you can call me either rat the store or on my cell phone, okay?"

"Okay," I promised, nodding against Brooke's arm as she pulled out of the embrace while keeping a strong hand upon my arm, involuntarily tightening her grip, letting slip just how nervous she really was.

"And if you feel sick at all, you go straight to the nurse's office."

"I will."

"And if you start to get tired and need to come home, I'll come pick you up no matter what so make sure you call."

"I will."

"And come home right away after school because you have an appointment with Dr. Miller at 3:30."

"I will."

"And if…"

"Brooke!" I cut her off because I knew that if I didn't do it now, we'd be sitting in the hallway all day. "I'm gonna be fine, stop worrying so much."

"You know that it's my job to worry." She smiled down at me, finally letting go of my arm allowing me to turn towards Julian who instantly grabbed me around the shoulders, pulling me tightly against his body.

"Knock 'em dead, Samson."

"I will," I mumbled my promise into his chest before pulling away, taking a deep breath as I slung my backpack over my shoulders and turned towards the front door.

"I'll see you guys later."

I turned and waved goodbye to them, but now that I thought about it, it had been stupid of me to think that Brooke wasn't going to follow me right out the front door. In fact, by the time we'd gotten to Haley's car, I was so convinced that she as going to get right in the backseat and buckle herself in behind me that I was more surprised when she didn't than I would have been if she did.

"Okay Sam, I'll see you later." She was making it sound like she was getting ready to leave and let me and Haley be off but the way she was hanging her body through Haley's open window told me that we weren't quite ready for that step yet.

"Remember to give me a call when you get the chance, okay?"

I was starting to get the impression that she was planning on chasing Haley's car all the way down the block shouting directions of what I should and should not be doing today the entire way.

"Don't worry Brooke I'll make sure that she does!" Haley assured her for me.

"Thanks Hales…" Brooke responded, her comment leading us into a moment of silence that, under any normal circumstances would have signified the perfect time for me and Haley to pull out of the driveway; of course, driving would be difficult with Brooke hanging halfway through Haley's passenger side window.

"Brooke, we're gonna be late if you keep stalling any longer." I finally confronted her, watching as she put the most confused expression on her face that she could muster, pretending like she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

"Fine, fine; Sam just be careful today." She said it one more time as she finally stood herself upright, just in case I hadn't caught it the first time… or the second, or the third, or even the fourth.

"I will!" I shouted back, waving to her as Haley finally threw her car into reverse and began to back out of the driveway.

"Wow, it looks like Brooke's more nervous about you going to school today than you are." Haley laughed the second we were out of Brooke's earshot, finally making our way down the familiar route towards Tree Hill High.

"Who says I'm nervous?" I asked her, going into defensive mode for absolutely no reason whatsoever except maybe to practice putting my tough façade back on for when I got back to school… I mean, I still had a reputation to uphold there, you know?

Haley however, was able to see right through me in an instant.

"Seriously though Sam; are you sure that you're feeling up to this?"

I nodded my head aggressively. I had gotten pretty good at convincing people the answer to that question considering I'd had an entire morning's worth of practice with Brooke; but really though, I've never been so ready for anything more in my entire life.

"I don't think that I've ever looked forward to going to school this much ever." I assured her, "I just can't wait to start getting my life back to normal."

"Yeah well, try not to make it too normal alright? Brooke made me promise her that I would keep a very close eye on you today and that's exactly what I'm gonna do, are we clear?"

Haley spoke to me with that tone of motherly concern that she had perfected years ago… It suddenly made much more sense how Brooke was getting so good at that; she was probably getting all of her tips from Haley.

"Crystal." I promised her, taking an unconsciously sharp inhale as Haley turned the car into the teacher's parking lot.

"Are you ready?" I swear, if I had a nickel for every time somebody asked me that today…

"Yeah,"

Haley turned to look at me as she shut off the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition, watching as I took a couple deep breaths and stared through the windshield; the slight reflection of my face superimposing itself across my view of all of the kids filing lazily into the building in front of me.

What I would give just to be like them again.

"Okay then, come on, we have to get you checked in with the nurse first and I don't want you to be late… or me to be late for that matter."

I took my time in following Haley out of the car; climbing slowly onto the ground below me, taking one more deep, reassuring breath as I stepped forward, Haley standing close at my hip protectively the entire time, watching as I plunged myself straight back into the life that I had left behind what seemed like so long ago now.

* * *

I walked down the familiar hallways of Tree Hill High School in generally the same manner that I found myself walking anywhere these days when I was out in public; head down and hands in pockets as I pretended like I couldn't feel the stares as they prickled at the back of my neck uncomfortably, practically burning a hole through my skin.

The problem I ran into however was that there is a huge difference between being out in a normal public place and being out in a high school; you see, in a high school, all of those unwritten rules of common decency that are in effect in the outside world simply don't apply anymore.

With every step I took, kids would stare me down briefly before scattering away to the side, clearing a wide open path for me to move straight down the center of the hallway so that I was starting to feel like Moses parting the Red Sea or something.

I tilted the navy blue wool cap that I had been wearing as far down my forehead as it possibly could go without blocking my eyes as I unconsciously inched closer and closer towards Haley with every step that I took.

'Okay Sam, breathe, just breathe. Everything is gonna be fine, nobody's gonna try to pull anything with all of these teachers around.'

But still, staring wasn't against the rules, and even if it was, the teachers weren't exactly making it a point to keep their eyes from lingering on me a second longer than they would have anybody else.

Even if they did spend a couple of struggling minutes battling the internal war between courteousness and curiosity, in the end, curiosity won every time.

"Ignore it." Haley whispered to me through the corner of her mouth, but her advice didn't really make me feel much better considering I seemed to be hearing a lot of those words lately.

But still, I nodded and trudged forward, sticking close to Haley, only stopping when I'd been about half way down the hall and heard somebody calling my name.

"Hey Sam," I was so shocked to hear the sound of my own name that I didn't even notice that Haley had stopped short to address the speaker and almost tripped over her feet which would have inevitably created even more of a spectacle out of myself than I already was… story of my life I guess.

I whipped my head around; Charlie Newman and his usual band of mindless gits were grinning lopsided towards me trying, however, failing miserably, to look friendly… of course there attempts probably would have been a lot more successful if every last one of them hadn't done something or another to make my life a living hell during the time that I was still in school.

That's why I was certain that they had something up their sleeves. I mean, why else would they be going out of their way to talk to me, right?

I cringed half expecting to be stuffed against a locker or have their worst insults thrown in my general direction just for old time's sake but when that never happened, it all began to come together very quickly.

You see, they probably just trying to gain some bonus points or something in their otherwise worthless lives just by trying to be nice to me.

And suddenly, it all made sense.

There was this kid at my old high school back when I was living in this foster home upstate in Saratoga.

His name was Tim Shlovoski and the two of us were both freshman together at Saratoga High School; me being the new kid with no friends and him being the old kid with no friends.

I think that it was pretty safe to say that Tim's loserdom rivaled even mine.

He used to walk down the hallway with a hunch in his back because he had flat feet and a bad case of scoliosis. Every time he inhaled, the air would catch in such a way in the gap in between his two front teeth that it created this weird wheezing noise that you could hear from all the way down the hall.

Tim was the kid that threw up in the hallways at least once a month. He was the kid that got nose bleeds in Biology class everyday because the smell of formaldehyde bothered his sinuses. He was the kid that kept his pet toad in his pocket everywhere he went.

Yeah, I think that it was pretty safe to say that Tim Shlovoski was the very stereotype of the kid that nobody ever talked to. I mean, you know high school kids; they act as if being a loser is just as contagious as the chicken pox or something.

"Don't talk to that Tim kid or everybody else might think that you're a freak too."

But then Tim didn't show up to school for a few weeks. The kicker was, nobody even noticed that he was gone until he came back one day in a wheelchair.

Tim and his mom had been driving to the mall one night so that Tim could get a new pair of jeans because his old ones had been so short that they exposed his ankles. On the way home there had been some sort of catastrophic car accident; a wet road combined with a set of tires too old to even date and the next thing Tim knew, he was dangling upside down by his seatbelt as his car teetered dangerously over the highway divider.

Tim quickly discovered that he was unable to feel anything below his waist, but when he turned his head to tell this to his mom, he found her crumpled like a pretzel across the hood of the car with her brains splattered across the leather interior; she had died on impact.

After that, nobody called Tim Shlovoski a loser anymore.

People suddenly passed him the hallway and would wave to him politely with nervous grins on their faces. They would invite him to sit with them at their lunch table. He would say hi, and you would say hi back…

But I guess those were just the rules of life. All you had to do to get attention around here was to enter a life stricken by tragedy so that you can just completely cancel out the fact that before any of it ever happened, you never even existed.

I grimaced awkwardly towards Charlie and his friends, forcing myself to at least mumble something that sounded close to a hello.

I guess I still wasn't quite used to the fact that I had just become Tree Hill High's very own Tim Shlovoski.

Haley and I finished our journey to the end of the hallway with relatively few interruptions after that one.

A couple of people would wave over in my general direction, politely pause to ask me how I was feeling or how I'd been doing in the few weeks since my absence but that was it really.

The two of us turned the corner at the end of the hallway, which, by the way, I swear had lengthened at least a mile since my last trip down it, ducking into the nurse's office where the woman had already been standing in the doorway waiting for me when I arrived.

"Hi Sam, how are you doing today?"

I took a moment before answering, trying to decide whether or not the nurse, who had just spoken to me as if I was six years old, was being a patronizing bitch. But when Haley gave me a small nudge to the ribs, I swallowed my pride and answered her question.

"Fine,"

Haley stepped in between the two of us, graciously intercepting our "conversation" before it got any uglier than it already was as she extended my large bag full of various medications in her general direction.

"Um… here, her mother wanted me to give you these." She said awkwardly.

"Don't worry," The nurse assured her, grabbing the bag which she had to carry with two hands simply due to its weight. "Ms. Davis called me earlier this morning to give me everything I needed to know… Are you feeling up to going to class today, Ms. Walker?"

Well duh I was. Wasn't that the entire purpose of me being here today to begin with?

Haley must have seen my typical sarcastic thought process written out across my face, because the next thing I knew, I was feeling another elbow nudge against my sensitive ribs that resulted in me spitting out a sentence that was as far opposite as what was really on my mind that I could have gotten.

"Yeah," I told her, "I'm good to go."

"Okay, well I'll be in here all day, so if you start to feel sick, or if something just doesn't feel right, you can come here. Otherwise, I'll see you back here at 9:00 for your medicine."

"Can't wait," I mumbled back to her before taking her words as an invite to leave, turning immediately for the exit, eager to get on with my day.

I was quick getting out of there, but needless to say, I was no track star over here or anything, so Haley caught up to me quickly, easily matching her pace against mine as she followed me towards what was conveniently both or our first periods of the day; English class.

"What's that ladies name again?" I asked Haley, just trying to find something to say to fill between that gap of silence that fell through us as Haley's classroom door came into my view.

"Davidson." Haley told me, twisting in front of me so that she could swing her door wide open and hold it for me.

"Got it," I told her, taking a deep breath and stepping through, relieved to see the empty room that greeted me mainly due to the fact that it meant that I would be able to settle myself in at a pace of my own liking.

I made myself comfortable in my usual seat, listening closely as the bell rang, trying to distract my mind from the students slowly filing into the classroom by shutting my eyes and repeating the nurse's name over and over again in the back of my head trying to remember it… It was lame, I know, but you know what, it worked… for a little while anyway.

But as the desks around me slowly filled, and more and more students shuffled closer towards me, it became more than obvious that my mind was elsewhere, and eventually, I couldn't help but think that by the time nine o' clock rolled around, I probably would have completely forgotten what that woman's name was anyway.

In fact, I already had.

* * *

I must say, 1st period English class definitely ran as smoothly as it possibly could have… But I guess, now that I thought about it, it was never really Haley's class that I had been concerned with anyway.

I had this sense of security whenever Haley was around me that made me believe that nothing could possibly go wrong as long as she was at my side. So you see, there was no potential danger to begin with when I was in her class… if you don't count the potential danger of how far behind in my reading that I was.

I mean, I've never exactly read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ before, and I had the slightest feeling that starting the book at Chapter 16 along with the rest of the class wasn't exactly going to get me caught up anytime soon.

Needless to say, I was a little bit lost during our in-class discussion leaving me feeling just slightly retarded and a tad bit doubtful about myself, especially considering English Literature had once been my best class…

But you know what, I had a feeling that Haley wasn't really depending on me too much to keep the flow of the class going anyway, so all I really did was lounge around in my usual back corner just like I used to do, minding my own business and even dozing off a few times…

All-in-all, I'd call it your average, everyday class.

For the most part, everyone in the class ended up coming up to me; you know, asking me how I was doing, what I'd been up to, whether or not I'd be sticking around for a while… things like that. But then again, my grades' Honors Literary class had gotten pretty close with each other this past year or so all thanks to Haley.

But I would quickly learn that first period English would probably become the most exciting part of my entire day; because as school progressed onward and the novelty quickly began to wear off, I found myself right back to being what I was before I came here; bored.

After English, I had gym class, but considering I wasn't allowed to participate for obvious reasons, I'd spent the majority of that class sitting in the library playing Spider Solitaire on the computer.

History had been boring per usual; in fact, I wasn't even sure that my teacher, an ancient old man whose monotone voice could even put me to sleep even at the peak of my best sugar high, knew that I was there.

Lunch was as exciting as it could have been considering I'd eaten it in the privacy of Haley's back office with only the two of us to keep ourselves occupied for forty five minutes.

I ended up skiving out of Algebra after lunch, ultimately deciding that a bunch of numbers and symbols that I couldn't make heads or tails out of under normal circumstances would do absolutely nothing but make the slight headache that was forming between my temples worse, choosing instead to spend the hour hanging out with the nurse who really wasn't as bad as everybody made her out to be…

Second to last period was the first bit of excitement I'd had in a while after I'd fallen fast asleep in the back of my an Anatomy class; an event, which I might add, gave my teacher a minor heart attack when she thought that I had literally died in the back of her classroom.

Of course, the real excitement didn't start until my very last class of the day; Biology.

I'd been starting to get pretty exhausted ever since around lunch time; the thing was, at that point, I'd been so excited about making it to the half way mark of my day that I ignored all of the signs telling me I needed to slow down and decided to take on the final half of school without a second thought.

Of course, there had been a brief moment where I seriously considered finishing up the day early; calling Brooke to have her come pick me up and take me home; but then I thought about it a little bit harder and considered what that might mean; how Brooke would probably never let me out of her sight again if I admitted to any sort of weakness now… So I just put on my brave face and pretended that everything was alright as I trudged through the final hour of the day.

I didn't have a lab partner anymore; my old one had joined some other group the day after my first absence, but in all honesty, it was probably for the best for both of us. You see, Michael Rosario was a total stoner loser who was dumb as a rock and never did any of his work anyway so I couldn't complain too much when I got an invite into another group with three girls that I had always gotten along with fine, sitting next to them as I helped as much as I could in a lab that involved attempting to identify the various stages of cellular mitosis through a microscope... how ironic.

Anyway, after a few moments of feeling extremely worthless mainly due to my lack of success at identifying anything at all, I fell back against my seat and decided to take a break; I was tired, and on top of that, looking through that microscope for so long had started to make me feel dizzy and nauseous.

I managed to make it a couple more minutes of just sitting around, lazing out in my chair; but after about a half hour, I just couldn't take it anymore… I felt that familiar lump of bile form slowly at the base of my throat and I began to break out into a cold sweat.

'Come on Sam, not here, not now.' I begged myself, taking a couple of seconds to breath steadily as I sat in my chair with my eyes closed until I managed to mentally convince myself that I had enough energy to stand up and walk to the front of my classroom without causing a total scene.

I took a deep breath and marched on forwards. The aisles in between the desks seemed to extend longer and longer with every step that I took creating the illusion that I was actually going nowhere.

It's funny; a few weeks ago, I was pretty sure that most of the people at this school didn't even know whether or not I had been in their class, but now… well now, I had the strangest feeling that every single eye was following me as I slowly made my way to the front of the room.

"Um… Ms. Downy; I was just wondering if maybe I could go to the nurse?" I walked straight to the teacher's desk, pressing my body into it and whispering my request in an effort to keep any of the other students from hearing it; but the room had inconveniently chosen that moment to become so silent that you could hear a pin drop… I might as well have screamed it.

"Of course, Sam,"

I knew that she would say that; really, I just asked more out of a courtesy.

"Do you need anybody to go with you?"

I shook my head forcefully but instantly regretted that decision when it felt as if my brain literally bounced off of the very inside of my skull; an explosion of pain ripping through my temples with every back and forth motion.

"I think I can make it." I lied, perhaps rather unconvincingly.

The halls were silent; the majority of the kids and teachers secluded to the isolation of their classrooms as they did whatever the hell it was that normal, healthy people did during the school day.

But I preferred it that way. In fact, I was thanking God for this small favor, because by the way I was stumbling down the hallway grabbing onto anything and everything that I could use to support myself, I probably looked like an alcoholic or something.

"Sam?" I heard my name but found it difficult to identify the speaker considering my eyes had just started to blur over.

"Sam are you alright?"

My legs suddenly felt as if they were made from pure Jello; my vision slowly began to fade from me as the outline of Haley's face got closer and closer to my own.

I tried to stay awake, tried to keep myself upright, but I was surprised to learn just how hard it was to hold your head up when the rest of your body just wants to stay down on the ground; so I allowed my mind to finally give up, letting my tired body take over as my eyes slowly closed and I found myself slipping into nothingness; embracing the blackness as it finally consumed me.

* * *

**BROOKE**

The first thing that you should all know before I say anything is that today, right before my phone rang, I had actually been looking out for myself for a change.

I had managed to send Sam off to school, get Julian to leave the house to go get some work done, and had even sat myself down on my couch in order to finish a couple of sketches for my rapidly approaching winter line, however, struggling due to the fact that I had been forced to draw with my non-dominant hand seeing a my right one was all tied up at the moment.

In fact, I had just laid out two of the Percocet I was supposed to be taking once every four hours for my shoulder down on the counter top in preparation when I was distracted by the familiar jingle of my cell phone.

Sighing, I pushed the pills to the side, darting to grab my phone just in case it was Sam calling to tell me that she needed something, but I was surprised to see that it wasn't Sam at all.

I was even more surprised when I saw the words 'Tree Hill High School' scroll across the banner.

And that was about the time that my heart stopped beating.

Now, the second thing that you should all know before I say anything is that today… well, right now anyway, I could describe how I was feeling using only three words; pissed, scared shitless, and tired… Okay, so that was four words, but I'm sure you get the picture.

Anyway, I was pissed at myself because I had been stupid enough to allow Sam to go off to school today when it was so obvious that she was the furthest thing from being ready for it as she could have been. I was scared shitless because I had just gotten off the phone with the school nurse telling me, using as little detail as possible, that I needed to come over here and pick up Sam as soon as possible. And finally, I was tired because I was currently literally sprinting down the hallways of Tree Hill High School towards the nurse's office.

A couple of students gave me strange passing glances as the wind whipped my hair behind me and I huffed and puffed in time with my running, which seemed like a half a mile from the visitor's parking lot to the nurse's office, but to be completely honest, I couldn't be too mad about it; I'd probably stare at me too.

I rounded the corner of the corridor that I knew the nurse's office to be down at around just the same time that my thought process began to transform and my feelings of fear began to turn into feelings of inadequacy.

Why the hell had I let Sam come to school today? What kind of horrible mother was I that would make me even think that this could have ever been a good idea?

I'll tell you what kind of mother; a truly horrible, horrendous, disgrace for a mother.

I mean, if I was anything close to a good mom, Sam would never have been in school to begin with, nothing would have happened to her. No, scratch that, if I was anything close to a good mother, Sam would never have even gotten sick at all.

Ugh, no, stop this Brooke, that isn't fair for you to say; not to yourself or Sam. Sam getting sick is not your fault, Sam getting sick is not your fault, Sam getting sick is not your fault.

I repeated the line over and over again in the back of my head as I got closer and closer to the nurse's office, finally allowing myself to break my run down into a simple trot, trying to ignore both the fact that my arm twanged with pang from my missed round of pain killers and those relentless 'what if's' started racing through my mind again.

That's probably why it came as such a pleasant relief when I found Sam sitting up in a chair across from the nurse's desk sipping generously out of a cup full of water, and, other than the fact that she was slightly paler than was normal for her these days, looking just fine.

"Sam, what happened?" I asked her immediately before anybody even had the opportunity to notice that I had entered the room, rushing over to her and gathering her up in my arms; staring her up and down in an attempt to find out what was wrong with her before she even had the opportunity to tell me.

"Nothing, I just got a little bit dizzy that's all." She told me as if this was no big deal, as if she hadn't just given me a minor heart attack and made me look like a fool running over here to get her.

She pushed herself away from my prying eyes, but I couldn't help but notice her sudden inability to look at me, letting me know that she was conveniently leaving something, probably something very important, mind you, out of her story.

"Actually Ms. Davis," Nurse Davidson stood from her position behind her desk in an attempt to look more official as she addressed me, "I called you in her to let you know that Sam collapsed in the hallway about fifteen minutes ago."

Sam rolled her eyes, sending a glare over towards the nurse that had the words 'traitor' written all over it, but I'd almost missed it, mainly because I flung my head so dramatically around to look at the nurse that my shoulder gave a lurching throb of protest that made me grimace only briefly before I was reminded that there were bigger problems at hand right now.

"What!" I shouted so loudly that I was convinced that I'd disturbed a class or two that was currently in session, but I didn't care. I looked back towards Sam as the girl sighed with frustration and threw herself further backwards into her chair.

"It's nothing, Brooke." She insisted, "I just had a long day; I'm not used to being that active."

I didn't know what to say; I was so torn between terror at what Sam collapsing could mean and anger that she was acting so nonchalantly about it all that the only thing that I could think of doing was to reach up and run my shaking hand up through my hair.

"What did I tell you about taking it easy today?" I finally spoke up after I'd had a couple of more seconds to sort out my feelings, ultimately deciding that the option that included 'pissed off' would be the most appropriate for this scenario.

"I was taking it easy, Brooke, it wasn't about that!" Sam practically shouted at me, leading us into the stereotypical Brooke/Sam fight mode that always broke out when one of us was convinced that we were right over the other. Of course, it was an argument that I didn't exactly want to get into, but I knew that Sam would fight me until she was blue in the face, and I guess now was as good a time as any to teach her the important lesson that not every fight was worth dying over.

"It was about the fact that I haven't been out of bed for more than ten minutes at a time in almost a month! I'm sorry that walking around for more than thirty seconds made me a little bit tired!"

I could sense the screaming match brewing between us rapidly turning into a category five hurricane. The nurse took a step back, probably scared that we would start throwing things at each other next. I guess she just wasn't used to the way that Sam and I communicated with each other when we were angry.

I opened my mouth, fully ready to retaliate back to Sam but then I caught a second glimpse of the nurse's nervous face. I was guessing that she wouldn't really appreciate having a fight break out in the middle of her office, and I guess now that I thought about it, I probably wouldn't appreciate having child protective services coming to arrest me because I'd yelled at a kid with cancer, so I decided to take it down a notch.

"Alright, alright," I said, taking a deep breath as I stepped away from Sam even though all I really wanted to do was shake her by the shoulders and yell at her endlessly for scaring the ever living shit out of me. "Come on, I'm taking you to the hospital."

"What? No!" She shouted, staring up at me with a look in her eyes that I couldn't distinguish.

But you know what, I was the mother here, and even if she was playing the role of the stubborn teenager, me and friends; my racing heart beat and my sky-high blood pressure that Sam had so graciously given to me, were the ones that were going to be making this decision; not her.

"We are going to go see Dr. Miller right now. You had to go to her office for blood work later anyway, going a little earlier won't make a difference. Sam, don't fight me on this one, I swear to God I will drag you there if I have to."

It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while a tone will appear in my voice; one that is laced with pure venom and have the words 'and that's final' written all over it; and let me tell you, when that tone does come out, the person being spoken to, usually Sam, knows that its best not to mess around... This my friends, was one of those times.

I could see Sam's body physically retreating backwards into her chair. Of course, that didn't stop her sarcasm from shining through in her reply.

"Fine, I mean, we made so many freaking friends while we were there just yesterday why stop now. I mean, I'm sure they would love a visit. Oh hey, while we're there, let's make sure to visit all of the other wards so we can see all of our other friends that we'd made considering we're there every single friggen day!"

I wanted to yell at her for her language, for behaving like this in front of a woman we barely knew, but I knew that this was just one of those times that I had to let Sam yell it out while simultaneously allowing myself to be the brunt of her frustrations, because I knew that she was pissed over the fact that she'd messed up.

Besides, what am I here for if it's not to take the hits for Sam anyway?

"Come on, let's go," I said, extending my hand down towards Sam in a peace offering in order to help her up from her chair, but she just ignored my gesture, instead choosing to push herself up from her seat on her own accord, brushing right past me and walking straight out of the door without so much as a second glance.

I sighed and turned back to the nurse.

"Thank you for taking care of her." I said as she attempted to give me a smile, but to be completely honest, I think she was to traumatized from the fight between Sam and I that she'd just witnessed to let out anything more than a grimace.

"No problem. If you need anything Brooke, call me."

I smiled politely and nodded my head at her offer, but in the back of my mind I knew that there was no chance in hell that she would be getting a phone call from me anytime soon.

And then, before this interaction had to be any more awkward than it already had been, I turned on my heels, pushed past the door, and moved my feet quickly down the hall in an effort to catch up to Sam who was already halfway to my car by now.

For a girl who had just passed out, Sam was certainly hauling ass, but still, the fact of the matter was she was a sick kid who definitely wasn't feeling up to her full speed right now. I caught up to her easily.

"Sam! Hey Sam, wait up!" I reached my hand out and grabbed onto her shoulder in an effort to stop her from continuing her attempt at a great escape as I tried to speak to her. But all she did was rip her shoulder out of my weak grasp, refusing to stop moving at all until finally she was forced into a halt only when she reached my car to find it locked.

"What the hell is going on with you?" I asked her, point blank refusing to unlock the door until I got some straight answers out of her.

"Ugh, nothing, Brooke," Sam mumbled as she pulled at the knob of the car door impatiently.

For a second I considered being forceful. She was vulnerable and I was determined; I could easily get her to talk to me right here right now.

But then I thought about it a little longer and decided that the parking lot of the high school wasn't exactly the best place to get into this so I finally gave in and hit the tiny button on my keys, watching as the car beeped and flashed with the indicative unlock signal and Sam wasted no time in pulling open her door and throwing herself down into the seat, perhaps being a little bit more forceful than was necessary in throwing her seatbelt across her shoulder.

The car ride to the hospital was completely silent. I didn't even have the radio on to fill the gap between our unspoken words.

Sam sat with her arms crossed the entire time, glaring out the window at the bypassing scenery so that I was strongly reminded of those times I'd driven her around during those first few days of knowing her... you know what I'm talking about, those times when she still hated me and never spoke a damn word to me; yeah, those times.

I pulled up to the Emergency drop off, parking my car as close to the door as I could possibly get before trying to help guide Sam through the ER doors even though she tried to rip her body out of my arms with every step we took.

"Excuse me," I was glad to see that the woman behind the receptionist counter wasn't the same as the one that had been there last night… I'm sure that would have lead to some awkward questions. "I need some help over here."

"Okay miss, if you would just sign your name right here…" She threw a clipboard full of the names of arriving patients and their various ailments towards me and I looked up at her confused as to why she wasn't taking this more seriously until I realized that Sam had left my side, choosing instead to head over towards the row of waiting chairs where she had thrown herself down besides a guy that looked to be missing a finger or two.

Great, as if I wasn't already terrified enough that Sam had caught some sort of infection…

"No, you don't understand," I insisted, "My… my daughter, she's a leukemia patient, she just collapsed at school so I brought her in here."

That seemed to catch the girl's attention; I watched as her head shot up, her eyes suddenly full of understanding and alarm.

"Where is she?"

"Over there." I reached my arm behind me, pointing over towards Sam who wasn't making a very good case for me as I tried to fight the fact that she needed immediate medical attention considering she was leaning back in her chair with a look of pure malice on her face watching Jerry Springer blare on the television screen in front of her.

"Okay, we'll get her in the back."

I thanked the woman behind the desk as she waved down a couple of orderlies dragging a wheelchair, pointing them towards Sam.

The girl eyed up the thing with a look of pure distaste in her eyes, but I couldn't tell whether she had started to not feel so great again or whether she just wasn't in the mood to fight anymore, because she willingly stood from her seat and lowered herself down into the wheelchair, even allowing the two men to help get her settled in as they dragged her into the back.

I'd never had an Emergency Room trip with Sam in her post-diagnosis state, but it all seemed too official for me to keep up with.

They put her in the back in one of those tiny isolation rooms that I wasn't even allowed to go inside of until I was wearing gloves, a sterile gown, and one of those weird little white masks over my mouth and nose that you always see all those Asian people walking around with when you read about SARS outbreaks on the news.

It was twenty minutes later that I was finally deemed sterile enough to be able to go in and sit with Sam, but by the time that happened, they had already gotten her processed, changed, vitals read, and blood drawn, so that now, the only thing that the two of us had to deal with, other than the awkward silence between us, was the waiting game.

And Sam remained fiercely determined to keep that waiting game as silent as was humanly possible the entire time. In fact, she couldn't even look at me.

It was almost an entire half hour where the only noise that pervaded either of our ears was the hustle and bustle of the busy Emergency Room behind out door, and the beeping heart monitor that had been keeping track of Sam's perfectly normal vitals that I had spent the better half of the last hour or so panicking over; but finally, I just couldn't take it anymore.

"Come on Sam, talk to me." I begged as I felt myself really begin to lose my mind. "Did I do something wrong here?"

I mean, besides from bringing you to the Emergency Room when I was terrified that you were dying… oh, sorry, my bad.

But I was met with a surprise; I mean, I hadn't exactly expected Sam to shake her head slowly at me and sink her chin low into her chest as the look in her eyes, full of anger only a few minutes ago slowly slid into a gaze of pure defeat.

"I just feel stupid that's all."

I perked myself up in my chair at her admission, sliding it instinctively closer towards her, surprised that it had been as easy to get out of her as it had been.

"About school?" I asked carefully, watching Sam closely as she shrugged her shoulders, still seemingly finding it difficult to look me in the eyes.

"I guess…" She drifted off before she tilted her chin back; looking up at the ceiling lights in an effort to keep her eyes from shedding the tears that I could practically hear brewing up a storm behind them.

"Ugh, I'm such an idiot!" She cried out in frustration, banging her closed fist against the mattress below her.

"Hey," I said firmly enough so that it forced her head to snap up; her dark brown eyes meeting my lighter ones in an instant. "You're not an idiot. Sam, it's perfectly normal for somebody who has been cooped up sick for so long to want to go back out and live the life they had before… But listen, you know your limits now, you know that you need to go slower, and you know that just because you aren't in the hospital anymore, doesn't mean you can just jump right back into things. I know that it sucks Sam, but you need to realize that you can't do all of the things you used to be able to do before you got sick quite yet… one day, yeah, but not yet."

I was afraid that the tone of my words would come out a little bit harsher than I intended them to, but the gentle look that adorned Sam's eyes as she looked down at me told me that they had not.

"I'm sorry for freaking you out before." She apologized to me as she looked down at her hands, entwining her fingers together in search for anything to do that would distract her from having to look up at me. "I guess I was just trying to feel normal again, and when I realized that it doesn't really work like that…" She drifted off and released a long sigh. "I didn't mean to yell at you before. I was just kind of pissed at myself."

She finished her miniature speech, only daring to turn her eyes back up towards me when she knew that she had no more words left to say and now all that she needed was my reply.

"It's okay Sam, I already forgot all about it." I smirked at her, watching as she returned the gesture so that for a split second, our faces looked almost identical.

"And you know, I'm sorry too," I figured as long as we were dishing out apologies I might as well throw one in. "I know that I've been going all Warden on you lately, and I know that that's probably why you felt like you needed to get away for a little while, but that was no reason for me to yell at you before either… it was stupid, you just scared me, that's all."

I watched her hang her head low, apparently ashamed of the reminder of how badly she'd frightened me, but the entire point of apologizing to begin with was to make her feel better, so I spoke up again.

"Hey," I emphasized so that she forced to turn her head back up to me. "Listen, I'm going to go ahead and say no more school for a while, huh?"

I was glad to see her laugh in response to my comment as she nodded her head approvingly.

"Yeah, that sounds good to me."

"But I'll talk to Haley about those tutoring sessions. Maybe we'll be able to get a couple set up in the next week or so."

"Can you?" She asked, her face brightening slightly. I don't know why she even thought she had to bother to ask. Didn't this girl know by now that I would do absolutely anything for her?

"Of course,"

"Thanks Brooke." She sighed, leaning back against her bed, eyes closed, and embracing the fact that the mood of the room just got ten pounds lighter.

"Hey Sam, Brooke," We heard a gentle knock at the door followed by the familiar voice of Dr. Miller. Both of our eyes darted quickly for the door, our hearts clenching in anticipation of Sam's test results. I had been so happy about reconciling with Sam over these past few minutes that I'd completely forgotten why we had been there to begin with. Of course, that only made the shock of the doctor's arrival about ten times worse.

"I got a call telling me that you were down here. What, Sam, you couldn't wait the extra two hours until your appointment just to come and get blood drawn in my office?" She laughed at her own joke as Sam shrugged her shoulders and responded casually,

"I'm kind of into grand entrances."

I surveyed the woman up and down analyzing the situation. The fact that she was joking around with Sam, her face light and her features relaxed, combined with the fact that she was wearing your standard pant suit and white coat as opposed to the full isolation, NASA-like getup I had on made me hopeful that whatever she had within the folder of Sam's blood work results was good.

"So," The doctor started, taking a seat right across from me, folding her legs over each other and placing her hands in her lap before turning towards Sam, "I hear you had a little bit of excitement at school today."

The girl flushed with embarrassment, but Dr. Miller spoke again quickly to let Sam know that her comment hadn't been accusatory.

"Ah, don't worry. It happens to the best of us… but listen, I got a hold of your blood work from today and was able to look it over, and it showed no signs of any abnormalities, or infections, or anything like that. In fact, all of your numbers are right where they should be, a little above average actually; you probably just over did it today is all."

I heaved a giant, audible sigh of relief. I hadn't felt that nervous since the last time I had brought Sam into the Emergency Room only to find myself waiting for a diagnosis… of course, we all know how that turned out.

"Okay, so since everything checks out just fine what do you say about getting yourself out of here?"

"Ugh, yes!" Sam sighed as if the doctor had just told her that Christmas was coming early this year, leaning back in her bed and eagerly allowing Dr. Miller to remove the now empty bag of antibiotics that they had attached to her central line in the beginning of her ER visit in order to ward her body against the invisible infection that we now knew wasn't even there… oh well, better safe than sorry, I guess.

"Okay, so you guys are all set," She finally spoke the words that Sam had been dying to hear since we got here. "I want you back in my office on Thursday for more blood work though, do you hear? We'll just keep an extra close eye on the results for the next couple of days in case we missed anything." She told Sam who nodded her head up and down vigorously in order to ensure to the doctor that she caught the message.

"Alright, I'll see you guys then." She waved us out, exiting the room and leaving just the two of us behind in her wake as Sam wasted no time in rolling herself sideways off of her bed and onto the floor.

"Crap, you know what I just thought of?" I asked Sam as she began collecting the clothes she had come in with and making the move for the bathroom so she could change.

"What?" She asked as I scrolled through the cell phone that I had turned off upon our arrival at the hospital. I had several missed calls staring back at me; four from Julian that I needed to return ASAP, and one each from both Peyton and Haley… I guess Haley had spread the news for me. Crap, I had probably freaked everybody out well enough with my inability to place a call back.

"Julian is going to kill me when he finds out that I've been in the ER with you all afternoon and I didn't even call him… shit… he went out to get some work done today… I don't even know where he is…" I drifted off after realizing that I was mostly talking to myself rather than to Sam who I don't think even heard me from behind the bathroom door.

"Okay well, can we get out here and just tell them in person?" She asked, stepping out of the bathroom fully dressed and apparently indifferent about the dilemma that I was currently in, more immersed in trying to figure out how she could put her shoes on and run out the door at the same time.

"Yeah, come on," I said, motioning for her to come follow me outside, which she did more than obligingly.

"Sorry about all that, Brooke." She said, pointing to me as I began to strip out of the special astronaut suit I had been wearing and threw it into the trash barrel behind me.

"Eh, don't worry about it kid," I assured her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her body into mine as we made our way down the crowded emergency room hallway towards the front doors. "I have a weird feeling that the only reason I was really put here was just to take care of you anyway."


	27. If They Don't Put Me Away

**Okay, so the next three chapters are just a couple little filler chapters because they're the last three chapters I have for "part 2" of this story. I started writing the next part and I'm pretty sure I haven't had this much fun writing any other part of my story so get excited! I'll give you guys a little preview of what's to come after the last chapter of part ii but trust me, it's everything you've been asking for, I promise.**

**Anyway, I wanted to try out writing little side stories for some of the other characters, all of them kind of relating back to Sam and Brooke but still kind of their own thing so I'm starting with Haley and Julian because I also wanted to include Julian a little more so I gave him and Sam and cute little thing in this chapter and have got some Brulian in the next one for all you Brulian fans who have been so patient with me these last 28 chapters. So enjoy!**

Chapter 27: If They Don't Put Me Away, It Will Be A Miracle

**Tuesday, November 22, 2011**

**HALEY**

I felt bad.

No, scratch that, I felt horrible. In fact, I can't even remember the last time that I've ever felt this bad about anything in my entire life.

I had been stupid enough to open my fat mouth on Sunday afternoon in an effort to be supportive of Sam's desire for a little bit of independence, and look where it got me… a one way ticket towards spending the last 24 hours feeling like the total instigator in the nearly catastrophic plot to help get Sam back in school. And despite Brooke's best assurances that Sam was just fine and I wasn't to blame, I still found myself calling her once every hour or so just to make sure it was staying that way.

"Brooke, I feel horrible, really."

I had a free period third; and instead of spending that free period grading papers, or preparing lesson plans, or else doing anything else that would improve my reputation as a teacher to the school board, I just deemed it a perfect opportunity to bother Brooke for the fifth time that morning alone with my incessant phone calls.

"Haley, listen to me, Sam is fine, I'm fine, we're all fine. Stop worrying so much, you're starting to sound like me." She laughed at me as she repeated the exact same words that she'd said to me exactly one hour and nineteen minutes ago when I'd called her the last time.

But her comfort didn't stop me pacing before, and it sure as hell wasn't going to stop me now as I did laps across the empty teacher's lounge, slowly wearing a hole in the tile floor below my ever-moving feet.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm positive, now quit beating yourself up over this or I'm gonna come over there and really beat you up myself." She yelled to me, but I still couldn't help but think to myself that despite the fact that her best efforts to get me to finally relax have now resorted to threatening physical violence; she would probably be getting another phone call from me when my next class was over.

You see, this reassurance from Brooke, the confirmation that no lasting damage had been done thanks to the role I played in Sam's emergency room visit yesterday afternoon has quickly become somewhat of a drug for me. The only way I found, that I could get rid of that tight rubber band wrapped around my chest and breathe a huge sigh of relief again was by hearing the words straight from the horse's mouth.

And even when I did, that nervous constriction would wrap around my body again just as quickly as it came.

"Sorry Brooke, I just can't stop thinking about how bad things could have gone yesterday… I never would be able to forgive myself if something bad happened to her."

"But it didn't Haley. Listen, you'll kill yourself going over all of these what-ifs in your head, trust me, I've been there and done that, so just try to relax a little bit, okay?"

"Yeah…" The word came out with an airy ring to it so even if I did try a little bit harder to make it believable, it probably still wouldn't have worked.

Behind the confines of the sealed teacher's lounge door, a shrill ring interrupted my thoughts and sprung me back into the reality of where I was and what I should have been doing.

An instant uproar erupted as students and teachers alike shuffled through the hallways and a handful of my fellow coworkers disrupted the former privacy of the room, walking through the door in pairs, talking and carrying on as if nothing was wrong in the world leaving me to conclude that it would probably be best to end this conversation with Brooke now before they all started to think that I was crazy.

"Okay, um… listen, I have to go teach a class right now. Can you just do me a favor and call if anything changes with Sam?"

"Okay, go teach your class Haley. And relax; nothing is going to change with Sam, she'll be just fine for the next hour or so before you call back again."

"Alright, I'll talk to you later, Brooke." I sighed as I hung up the phone, running a shaking hand through my hair. Sure, Sam was fine for now; but what about in the long run, in the grand scheme of things… the possibilities, the sheer number of things that could go wrong were suddenly running rampant in my mind…

I wonder if this is how Brooke felt all the time because it sure as hell is no way to live. But then again, I guess you get used to it after a while.

"Hey Haley, are you okay?"

My eyes snapped back up from the floor leaving me suddenly very aware that almost every teacher in the room was looking straight at me.

Jesus, what the hell has been getting into me lately?

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." I lied quickly, looking back down to my feet in an effort to avoid what seemed like a thousand pairs of eyes staring in my direction as they tried to read me like a book.

Reaching down blindly, I groped for the folder full of lesson plans I'd been preparing half-assed for the past hour or so, grateful when I found it quickly so that I could dart from the room before anybody had a chance to get a word in edgewise, making a conscious effort not to look a single person in the eyes as I did so.

The hallways were suddenly very claustrophobic. The maybe thirty second walk from the teacher's lounge to my classroom lasted so long that it was starting to make me anxious in the belief that it would never end.

Maybe it was supposed to be a metaphor or something; my inability to reach my classroom symbolizing my inability to do anything other than make everything worse than it already was…

Okay Haley, it's time to stop trying to be so over-analytical and philosophical about everything. It's time to stop beating yourself up over a minor incident. It's time to stop killing yourself with all of these what-if's and worst case scenarios before you look crazier than you already are.

With one final deep breath, I finally ducked inside of my classroom a few seconds before the late bell rang so that the majority of my students were already seated at their desks when I arrived.

I flashed them all a fake smile hoping that they weren't paying enough attention to see right through it and quickly turned to my desk, turning towards the board instantly to write the day's objectives down on the board, really just looking for an excuse for my students not to see my face.

"Okay," I managed to pull myself together for the time being, turning back around to face my class only after I had taken as long as humanly possible to write a single sentence down on the white board, only stopping when I knew I couldn't stall any longer.

"I'm gonna take attendance real quick and while I do that, everybody get your essays out and get ready to read them to the class. We're going in alphabetical order so don't worry, everybody will have their chance to go today."

I flopped down into the desk chair as a couple of groans from disappointed students echoed in my ears and I opened the automated attendance program on the computer to begin scanning down the list, filling it out as I began paying less and less attention the further down I got.

"Okay… Matt, Sarah, Jenn…" I mumbled the alphabetical list to myself checking names off as I went, not really caring whether or not I falsely marked anybody as present or absent.

"Eddie, Jim, Hannah, Elyse…" I rapidly approached the bottom of the list, paying less and less attention to where I was looking the further down I got. "Amanda, Rich, and Sam…"

I froze. I hadn't bothered calling out Sam's name during attendance in about a month, but leave it up to me to pick today to slip up.

Everybody's head snapped up to look at me, mouths open in shock as if I'd just said a curse word or something.

I swallowed hard, my eyes scanning nervously up and down the length of the room as familiar heads peeked up from behind ever desk; every single eye in the room on me. But still behind them; placed strategically in the back right corner sat an even more familiar empty desk that continued to sit untouched.

And the longer I stared at it, the more quickly I began to lose all sense of control.

"Um…" I stumbled over what to say next, suddenly feeling very warm as the sweat began to bead at my forehead. "I'll be right back. Stay in your seats!" I called over my shoulder as I turned as fast as I could straight out of my classroom in the most unprofessional manner I could, running down the hallway until my feet, confined to hopelessly uncomfortable heels screamed for me to stop moving before they fell off.

I thought I'd already been past this. I thought I'd mastered all of the simply derived methods that allowed me to calmly get through an entire school day while simultaneously forgetting why I was suddenly one student short in my classroom.

But either I had finally lost one too many students, or all of my old ways of thinking were starting to get redundant because by the looks of things, it seems that I need somebody to get their ass over quickly and give me another reason that I should keep breathing before I just decide to stop all together.

"Haley?"

It was only a minute or two later, when I heard my name echoing through the otherwise empty hallways that I became suddenly very aware that I was in the midst of a rapidly approaching, very public breakdown.

"Haley, are you okay?"

Joan Riley was the girl that ran the payroll department here at Tree Hill High. For a kid fresh out of college she'd worked her way through the rankings fast, and considering how close in age the two of us were, combined with the fact that she'd managed to get me out of a sticky spot or two during my subsequent firing and rehiring during the Principal Rimkus ruled dark ages, we managed to get a pretty decent bond formed between the two of us.

"Um…" I considered attempting to lie my way out of this one but I knew that that would just be no good, so instead, I sighed and looked down at my feet, choosing instead to say, "You know, I think I'm just feeling a little bit off today."

That was one way to describe it. It was also the understatement of all understatements.

"Maybe you should take the rest of the day off, Haley."

"No, I can't, I have a class right now, and I have to get back to them and…"

"Hey," She cut me off before I could make up any more pathetically lame excuses. "I'll take care of it okay? Really, you look like crap. Go home and clear your head. It'll be fine."

I don't know why people were suddenly so keen on telling me that everything was going to be fine today; especially considering, from where I was standing, it seemed like nothing other than the exact opposite was true.

It's weird. Usually, it was me that was doing all of the reassuring in these types of situations here… I guess I finally just cracked.

She walked me all the way to the teacher's lounge, probably just to make sure that I actually went. And once I did actually get in there, I quickly gathered my things together, and not even bothering to go back to the classroom I'd just embarrassed myself in and offer my confused students a proper explanation, I bolted through the front doors, running straight to my car, finally driving away with all of my windows rolled down in the hopes that a little bit of fresh air would do its wonders in clearing my clogged head up for me.

I ultimately decided against going home. I didn't want to be, no, I couldn't be cooped up inside because I had the strangest feeling that that was a large part of what put me in this bizarre mood that I had found myself in to begin with.

I drove, not really knowing exactly where I was headed, just knowing that I needed to go somewhere.

I didn't care where; the River Court, the docks, the park… anywhere where I knew there would be air, room to breathe, and people, because I knew that the walls and the solitude of my house just wasn't going to cut it right about now.

I never could tolerate the world on those days where I felt all alone in it.

I ended up at the River Walk after a rarely seen open parking spot right at the front of dock seemed to glow and call out my name for me to park there.

Stepping out of the car door, I willingly allowed the parking meter to rape me of all of the quarters that I could find at the bottom of my car, watching as all of the last minute Thanksgiving shoppers clogged the streets and pushed, shoved, and pulled out any moves that they could to get their hands on one of the rapidly dwindling supplies of turkey.

I pushed past them all, heading east towards the water, pushing through the bustling crowd as they rushed in the opposite direction that I was walking making me look like the asshole… go figure.

It's hard to say why I've been so bothered lately. I mean, it's not like any of this is new or anything. I've been… we all have been at this for nearly a month, and it seemed like up until today, I was keeping up with my role of being a pretty consistent backbone for everybody… I don't know, maybe I finally just cracked or something; I mean, it was bound to happen eventually, right?

Maybe it's the fact that Sam being sick has never been my fault up until now. In fact, it's never been anybody's fault; just leave it up to me to be the first person to screw up enough to land Sam in the hospital.

God I'm such an idiot.

I continued to look down at my moving feet as I stepped over the curb, watching as the tan sidewalk turned to the jet black color of the freshly paved street and I began to cross the street that would lead me to the sanctuary of the water front.

A blaring horn suddenly forced me to lift my head and take an instinctive jump backwards.

A car zoomed past me so quickly that the breeze it left in its wake damn near knocked me flat on my ass as I closed my eyes and clutched at my chest; my racing heart pounding against my palm below me as I took a couple of deep breaths and recovered from my sudden near death experience.

I swallowed hard and sat myself down on the curbside. A couple of passerby snuck quick glares at me but not a single one reached out to see if I was alright. I guess it was a good thing that I wasn't actually hit, they probably all would have left me out to lay in the middle of the street until I bled to death.

The guy that had just almost friggen killed me was already half way down the road as he continued his 50 mph escapade down a residential street without a second glance backwards.

I thought about memorizing his license plate number, chasing after him, or at least throwing up some kind of obscene hand gesture in his general direction, but in the end, that's all that it was; just a thought. I was too wrapped up in myself to care, too deep in thought to acknowledge the fact that I had almost just died…

Jesus, after today, if they don't come over here and put me away, well let me tell you, it will be a damn miracle.

* * *

**JULIAN**

I think that it would be safe to say that today tensions were running high in the Davis household.

Actually, to be completely honest with you, it would be more accurate to say that tensions have been running high in the Davis household for a while now. It was the stress of everything, the constant worry of it all, the stone cold schedules and doctors appointments and all of this running around that we've been doing lately that had finally gotten to all of our heads.

Of course, I think that yesterday, with Sam's collapse and subsequent hospital visit, all three of us were finally finding ourselves put straight over the top, and let me tell you, it's bad enough in this house when one of us is in a bad mood, but when all three of us were walking around looking as if somebody had come over and peed in our breakfast cereal, well than let me tell you, you better watch out.

Brooke was in a bad mood because she knew she had a deadline for work she had to fulfill, a task that always frustrated her to no end, but when you tack on the stress of the fact that Sam's recent bought of hospitalization had put her right back on her toes, and the frustration towards Sam as the girl attempted to duck out of Brooke's watchful eye and retaliate against everything and anything that Brooke had told her, well then describing Brooke's mood as bad was like describing World War II as a friendly dispute.

Sam was in a bad mood because Brooke just hadn't left her alone for a minute ever since their return from the hospital yesterday, and Sam never was one who took lightly towards being hovered over anyway.

And me, well I was in a bad mood because everybody else around me was in a bad mood, and you know what they say; that shit is contagious.

Besides, both Brooke and Sam have been tugging at either of my arms all day long, playing this weird, messed up tug of war as they tried to pull me to side with them. And although I've retained my defiant neutrality up until now, it was getting harder and harder to hold up with the constant arguing and nagging that had been swarming around my head all day.

But to be completely honest with you, I was starting to get tired of both Brooke and Sam walking around moping around the house all day long waiting for one to give into the other when in reality they both knew that they were just too damn stubborn for that to ever happen.

I mean, I'd given them a bit of leeway; what I thought had been a more than appropriate slot of time to recover from the fact that Sam had only just gotten out of the emergency room yesterday, but of course, considering the fact that Sam was fine… well, as fine as she could be, Brooke was fine, and their visit had gratefully ended up proving to be nothing more than a precautionary false alarm well I think that now was as good a time as any to hack away at this tension before it reached out strangled every last one of us.

I walked into the living room. Sam was sitting against the recliner with her feet up and head back with her iPod in her ears and her feet tapping slightly on their own accord in conjunction with the bass drum of the song that she was listening to which was so loud that I could hear it clear as day from all the way across the room.

Brooke meanwhile was sitting across from Sam, a bunch of papers and sketches strewn amongst the couch, the table, the floor… anywhere that she could find room really as she continued to impress me with her ability to do all of the work that she was with only one arm to work with.

I watched as she snuck occasional furtive glances up towards Sam and I could tell by the way that Sam's muscles tensed every time Brook looked over at her that she knew exactly what Brooke was trying to do, however, she remained defiant in her attempts to keep from acknowledging it by refusing to open her eyes and raising the volume up on her iPod every couple of minutes or so.

"Sam!" Brooke shouted after a couple more moments of silence where the only thing that could be heard was a harsh techno beat emitting from behind the ear buds… and Brooke hated techno more than life itself, which I'm pretty sure Sam knew…

I guess that was just the last straw for poor Brooke.

But Sam didn't respond, and I couldn't be so sure whether she had genuinely not heard Brooke or if she had simply decided to ignore her.

"Samantha!" Brooke yelled again even louder the second time.

Brooke waited for a second, giving Sam some time to respond, but when she never did, Brooke finally lost it, crumpling a large piece of scrap paper up into a tight ball and hurling it across the room where it flew gracefully through the air for a second or two before landing right on target square in the center of Sam's forehead; bouncing off of her skin before rolling across the ground below.

"Ow; what Brooke?" Sam asked harshly as she ripped the headphones out of her ears and sat up straight in order to glare at Brooke.

"Do you plan on being able to hear by the time you turn 20?" Brooke asked as Sam rolled her eyes sarcastically at the comment.

"Do you mind lowering that a little bit, I'm trying to get some work done over here?" Brooke asked Sam, who immediately upon her request, simply stood up and began her journey out of the living room.

"Whatever," She mumbled, walking straight to the coat closet by the front door, pulling out her shoes and a jacket, creating the bizarre illusion that she was planning on leaving the house.

"And where are you going exactly?" Brooke asked, apparently getting the same impression that I was as Sam pulled her keds onto her feet and her jacket over her shoulders; bundling up so securely that she looked like she was preparing for an expedition out into the Arctic… well at least she was being safe about it.

"You said you needed to get some work done, I figured I'd just leave you alone for a while."

When Brooke gave Sam one of those 'are you seriously thinking what I think your thinking' looks, I knew that was it; but Sam just rolled her eyes and kept talking, "Come on Brooke, I'm just gonna go down the block, I'll be right back. I just want to get out for a minute and get some fresh air."

"Sam, I really don't think that that's a good idea, not after yesterday." Brooke said trying to sound as calm as possible even though I could tell, and I knew Sam could tell by the undertone in her voice that the only thing that she wanted to do was get up and scream about how Sam could even think of doing something so stupid.

"Ugh, I'll be fine Brooke!" Sam insisted, making no move to pull of her winter suit like Brooke had just so kindly suggested.

"Sam!" Brooke shouted when the girl blatantly ignored everything that Brooke had just told her and made a move for the front door…

At this point, I knew that the winner of this argument was ultimately going to be decided based on whoever gave in first.

Excuse me while I walk myself over to California, finish making this movie that hasn't even started filming yet, and then walk back over… maybe then one of them would have given in… probably not though.

"What?" Sam shot back, raising her voice so that it was slightly louder than Brooke's had been in an effort to secure her dominant stance. "I'm fine, Brooke. Didn't you hear Dr. Miller yesterday? She said that all I needed was a little bit of rest, and I've been doing absolutely nothing but resting for the past 24 hours! I'll be fine walking ten feet and back. I thought that the entire point of bringing me home to begin with was so that I could go somewhere other than a hospital?" Sam retaliated quickly without a single moment's hesitation in her voice.

She was good.

"No!" Brooke shouted back to her with even less of a time gap between her words and Sam's than Sam had.

She was better.

"The whole point of you coming home from the hospital was so that you can recover and try to get better in a familiar environment. We were thinking more along the lines of in your bedroom, not outside in the 40 degree weather. How do you expect to stop being sick if you keep running around doing things like this, Sam?"

"I'm going." Sam disregarded Brooke's question and opened the front door.

"Samantha, if you walk out that front door, I swear…" But Sam didn't listen; in fact, she was already gone.

Brooke glared open mouthed towards the door for a moment before she turned back to me and made the move to stand up, looking as if she was prepared to go out there and drag Sam back into this house if she had to.

"Wait Brooke," I stopped her, "Let me get her. I'll take her around the block in my car a few times and let her cool off and get rid of all of that pent up energy. She'll be fine, okay? I'll take good care of her."

Brooke stared at me, and for a moment, I was sure that she was staring me up and down thinking of the best possible way to kill me for simply making the suggestion which to her, was the equivalent to blasphemy.

"I'll talk to her Brooke. I think she just needs some space. It'll be okay."

"I want her back here in one hour." Brooke told me, narrowing her eyes so that I knew when she said one hour, she did not mean sixty one minutes.

"And I swear to God Julian, if she's not back here, I'm calling 911."

I wouldn't put it passed her.

"I will be, I promise." I told her, looking down at my watch so that I could get an idea as to what that hour time frame was looking like, setting my alarm so that I knew that if I heard it beeping at 1:21 p.m., and I wasn't back in this house, I was screwed.

"Sam!" I rushed through the front door in order to catch up with the girl who I found to be already traveling down the length of the side walk, hands in pockets and shoulders scrunched up against the cold weather.

She turned to look at me; she didn't say anything but I instantly knew the second our eyes met what she was thinking; that I better not be coming out here to tell her to turn around and get back into the house.

"How about me and you go for a drive?" I suggested, watching as she slowly relaxed her face and nodded her head around the answer.

"Sure," She mumbled, sauntering back over towards the house as I pulled my car keys out of my pocket and helped her up into my truck.

"So… where are we going?" Sam asked after a couple more minutes of silence in which I made my way down the long drag of main road that cut through Tree Hill that lead towards the east side shopping district.

"Well, you said you needed to walk around to clear your head so I figured we'd go over to the River Walk for a while. Besides, we can't go too far; Brooke threatened that she'd have you out on an Amber Alert if you weren't back home in an hour."

To my surprise, a small grin appeared on the corners of Sam's mouth as she looked embarrassed down towards her hands.

"Sounds about right."

"So… any particular reason you were so eager to get away from the house today, Sam?" I eased my way into a confrontation without being too awkward about it.

She shrugged her shoulders, indicating to me that no matter how hard I could have tried at being casual, Sam still didn't really want to talk about it; but she swallowed her pride and answered my question anyway.

"I'm just getting tired of being stuck around inside of the house all day, I guess."

I gave her a slight smile and nodded my head up and down slowly. "What, the emergency room didn't count as getting out yesterday?"

She smirked but still wouldn't look at me, so I eased up. "I can imagine that it gets pretty boring after a while."

"Yeah, and Brooke doesn't give me any leeway."

"Hey, come on, you know how worried she is about you, and besides look what happened the last time she gave you an inch; you ended up in the hospital, and trust me, I know that the doctor said it was nothing and all, but just think of how much you scared Brooke yesterday Sam. And you know, that fear never just goes away… Brooke is doing everything that she's doing to you because she wants to see you get better, and I know that she never wants to feel the same way that she felt yesterday when she found out that you collapsed at school because Sam, I never want to feel that way ever again either."

The thought alone was enough to bring back the horrible memories that snaked through my insides of when Haley had given me a call at around 3:30 yesterday afternoon telling me that Sam had collapsed at school and Brooke had come to take her to the emergency room.

And after four unsuccessful calls to Brooke, and even a couple to Sam, I had really began to panic, my mind racing, telling me that the only reason that Brooke wasn't calling me back was because it was really, really bad and she was too distraught…

I had just gotten myself all packed up and ready to march over to the ER and figure out just what the hell was going on when I got that saving grace phone call from Brooke telling me that she was sorry but she forgot that she shut her phone off and that Sam was just fine.

And sure, the relief that Brooke's words had given me was insurmountable, but the terror that I'd felt right before that was way more than I could stand. I just knew that for Brooke, it must have been about ten times worse.

"I know," Sam mumbled in response to my little speech. "I'm not mad at Brooke Julian, really, I'm just mad at… at… _this_."

I nodded my head. I think that it was pretty safe to say that I understood a little bit at least.

"I'm pretty pissed at all of this too."

The smallest of laughs escaped her lips as she turned her head out of the window, watching the emerging river line as it came into view over the top of a steep hill.

"I'm just sick of being sick I guess." She said, speaking out to the scenery in front of her.

"Yeah," I agreed, "Me too… But you know what, that just means that you have to get better faster, and you know that means not overworking yourself or pushing yourself over the edge into things that you know you're not quite up to doing yet… like barging out of the house on Brooke."

Her cheeks flushed the slightest shade of red as she looked back down towards her feet, the look on her face telling me that she was almost ashamed of the way she'd been behaving lately. But that wasn't really what I was going for with my little motivational speech. I never wanted her to ever feel bad about wanting to live her life, I wanted her to be proud of how determined she was to let nothing get in her way of being who she wanted to be; not even this god-awful disease.

"Hey," I called her attention as she looked up at me. "I know this all sucks pretty bad now, but trust me, it'll get better."

"It's got to," She mumbled as I threw my car into park. "How can it get any worse, right?"

I nodded and watched as Sam slowly began to unbuckle her seatbelt. The fact of the matter was, I could think of a lot of ways that it could be worse, I just didn't _want_ to think about any of those ways, so I pushed it aside and quickly changed the subject.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah," Sam smiled to me finally climbing out of the car. I quickly glanced back down at my watch; we had 49 minutes to enjoy ourselves and forget about our troubles for a while.

Deciding that we'd better take advantage of every last one of them, I followed her out of the car and lead her down the block of Tree Hill's shopping district, walking through all of the decorations as the street lit up with the orange and red leaves dancing through the air where they combined perfectly with the Thanksgiving décor that lined the town.

I found myself strolling casually behind Sam as she glanced through all of the windows of the small shops that aligned up and down the streets, not daring to go into a single one of them mainly due to the fact that she had a reputation on this side of the town for one reason or another, of course, Sam didn't exactly look as ominous as she had before when she'd survived off of straight thievery, but that's not really the point…

She occupied herself with window arrangements and display cases for a good several minutes until the stretch of small locally owned businesses ended and Sam rounded the corner onto the docks overlooking the river.

"Hey, isn't that Haley?" Sam's inquiry caught my attention as I looked up and followed Sam's pointed finger over towards the ledge of the walkway where Haley was hanging over the railing looking out amongst the water below with a strange expression on her face that told me that whatever it was that she was thinking about, it was something important.

"Haley!" Sam called over to her, rushing the last couple of paces over to her as the older woman snapped her head around in response to hearing her name being called.

I must say, the look of relief that crossed over Haley's features the moment she saw Sam approaching her with a huge smile on her face could have even rivaled my own after I'd fallen to the ground with literal tears in my eyes when Brooke called me yesterday to tell me that Sam was fine.

I knew that Haley had been beating herself up over what happened to Sam yesterday ever since the woman had witnessed Sam collapse in the hallway right outside of her classroom; trust me, I'd been with Brooke for the first phone call Haley placed with her… and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and… well you get the picture. And despite all of the reassuring that Brooke tried to dish out towards the woman, I don't think it helped in the slightest.

As a matter of fact, I was starting to think that nothing could have helped ease her conscience except seeing for herself that Sam was just fine.

I guess it's a pretty damn good thing then that we'd ended up here.

"Why aren't you in school?" Sam questioned as Haley pulled her into a more ferocious hug than was probably necessary, holding onto the girl tightly for a long time as if she was afraid that letting her go would mean letting her slip away.

"I took the day off." Haley smiled down at her, finally releasing Sam, sinking down onto the park bench behind them.

"Not because of me, I hope." Sam told her, sliding down next to Haley, looking kind of embarrassed that she'd worried Haley so much.

"No," Haley told her, but her response came out much too quickly to convince me that it was the truth. Of course, I wasn't so sure that Sam knew that Haley had been obsessively calling Brooke by the hour to check up on her so for the sake of holding off an argument, I let it slide.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" Haley didn't hesitate before asking, eager for some confirmation to settle down her building nerves.

"Better." She nodded, delivering just that confirmation to Haley. "I just needed to get out of the house real quick, Brooke's kind of Nazi-ing it up right now…"

"Eh, you know she's just worried about you." Haley told her, echoing the exact same words I had delivered to Sam in my car only about a half hour ago now.

"I know," Sam shrugged, probably getting pretty tired of hearing this lecture over and over again.

"And you know the best way that you can prove to Brooke that she's got nothing to worry about is to go ahead and get better. So when we tell you that, just know that we're all just looking out for you, okay?"

"Sounds like a deal to me." Sam assured her, eager to prove the point that she was more than ready to go ahead and put this whole experience behind her.

"Hey, I know it may seem annoying now Sam, but one day when you're a mom, you'll understand what we're talking about, and you'll realize what lengths you'll go to just to protect your kids."

Sam almost scoffed at the words; I could see it in her face, the thought alone of her ever being a mom seeming almost humoring to her. Of course, deep down inside, I could tell that Sam and I were thinking the same thing as much as we didn't want to…

Yeah sure, she'll understand; if she ever even has the opportunity to be a mom…

"Really Sam, I mean it…" I guess Haley had noticed that same look in Sam's eyes as well… of course, it was hard to miss, it had been so pronounced.

"Okay," Haley spared the need for Sam to come up with something more to say, standing up from the bench and smoothing out the wrinkles lining her clothes from being hunched over the dock of the River Walk all day long. "I have to go pick up Jamie from school, he gets out early today; first day of Thanksgiving break… kill me now." She added with a smile that the girl gently returned.

"We should get going too, Sam," I told her, instinctively looking down at my watch, surprised to find how fast the time had flown by when it revealed that I only had fifteen minutes left to walk Sam back to the car and drive her back home before Brooke got on the phone with Tree Hill's finest to put Sam's face on all of the milk cartons in the state of North Carolina.

"Okay, I'll see you later Haley." Sam called as the older woman wrapped her into one last reassuring hug; a good thing considering poor Haley looked like she needed some reassuring right about now. Still, I couldn't help but notice how Haley held onto Sam a little bit tighter than she ever would have otherwise…

"I'll see you later Sam, and remember what I said, alright?"

Sam nodded her head, a silent promise to Haley as she turned to wave before the two of us headed in the opposite direction back towards my truck.

"Alright Sam; let's get you out of here before we have the SWAT team swooping down on us in helicopters, huh?"

"Ha, yeah," Sam nodded her head in agreement. "I'm not really down to watch you getting arrested for kidnapping me today anyway."

"You and me both kid, you and me both." I reached out and wrapped my arm around Sam's shoulder, pulling her over in the direction of my car. "But you know, I have a feeling that if they don't come soon and put us all way, it'll be a damn miracle."


	28. Remember to Feel Real

**Heyyy, so I told you guys I've been on a writing roll lately, right? I'm rolling out chapters like rapid fire hahaha. Anyway, I've been in a good mood lately so I wrote this chapter solely to put all of you guys in good moods too so enjoy! And thank you sooo much to everyone reading and especially everybody reviewing. It's eternally appreciated, really, you have no idea how excited it makes me to actually see people read this story so thank you!**

Chapter 28: Remember to Feel Real

**Wednesday, November 23****rd****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I woke up early this morning; probably a little bit earlier than I actually would have preferred, especially since I hadn't managed to fall asleep last night until well past midnight… but I couldn't complain too much considering these days it seemed that I was positively made of time.

I walked slowly on the balls of my feet as I made my way across the bedroom, attempting to be as silent as possible amidst all of the loose floorboards and the door that emitted a high pitched squeak every time you opened it…

I stood in the doorframe; sneaking a casual second glance back over my shoulder towards Julian, who I was pleased to find still safely asleep on the bed behind me confirming that my goal of a quiet journey had been successful, leaving me safe to slip safely through the door and into the hallway.

Stretching my arms high above my head, I sauntered over into the kitchen and flipped the pre-prepared coffee pot on, listening as the instant bubbling of hot water and coffee grinds melting together to create my delicious cup of golden delight filled the otherwise silent house.

Blinking my eyes a couple of times, I quickly adjusted them to the change in the lighting pattern as a couple rays from the still-rising sun darted out from behind the curtains that covered the window above the sink.

I used the little bit of sunlight that I had to help guide me through the halls where I managed to sneak stealthily out of the front door, feeling an instant change underneath my bare feet as I went from standing on the warm hardwood floors of my hallway to the freezing concrete walk of my front yard.

I shuddered involuntarily underneath the chill of the late November morning air and subconsciously hiked my robe a little bit higher up on my shoulders as I bent forward and reached out a hand to wipe the thin layer or frost and morning dew off of the newspaper that was already resting at the edge of my stoop before picking it up and retreating back inside to the warmth.

But despite the slight breeze that had traveled through the night and somehow managed to find its way into Tree Hill, North Carolina, the fact remained that today was the first day that I had seen in a while where the temperatures just bordered at that level where it was comfortable enough for me to sit outside on my balcony and watch the sun rise up from behind the edge of the river, so I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity.

I gathered my things, managing to balance my coffee cup and newspaper while simultaneously sliding the door to the back deck open with my one free arm before wrapping a blanket up around my shoulders and sinking down into my favorite patio chair.

The sunlight was just bright enough for me to be able to reflect the small lettering of the newspaper back into my eyes as I sipped greedily at the warmth within my coffee cup and read all about the latest budget crisis that the state of North Carolina was facing, my eyes traveling steadily deeper into the paper as the sun grew higher and higher so that some of its residual warmth managed to bounce off of my face until eventually it even grew too hot for me to be wearing a blanket, forcing me to take it off and toss it back into the corner.

Throughout the morning, small fishing boats and trudgers swam casually past my balcony view as the smell of high tide began teeming into my senses and the gradual heat of the morning filled me with a much needed sense of peace.

I skimmed quickly through the Better Living section of the newspaper, barely even looking at the movie time tables or the crossword puzzles or the comics before I flipped onto the very last page and a small section in the Celebrity Gossip column caught my eye.

It was barely a blurb; a brief paragraph squeezed into the bottom left hand corner. In fact, I had almost missed it completely; probably would have if I didn't see Sam's name jump out amongst the words and hit me square in the face.

"Critics Question Local Fashion Superstar's Motivation for Adoption" by Gary Reynolds.

Oh yeah, I knew Gary Reynolds alright. A few years ago now when I'd first moved back to Tree Hill, Gary Reynolds stalked my house daily looking for an interview to put in his biweekly celebrity news column until finally I got so fed up with it that I slapped him square across the face.

I had a nasty article written by him published about me at least once a week, but taking a jab at Sam was a new low that I wasn't about to tolerate.

Narrowing my eyes, I looked back down towards the paper. Squinting at the tiny words, I read –

"Close sources have confirmed that Brooke Davis, 23, of Tree Hill, famous for building the mediocre fashion line Clothes Over Bro's has officially petitioned to adopt sixteen year old Samantha Walker whom she has been fostering for about a year. However, some critics of Davis have openly claimed that she is using the adoption of her foster daughter, who was diagnosed with leukemia last month, to merely gain publicity for her company which coincidentally has been seeing a rapid decline in sales since early last year. Government officials have assured us that the adoption process will include a standard evaluation and interview of both Davis and Walker where they will undoubtedly investigate these claims. Davis has yet to comment on any of the above accusations."

Comment on the above accusations my ass.

I rolled my eyes at the article and crumpled it up into a tiny ball before throwing it aggressively into the corner.

Sure, it was a stupid article written by a stupid blood hound with a personal vendetta, but how the hell was I supposed to read that and not immediately begin to second guess myself? How was I not supposed to think that maybe he had a point, maybe I _was_ taking care of Sam for reasons that were purely selfish, maybe I _was_ totally unfit to be her mother...

But then I started thinking about Sam; the way we used to be compared to the way we are now; how we had evolved, how we had bonded, how we somehow managed to strengthen ourselves into the people that we've become; the people that we never could have been without each other.

I mean, look at Sam; she's so young, she's just a kid; hell, if you really look at it, I'm really just a kid too, but in the long run, the fact of the matter was that it still took us this long to embellish on the moments such as this; that moment where you realize what it's like to truly love and to be loved back.

And now that I'm finally beginning to truly understand what that feeling of holding a child that's as good as yours in your arms is like; being able to provide her with some safety amongst the chaos while embracing the affection she'd been denied for so long… well pardon my French but Gary Reynolds can suck my dick because there isn't a single doubt in my mind that Sam and I had been meant for each other all along.

"You're looking mighty pensive this morning."

I'd been so wrapped up in my thinking about me and Sam that I jumped a little bit, the remaining coffee that was gathered at the bottom of my coffee cup spilling over the edge causing the luke-warm beverage to drip steadily down the back of my hand.

Julian was standing within the frame of the open sliding door leading out to the balcony, looking slightly foolish standing there wearing nothing more than a slightly oversized pair of black boxer-briefs.

"I was just thinking, that's all."

"About what?" He took a step out onto the balcony, walking slowly outwards until he was right in front of me, so close that I could see the goose bumps as they began to form along his skin.

"Us," I told him, a dreamy smile forming on my face at the mere thought. "Me and you… Sam…"

"Is that a good 'us' or a bad 'us'?" He asked me, but his voice was laced with a sense of loose humor so that I knew that he knew what I had meant when I said it.

"It's a really good us." I assured him with a small nod as he flashed me that famous grin that melted my heart every time I saw it.

"Well in that case…" He reached down, tucking one arm under my knee and the other across my back, lifting me upward in one swift motion, being extra careful not to budge my shoulder as he held me in the air, swung around, and sat down in the seat that I had been occupying not ten seconds ago, pulling me close up into his lap… "You won't mind if I steal your seat then."

"Not if I get to sit here instead." I assured him, burying my body into his chest, allowing my head to move slowly up and down with the motions of his breathing as he inhaled and exhaled in a steady pattern.

It was a long time that we sat like that; no words spoken between us, no words needed to be spoken between us. All that we needed was the sounds of the early morning as it continued to form around us, and for a while, that was all that we got until finally, Julian became the first to break the silence.

"You know, when I woke up and you weren't there, I got kind of scared that you ditched." He joked, reaching his right hand around to weave through my hair just the way that I liked it.

"Yeah… in my own house with all of my stuff, including my daughter, inside… You couldn't be so lucky." He let out a short, hearty laugh that I felt originate somewhere deep within the depths of his chest against my head.

I looked up; a small grin was permanently affixed upon his face so that I knew that he was looking down and acknowledging the fact that I had just subconsciously called Sam my daughter… I guess it was just all of that thinking I had been doing about the three of us being a real family finally taking its toll.

"You know I check on her this morning before I came out… Sam, I mean." He told me, clarifying himself even though I'd already figured who he'd been talking about. "She was asleep, I let her be… I'm pretty sure that she was just fine."

I took a deep breath, nuzzling my head deeper against his muscular chest; a silent thank you towards him for being such an amazing guy. But for once in my life, I wasn't worried about Sam this morning.

"Sam will be okay, don't worry about her." The words sounded foreign coming out of my mouth, but in another aspect, they also sounded strangely freeing.

"I'll always worry about her… and you. You two are my girls, after all." I took a deep breath as if I was trying to simply inhale his words as he spoke them.

"You know, I really like being your girl."

"That's good, because I'm starting to get quite fond of being your guy." I ran my hands smoothly up and down his arms, the goose bumps on his skin feeling bumpy and rough against my smooth palms.

"You're freezing, Julian." I told him, genuine concern emerging from the base of my voice as I recognized the fact that he was sitting outside in his underwear in the middle of November.

"Yeah…" He breathed out the word slowly after a brief pause. "Maybe we should go inside, we're both gonna catch our death out here."

"Yeah maybe…" I said, "But it's so nice out here." I commented, becoming hypnotized by the vision of the sun reflecting brightly across the smooth surface of the river below me.

"It is," He agreed, "So I guess you're just gonna have to warm me up."

I laughed at his words because at first I thought that he had been joking; but when I felt his soft fingertips graze across the underside of my chin, gently lifting my face up towards him allowing him to lower his lips onto mine, I knew that he had been serious.

"Julian," I laughed my word into his mouth, "We can't do this out here."

Of course, my motions completely contradicted my words as I subconsciously repositioned my body so that our chests were pressed firmly against each other and my legs wrapped awkwardly around his waist.

"We already are." He mumbled his words so low that I could practically feel the vibrations of his throat reverberate into my own.

"But what if somebody sees us?" The mere idea was rebellious enough that the adrenaline junkie in me began roaring with approval.

Of course, the chance of anybody seeing us from this high up on the edge of a river was slim to none, but still… if anybody did I would probably be mortified to death.

"Gary Reynolds is already writing nasty articles about me in the paper today… what if somebody sees and he finds out."

"Brooke, are you really gonna think about Gary Reynolds right now?" Julian asked me, cupping my shoulders in his hand with a firm gentleness, collecting a handful of my robe and gently sliding it down my arms; the endorphins currently running rampant in my body making it so that I even forgot the dull pain that was pulsing through my still-recovering shoulder.

"I guess not," I mumbled back to him, leaning forward to reconnect our lips, effectively silencing myself before I had the opportunity to run my mouth anymore than I already was.

I squeezed my body more firmly into his, I shrugged my good shoulder backwards until my robe finally fell from my body, blanketing across the floor, leaving my one free arm to reach behind him and latch onto the back of his head for support, running my fingers through the soft prickle that was the spiky stubbles that had been growing from Julian's head ever since his impromptu haircut on Friday.

I felt the sweat begin to glisten like a mosaic across my exposed back; the cold air colliding forcefully with the warm heat of my body, creating the perfect temperature to help sustain me as the passion swept between the ever-narrowing cracks between our two bodies.

"I don't think you realize how much I love you." His words lingered on my lips, tickling them for a brief moment before passing through to anchor us together as we began to move in a single, unified unit.

"I think I have an idea." I groaned lightly, tilting my head down to assault his jugular, feeling the steady pounding as my teeth scraped delicately across the pulse in his neck, keeping perfect timing of our motions together, the scene creating a portrait of sorts that could have fooled even us into believing we were back to a time when our sanities had still been intact.

From somewhere within the depths of the house the sound of my alarm turning on signified the arrival of seven a.m.; the radio, automatically tuned to the AM Weather and Traffic station filling our ears through the still-open sliding doors, marking our time like an infinite metronome.

"And today all across North Carolina's eastern coast, temperatures in the upper 60s to the lower or even mid-70s will continue the streak of what's shaping up to be North Carolina's warmest November in years."

I vaguely listened to the weatherman's confirmation that today was bound to be a perfect day before I blocked the incessant chatter out of my head all together in an effort to remain more focused upon keeping the timing of me and Julian's rhythmic movements against each other constant.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, the message of the unknown whether man lingered; the confirmation of everything that I already knew…

Today was the day that something great was going to happen, the day that we finally lifted the dark veil that has been clouding over us for so long now, if only for a little while.

Today was going to be a good day.

* * *

**SAM**

"Come on, Sam! Up, now!"

Those are the exact words that I found myself being awoken to bright and early on this beautiful Wednesday morning… real nice, huh?

"What?" I let out a long, exaggerated groan of annoyance just to make sure that Brooke knew exactly how pissed off I was that she was waking me up right now.

I rolled over in my bed just as the sound of my bedroom door slowly opening filled my ears and decided to chance a peek, cracking my eyes open just a sliver, finding a pleasant surprise in front of me when I saw that it wasn't Brooke standing in my doorway waking me up so early in the morning, but instead, Peyton.

Squinting against the bright sunlight that peaked through my blinds and practically burned holes through my dark-adjusted eyes, I snuck a glance over towards my clock…

Oh crap, not as early in the morning as I initially thought… Oh well, you could still consider 12:47 early afternoon right? Give me some credit; at least I'd gotten one part of that equation correct.

"What are you tired or something?"

I took a sharp inhale, yawning as I sat up in my bed and stretched my arms high above my head.

"Not really, I was just testing out the new sheets." Good to know a sarcastic comment was the first thing that came out of my mouth this morning… Oh well, at least I'm consistent.

"Aw, you're hilarious." Peyton told me with fake amusement as she advanced further into my room and I finally mustered up the energy to roll sideways out of my bed, groping blindly for solid ground with my feet before finally standing up, curving my spine satisfyingly in a steep stretch.

"So what are you doing here so early?" I asked, plucking a few loose clothes up off of my bedroom floor with the intention of wearing them whether they were dirty or not.

"Sam it's 1:00 in the afternoon," She corrected me, letting out an audible and authentic laugh at my inability to distinguish between the times of the day. "Besides, everybody's outside waiting for you. Brooke's got a nice little surprise headed your way today."

I raised my eyebrows, slightly intrigued to find out what exactly Peyton's idea of a surprise was as I tried to decide what was more bizarre; the fact that everybody was standing around outside waiting for my lazy ass to wake up or the fact that I had some sort of mysterious surprise waiting for me for when I got there.

"Cool," I tried to respond casually despite the fact that I was eager to see what it was exactly that was in store for me behind the comforts of my bedroom walls as I finally exited the room with Peyton following close behind, rounding immediately into the kitchen, not really caring about the fact that I was still wearing my pajamas…

As it turned out, the crowd that had slowly been gathering in my kitchen as I slept peacefully right down the hall was slightly larger than I had initially expected… actually, make that a lot larger.

The whole of the small group had jammed themselves into the kitchen, talking and laughing animatedly amongst each other, preoccupied with their own little activities so that I was given a brief grace-period in which nobody even noticed I had entered the room, effectively allowing me to collect myself and attempt to piece together just how big of a surprise we were talking here before anybody actually said anything to me.

Brooke and Haley had their backs to me, leaning across the counter top in order to talk to Nathan and Lucas, whose hands were full with little baby Sawyer whom he was bouncing up and down softly against his hip as Julian chased Jamie around the small island in the center of the kitchen, both of them fully immersed in what looked to be a pretty intense game of tag, or whatever it was that they were playing.

Jamie sprung suddenly from behind the counter, exposing himself to me in full so that I was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was wearing what appeared to be… wait… was that… a bathing suit?

Yup, it definitely was… I don't know, maybe Haley had let Jamie dress himself this morning and just didn't have the heart to tell the poor kid that, seeing how it was now the tail end of November, there wasn't a chance in hell that he would be swimming anytime soon…

But still, something very suspicious was going on around here…

"What's up?" I decided to announce my presence, the greeting ringing throughout the room resulting in all eyes snapping up to face me at once, a chorus of "hey's" and "how are you's" filling my ears as everyone in the room turned to greet me all at once and Brooke stepped away from the counter to approach me.

"Hey," She spoke with a sly smile on her face, standing directly in front of me but offering nothing more than that, leaving me just as confused as to what the hell was going on here as I had been before if not even more so.

"What's going on?" I asked, trying to arrange my voice to sound as casual as humanly possible even though I was pretty sure that I'd allowed some of my anxious curiosity to leak through my voice by mistake.

"Well, I was thinking this morning Sam; after yesterday and the day before and you know, with everything that's been going on around here, well… I know I've been hard on you, especially when it comes to sitting around this house all day, and I know I haven't been giving you much freedom to move around, so… maybe… I thought that maybe you'd be up for going on a little trip with us all."

She had a hard time getting what she wanted to say out; but the second those final words came out of her ridiculously long run-on sentence, it hardly seemed to matter because I developed instant tunnel vision.

A trip? Did she just say a trip? But seriously though… like, a real trip?

I scrunched my face up so that wrinkles of deep thought bushed across my forehead as I attempted to wrack every crevice of my brain and decide whether Brooke was being serious with me right now, or if I was just on some kind of weird, Candid-Camera type TV show, waiting for a camera crew to jump out from behind the walls and yell "April Fools" or something the second that I told Brooke that I would like nothing more than to go on a trip with her.

I looked over towards Julian. He was grinning shyly up at me, the expression upon his face, combined with the way he kept avoiding my eye contact making me suspicious that he'd slipped some heavy-dose happy pills or something into Brooke's morning coffee… I mean, where else could this idea have come from?

"Where are you going?" I attempted to wrap my mind around the possible options of a destination, but to be completely honest; Jamie walking around my kitchen in his bathing suit was throwing me off a lot.

"Well, I mean, it's a beautiful day outside, I was thinking the beach…"

My body perked visibly upwards at Brooke's words, creating the illusion that I had sprung up five inches in under a millisecond.

I haven't been to a beach since… well, actually, now that I think about it, I haven't been to a beach ever… I mean, I've driven past it a couple of times. Does that count?

"What do you say Sam, are you feeling up to it?"

"Yes!" I literally shouted my reply, so loudly that my voice echoed across the entire kitchen; an impressive feat considering how jam-packed it currently was. "When do we leave?"

"As soon as you're ready to leave Miss "I Sleep Past Noon" now come on, hurry up, we're all waiting for you."

I think that it's pretty safe to say that I have never moved faster than I did at this moment a day in my entire life… a pretty embarrassing admission considering that I'm currently a cancer patient with about half the strength and energy that I used to have…

Needless to say, I was not only ready to leave, but was fresh out the door within fifteen minutes of Brooke yelling at me to hurry my ass up and get ready.

There was so many of us going that we had to pack ourselves into two different cars just so that we could all fit.

Peyton and Lucas wound up in Peyton's Comet so that they could safely store Sawyer away in her car seat, and after a minor melt-down stemming from the fact that Jamie just really wanted to ride in the convertible, Haley gave in to letting him join their car too.

Me, well I found myself squished in the back of Brooke's SUV, finding myself riding bitch-detail seeing as I was the smallest of the bunch, sitting between Haley and Brooke who chatted my ears off throughout the entire half hour ride as Nathan and Julian sat comfortably in the front.

The closer we got, the more perked up in my seat I found myself until eventually, all I was doing was leaning forward to catch a glimpse past Haley's shoulder and out the window so that I made sure that I had the perfect line of vision of the outside scenery, making sure that when the city limits of Wrightsville Beach came into our view, I would be the first one to see it.

I smelled the beach before I ever actually saw it, the strong wind of our open windows filtering the salty scent of the ocean and the sand through the car and straight into our nose's.

As we reached the peak of the hill on top of the Causeway Bridge, the shoreline finally came into my line of vision, and I watched mesmerized as the powerful waves crashed up against the rocks as the sun glistened over the surface of the ocean, making it shimmer so that when the reflection of the light bounced prominently into my eyes, it took everything that I had inside of me to not just jump out of the car now and run straight down there.

This day couldn't have been any more perfect.

I was in such a rush to get of the car when we finally reached the parking lot that I stumbled out the door, straightening myself up against the ideal sight.

In this weather, we might as well have been back in early September. The breeze was cool against my hair, and when I finally did sink my bare feet out into the sand, I was pleased to find that it wasn't so hot that it burned off the soles of my feet, but at the same time, wasn't so cold that I would need my full Eskimo suit on in order to sit with it either.

I stood in the sand right at the center of the entrance to the beach for a while, soaking in that feeling of the tiny grains as they molded their way between my toes while everybody else shuffled between the two cars, grabbing at bags and coolers and umbrellas and everything else they needed to ensure that this day would be absolutely flawless.

"Ready?" Brooke asked, walking up to me, wrapping her good arm around the back of my neck across my shoulders.

I nodded my head so aggressively that I was surprised that it didn't pop off my neck and roll away… of course, at this point I was sure that not even that could ruin this day, so with an excited anticipation, I finally lifted my feet up off of the ground and guided Brooke up the steep hill and onto the beach.

Brooke stayed close at my side the entire time as we rounded the top of the sand-dunes and stood at the crest of the hill for a moment so that the entirety of the beach's vast landscape overwhelmed my vision, and miles upon miles of sand and ocean filled my eyes as far as they could see.

I couldn't help but notice that there weren't many people out on the sand… actually, there were no other people out on the sand, making us look even more ridiculous looking like we were ready for a July day at Miami Beach than we already did…

The local joggers glanced briefly in our direction as they ran past across the boardwalk. The cute couples holding hands and walking across the cusp of the shoreline so that the waves danced across their feet would look back and forth at us, trying hard to make it seem like they weren't staring, but failing when they would immediately turn and whisper something to their partners so that none of us would hear… but it was okay, I mean, I was getting quite used to sticking out like a sore thumb by this point anyway.

I breathed slowly; in and out, in and out, embracing the soft waft of the ocean air as it filtered into and out of my system with every breath as I sat across one Haley's massive picnic-sized blankets right next to Brooke so that we were touching shoulder to shoulder, watching amused as poor Jamie ripped his shirt and shoes off with one fluid motion and headed instantly down to the water, disappointed to find that it was so cold, he couldn't even tolerate sticking his toes in.

We laughed in a synchronized fashion as the boy scurried away from the freezing water and Nathan walked up to us, tossing an official-looking football between his hands.

"Hey, we're gonna go down and play football, who's in?"

"Sorry Nate," Brooke apologized, raising her arm, which was still firmly nestled within the protective covering of her sling, to him indicating silently that if she played football right now, she'd probably just go straight ahead and break her other arm before the first one even had a chance to heal.

"Good call," He shrugged in agreement, "How about you Sam?"

"Nah, I'm good," I told him, "I'll stick to my front row seats." I was still too busy embracing how amazing the feeling of sitting down within the cool sand felt to stand up now.

"Okay… Are you good Julian?" Nathan raised his voice and shouted a few feet to his left where Julian was busy kneeling amongst a large pile of scrap wood and newspaper as he attempted to create a makeshift fire pit, probably seriously regretting his volunteering to be the one to light up the bonfire at this point.

He offered Nathan a sarcastic thumbs up, leaving the man free to lead Lucas, Haley, and Peyton down closer towards where Jamie was still sitting against the point in the sand where the waves broke off and retreated back into the ocean, pouting over the fact that swimming was not a viable option for him right now and instantly began a pick-up game of touch football… of course, I quickly learned that Peyton and Haley were about to embrace any opportunity that they had to tackle their husbands straight into the ground…

I sat with my head against Brooke's shoulder, watching as she held Sawyer under the arms and bounced her feet against the sand.

A couple of times one of them would call back up to us; invite us to join them, tell us to come over there, but we politely declined each time because we were perfect right where we were; the spectators amongst the crowd… it kind of reminded me of when I was younger, watching people walk past me, each one of them clutching to their mother and father, their brothers and sisters, best friends and loved ones…

I can remember thinking that just because were loved, just because they were needed by at least somebody that they were so much better than I was, that they had somehow managed to become one of those lucky few… I used to feel so left out, so lonely, so unloved… and then Brooke happened, and after that I could suddenly watch people walk past me with their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends and loved ones and it didn't seem quite so bad anymore.

I smiled a little bit from underneath the hood of my sweat shirt, subconsciously digging my head deeper into Brooke's shoulder.

We stayed on that beach for a long time; long enough so that we were able to cook both a lunch and a dinner consisting of freshly grilled hot dogs and burgers straight off the bonfire that Julian had successfully procured.

Long enough so that we could listen to Haley play her guitar and premier her latest song while Nathan and Lucas helped Jamie create the largest sand castle I've ever seen and Peyton carried Sawyer down to walk along the crest of the waves, the outline of her daughter's tiny feet kicking excitedly within the water silhouetting back to us behind the fading sun.

Long enough so that by the end of the day, the only light that we had left to guide us was that of the reflective embers bouncing off the fading fire, and I stared mesmerized, heat penetrating through my face as I sat wrapped up in a blanket, watching as a rough breeze swept in the nightfall, marveling over how early the sun sets during that cusp of the winter season, disappointed that it couldn't just stay out a little bit longer to lengthen this perfect day.

We waited for as long as we possibly could, but eventually, it got to the point where the fire could no longer withstand the chill of the night air and it gradually began fading out until it was so dark that we couldn't even see our hands in front of our faces anymore.

We packed our things; Nathan collecting Jamie, who had fallen asleep inside of the moat he had dug around his sand castle over his shoulder before leading the hike back up the dunes and out towards the cars, using only the moonlight to guide our footsteps.

I walked slowly; I couldn't help but think about how upset I was over the fact that the best day that I have ever had in my entire life was coming to an end, but at the same time, how grateful I was for that reminder that even though this world could be a pretty ugly place sometimes, there are always those moments just like this one here, now, that serve as a nice reminder that every once in a while, as long as you looked hard enough, it could be pretty beautiful sometimes too.


	29. The Cost of Living

**Okay, so this is the first chapter of "Part III" so don't freak that I skipped ahead a couple of weeks! **

**And just to let you know, this is Part III of four parts so we are officially down to the second half of this story which of course is exciting. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has stuck around with me while I'm writing this, it means a lot. And just one more thing, I'm gonna throw a little footnote at the end of this chapter that previews this entire upcoming part just because you've all been waiting so patiently so quick warning if you don't want to know skip the little bold section at the end of this chapter. **

**Thanks again to all of you, hope you enjoy.**

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* * *

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Chapter 29: The Cost of Living

**Sunday, December 11th, 2011**

** SAM**

There's been a lot of days that have gone by lately where I'd just straight up forgotten that there was ever really a time that had gone by where I ever really felt alive to begin with, I mean, with all of the shit that has been going on around me lately.

Of course, I can't say that things have been all bad; I don't know, maybe I should be knocking on wood or something before I give myself more bad luck than I already have, but I'm going to risk it this time and say that this past week or so has been going well… well.

At least, as well as a round of chemotherapy can go anyway.

I'd been back in the hospital only a little less than a week; six days to be precise, now pretty deep into the beginning of my second cycle of chemotherapy, and even though my first round of therapy, which has been complete for nearly a month now, had secured the notion of scaring the absolute shit out of me about what was to come next, I think that I ended up setting the standards so high that this round would be just as terrible as the last, that when I started, and it turned out not to be half as bad as the last one had been, I was given a pretty uplifting boost of motivation.

On top of that also stood the miraculous fact that Brooke had taken to giving me a little bit more freedom this time around, more likely than not given from the fact that she has yet to be forced to sit at my bedside and comfort me as I puked my brains out... In fact, she's taken a lot stronger to coming and going in and out of the hospital than I was used to.

Actually, now that I mention Brooke, and her habits of spending a lot more time at home lately, I was, believe it or not, currently sitting up in my hospital room all by myself, my usual cocktail of drugs filtering through my system as I sat in the silence, watching the muted TV while paying attention to the seconds as they ticked by on the clock in front of me as I waited to get disconnected from these God-awful drugs currently chaining me to the wall.

A sudden knock on my door is what ultimately interrupted me from the very important task of twiddling my thumbs together and counting the seconds go by.

I looked up and instantly felt a broad grin flash across my entire face when I saw Julian, who had been in Los Angles ever since the day after Thanksgiving in order to be present for the beginning of his movie's filming, standing in the doorway; a goofy grin plastered on his face and a large bouquet of flowers held between his fumbling hands.

"Julian!" I shouted loudly before Julian could even get a single word out, "You're back from L.A.? How was it?" A rapid slew of questions spat from my mouth before I had the opportunity to filter them out and control myself.

"It was work," Julian shrugged casually in his classic attempt at trying to be smooth as he sauntered deeper into my room.

"Yeah sure, a week long stint in Los Angeles, it must have been tough." I joked with him.

"You won't believe what they made me do, Samson," Julian sighed to me, the tone in his voice letting me know that he was fully intending upon playing off of the joke that I had just thrown to him. "I had to stay on the beach _all day_." He threw up his hands in mock exasperation. "I got so tan, it's crazy, I could have gotten sunburn; what the hell were they thinking?"

"You're an ass." I joked, laughing at his sarcastic sense of humor, which I know for a fact that he'd only recently developed thanks to the fact that he'd been hanging around both me and Brooke for way too long.

"But really, how was L.A.?"

"It sucked without you." He told me, dropping the pitch of his voice down an octave so that he sounded more serious this time around than he had before.

"It better have." I approved of his answer, my face beaming.

"So…" I told him, rapidly changing the swing of the conversation, my eyes rolling away from Julian's into an innocent smirk so that he knew that I was about to ask for something. "Did you bring me anything?"

He shrugged his shoulders up into his jaw and scrunched his face as if to silently ask me what the hell I thinking, believing that he would bring me something back from his beach vacation while I sat in a hospital bed and got chemotherapy drugs drilled directly into my bloodstream.

"Me?" He asked, pointing his index finger innocently at his chest. "Bring you something? Now why the hell would I ever want to do that?"

He was good at making me squirm but his sarcasm told me that he did indeed have something for me hidden somewhere within the depth of his pockets. Of course, whatever it was, I would have to wait until he was done messing around with me to find out.

"Are you serious?" I asked him, feeling my face fall with mock disappointment, "You have to bring me something; it's like… an unwritten rule."

"That's not true." He said, walking over to the edge of the bedside table in order to lay the flowers, which I wasn't so sure were for me or for Brooke, across the wooden counter top.

"Whatever, I'm gonna go on Brooke's computer tonight and post all over the internet all about how Julian Baker, big time movie producer, doesn't care about kids with cancer."

"Ugh, fine, here, let me dig through my bag here… I might be able to find you a pack of gum or something… you know, authentic Los Angeles Trident." I smiled up at him in eager anticipation, craning my neck upwards trying to catch a better view of the inside of the laptop bag wrapped around his chest that he was currently digging through in an effort to see what he was going to take out of his it before he actually did.

Of course, I really would have been just fine with a pack of gum, I had been too lazy to get up and get out of bed to brush my teeth this morning anyway, but when Julian pulled a small box out his bag that was definitely much larger than any pack of gum I've ever seen, well, you know, I'll sure as hell be fine with whatever that was too.

"What is it?" I finally asked, my curiosity getting the better of me as Julian shuffled the small gift, which looked to be wrapped up in yesterday's newspaper, between his hands.

"Oh crap, this? No, you weren't supposed to see this, it's for my other family, you can't have it." He continued messing around with me long after I'd thought the joke to be over, making the move to stuff my present back into his duffle bag, but before he could, I extended my flattened palm over towards him and put a serious look on my face.

"Shut up and hand it over, Baker."

He grinned and finally placed the light box down into my open hand. I shook it slightly with anticipated curiosity before tearing at the makeshift wrappings eagerly, quickly revealing a shiny silver apple emblazoned across the clean white box of a brand new iPod.

"Woah, thanks Julian!" I pulled the small black device out of the box, flipping it between my fingers so that my face reflected off of its shiny backside, giving me the illusion that I was positively glowing.

"Yeah well, I found it on the floor so…" He continued playing the modest card towards me as I turned the iPod on and shuffled through the music library which I quickly found to be already full with the classics, my favorites, and I couldn't help but notice some of Brooke's favorites as well.

"You put music on it already."

"Yeah… well, I asked your mom what you liked so I can't take full credit for that. She did mention something about being sick of you stealing her iPod from her all the time." He smirked as my heart fluttered briefly in my chest like it did every time somebody acknowledged Brooke as my mother, but I'm not sure that he noticed; I think he was too busy glancing about the room, finally noticing that, speaking of Brooke, she was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is Brooke anyway?"

I shrugged in response to his question, still unable to take my eyes or my mind off of my brand new toy as I continued to shuffle my way through it.

"I think she went home to go get something to eat." I said as Julian sat himself down into the chair next to my bed, dropping his bag accidentally so that a couple of items stored within it spilled out.

"Oooo, do you have any pictures?" I asked, pointing with a sudden excitement to his Blackberry, finally discarding the iPod in anticipation, watching as Julian grabbed his phone and began instantly scanning through it.

"I may have one or two in here."

He spent a couple of seconds glaring down at the LCD screen in front of him with wistful concentration upon his face that contorted into a look of success before he flipped the screen over towards my direction, where a view from over a balcony atop a steep cliff that was overlooking a grand city with the sun setting over the background appeared before me so that it I suddenly felt as if I was staring at a postcard.

"That's the view from my apartment." Julian explained to me as my jaw dropped in awe of what Julian got to watch every single night that he was in L.A.

"That's cool," I told him after I'd looked at the picture for a long time. "I've always wanted to see L.A."

"I'll take you," Julian replied eagerly, barely a second's gap in between our sentences. "As soon as you get better, Samson, I promise; it will be the first thing that we do, go to L.A. You'll love it there, Sam, you really will."

I smiled and nodded in response to his offer, but I couldn't bring myself to flash him anything larger than a smirk, the genuineness that had been in my face before leaving with a rapid suddenness.

Of course I knew what Julian was trying to do here; the thing was, I'd already been through this with myself time and time again, and I'd learned a long time ago that if there was any real guarantee that skipping town was going to set any one of us free again than I probably would have peaced out along that open road a long time ago.

"Hey," He called me back to attention, instantly noticing that something was wrong, because as it turned out, as good as I was at hiding things from them before, I could no longer disguise my feelings from either him or Brooke anymore. "What's wrong?"

I shrugged, almost too embarrassed to speak.

"It's stupid," I mumbled, handing Julian his phone back before I could get too depressed looking out at the painfully free, eternally open ocean-side of California's most beautiful scenery.

Julian extended his hand towards me to retrieve his phone, but when our hands met, he held on for a little longer than was actually necessary.

"It's not stupid Sam; trust me." Our eyes met, and I did trust him, really, I trusted him more than anybody else in this entire world besides Brooke, but that didn't stop me from feeling foolish.

"I'm just thinking… what if I never do get the opportunity to see L.A.?"

I had sugar-coated my question as much as I possibly could. What I really wanted to ask him was what if I never did get better, what if I didn't make it? Then I'd never be able to go to L.A. with him… But Julian had understood my meaning; I could tell that much by the dawning realization that spread across his face as it fell inward and his eyes sunk slightly inward.

"Sam…" He took a deep breath, pausing for a long time just trying to think of a way to respond to the immense weight of the question that I had just selfishly placed upon his shoulders. "You know that it's okay to be afraid, right?"

I nodded my head for simplicities sake. The truth was, I didn't particularly believe that it was anywhere even close to being okay to be afraid; for some reason fear to me was equivalent to giving up, so I tried to avoid it.

"I get afraid sometimes." He admitted to me; a shocking truth that I'd never really thought of before. "And I sure as hell know that Brooke does too, but you know that you will always have the two of us by your side and that we will do anything that we possibly can to make sure that you do get better again."

I smirked slightly underneath his assurances, feeling better about the prospect of our future travels as a slight healthy pink glow shimmered within my cheeks for the first time in weeks and I relaxed into his words.

"And then we can go to L.A.?" I cracked a smile out of the corner of my mouth and snuck a sheepish glance up towards him that he returned, probably more relieved that he hadn't said the wrong thing than anything…

"Yeah, and then we can go to L.A." He confirmed.

"Do they have nice beaches?" I asked. I found that ever since the day Brooke had taken me up to Wrightsville Beach on the day before Thanksgiving, I had become nothing short of obsessed with the ocean, lining my hospital room walls with pictures and cutouts of endless lines of beaches and waves, using it as motivation to get me through to the time where I would be able to spend another day as perfect as that one.

"The nicest,"

"And we can go see the Hollywood sign? And meet all of those famous people?" The questions rolled out of my mouth as I ticked off some of the attractions of L.A. that I wanted to see the most, the inner tourist inside of me taking over.

I could practically see it now…

"Well, you will be traveling with the most famous guy L.A. has ever seen, so yeah, there's a fair chance that the others will approach me in search for autographs, so while I'm doing that, I guess you can meet them too."

I laughed and rolled my eyes at his fake cockiness before I leaned backwards against my bed, closing my eyes and taking slow, steady breaths, trying to convince myself that if I inhaled hard enough, I would be able to take in the residual scent of the L.A. beaches that I believed to be lingering off of Julian's clothing.

"I wish we could just leave now."

I hadn't exactly meant to say that out loud, but it was that air of travel, the smell of freedom so close, yet so far away as it lingered through my veins, merging with the heavy dose of chemotherapy in my blood that pushed it out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop it.

"Starting to get sick of this place?" Julian sympathized with me, but I knew that he knew that he didn't know the half of it.

"Oh, I'm way past starting to get sick of it. I am straight up just ready to be done with it here at this point."

I opened my eyes and looked around at the familiar walls surrounding me. I was in a different room than I had been in the last time that I'd paid an extended visit to Tree Hill Memorial's sixth floor oncology wing, but that hardly mattered; they were all designed to look exactly the same so that after a few hours of being stuck in the new room, I began to feel as if I had never even left the old one to begin with.

"Yeah, I'm getting pretty sick of it in here too."

He took a great big sigh, twisting his head to full torsional strain as he scanned over all of the walls, the ceiling, the floor… every minute detail of this bland, bleak room.

A strange expression suddenly appeared on his face so that he looked as if a physical light bulb had just gone off somewhere inside of his head.

"What?" I asked him with a little more hesitancy in my voice, almost nervous to find out what he had up his sleeve… but there was one thing for certain, there was definitely something up there.

"I just got an idea. Hang on, I'll be right back."

And without a single word, or any sort of glance backwards towards me, he stood up from his chair and darted straight out of the room.

My eyes followed him for as long as he remained within my line of vision, watching as he walked briskly down the hallway; and with my eyebrows raised and my face contorted into a look of frozen shock over how quickly he had just stood up and ran right out of the room, I couldn't help but find myself very confused, very alarmed, and very curious as to what the hell he had brewing in that mind of his.

* * *

**JULIAN**

I had literally just been sitting around, hanging out of Sam's room when out of nowhere this crazy, totally out of sight, probably won't even work kind of idea just sort of popped into my head.

You see; every word that Sam spoke; her uncertainties about the future, her eagerness to escape this hell, her determination to put this horrible experience behind her and never look back, well it struck a nerve deep within every fiber of my body every time she ever mentioned it, and this time, well I'd finally decided that I was going to do something about it.

I left Sam hanging, most likely very confused and probably slightly shocked that I'd just upped and darted straight out of the room without so much as a warning, but I'd done it because I was afraid that if I told her what I had been planning, and the idea got struck down, I would just leave her more disappointed than she already was.

At least now if they told me I couldn't do it, I'd just be able to tell Sam that I really had to go pee or something. Sure, she wouldn't believe me, but she wouldn't push me either so it wouldn't leave any lasting harm done.

I walked briskly through the halls, stepping on the balls of me feet so that I could propel myself forwards faster through each corridor, scanning over the various heads in the crowds and occasionally peering through a couple of doors and windows looking for any sign of the person that I was currently in search of.

She shouldn't be too hard to find, this was after all her second home… even though some days I was pretty convinced that this was actually her first home…

Ah, there she is, just the person that I wanted to see.

"Dr. Miller!" I shouted her name in a successful attempt to gain her attention and jogged over towards the tall red-head, parking myself right in front of her in order to corner her into talking to me as she stepped away from a young nurse.

"Julian, I didn't expect to see you back here so soon."

I slipped out a grin despite myself at the hominess that was prevalent in here, the hominess that was definitely lacking back in Los Angeles, the hominess that I'd almost forgotten all about.

It was nice, the idea that everybody knew who you were, everybody cared about what you were going through, what you did…

"Yeah, I left L.A. a little bit early." I shrugged but cut through all of the small talk quickly. I didn't want to linger, I had bigger and better things to think about here.

"Hey, I was just wondering if maybe it would be safe for me to take Sam out to lunch for a little while. She's starting to go a little bit crazy in there." I cut to the chase instantly, jabbing my thumb behind me back in the direction of Sam's room just to make sure that the doctor knew exactly what I was getting at when I said "in there."

I watched the doctor carefully as the question sunk into her features; her eyebrows furrowing and her jaw line narrowing in concentration as she briefly thought about my offer.

She considered it carefully as I knew she would; if there was one thing that Dr. Miller cared about other than keeping Sam physically healthy, it was keeping her from losing every trace of her sanity in the process as well.

"She did seem a bit stir crazy this morning." She laughed after a couple of tense seconds where I couldn't be exactly sure what she was going to say to me, nodding her head up and down in agreement with my statement as I heaved a deep, audible sigh of relief that came out a little bit louder than I had previously anticipated on.

"There and back," The woman warned me sternly. "But I think that it will do Sam some good to get out and get some fresh air."

It took all of the control that I had in my body to prevent myself from leaping with joy, from jumping on top of this woman to wrap her up in a huge bear hug of appreciation, that's how happy I was to hear her acceptance.

Wasting no time I turned back around, taking off into a full sprint back towards Sam's room, shouting a thank you behind my shoulder back towards Dr. Miller as I went.

"And make sure you tell Brooke!" I vaguely heard the doctor's orders as she shouted them back towards me, and I turned and lifted a brief hand to wave through the air as I ran in order to indicate to the woman that I had heard her…

She did have a point; calling Brooke would probably be a good call so that she didn't freak when she got back and saw that Sam weren't there.

'Gotta call Brooke, gotta call Brooke, gotta call Brooke," I repeated the instructions over and over again in the back of my head as I skidded to a halt outside of Sam's room and rounded the corner back through the doorway where I found Sam, still sitting in the exact same position that I had left her in, looking, if possible, more confused than she had when I left.

"What were you doing?" She asked, looking up at me as if I had three heads as I hunched against the door frame and attempted to catch my breath.

"Who, me?" I asked, jabbing an innocent finger into my chest, pretending to look around the room for a second person that she could have possibly been asking that question to, just trying to be an ass in building up the suspense as to what exactly I had been planning.

"No, my imaginary friend," She said with a distinct eye roll, her voice deepening with sarcasm, "Yeah you, what were doing over there anyway, I could hear you yelling from all the way over here?" She raised an inquisitive eyebrow up towards me.

"Eh, nothing really, I was just, you know, convincing your doctor to let me take you out to lunch for an hour or two, no big deal."

Her facial expression changed so rapidly that I almost missed the transition.

"Really?" She asked, perking up her shoulders slightly, trying, but failing to not get her hopes up too high just in case I was pulling some kind of sick joke on her.

"No, I was making that up to be a dick, yes really."

She allowed my words to sink in briefly before deciding it was safe to no longer hold herself back; her face was beaming so brightly that it had literally began glowing.

"When are we leaving?" She asked me instantly, sitting straight upright in her bed, one leg already dangling off of the side so that I was starting to get the impression that she would have considered jumping up and leaping straight out of the window if she thought that it would get us there faster.

"I was thinking now, but you know, I'm not really in any sort of hurry of anything, we could always wait a couple of hours if you want…"

"Let's go now!" She didn't bother waiting to sort out whether or not I had only been joking with her, which I had been by the way, before she threw her two-cents into the mix, demanding that I take her out of here as quickly as humanly possible.

She had literally gotten half way out of the door before I was able to catch up to her, reaching out to grab her by the shoulder with a gentle, yet firm grip, pulling her back inside because I knew that if I'd let her slip away and escape now, she would be straight out of the hospital doors before I even had the chance to blink.

"Hey, relax; how about at least getting dressed first, huh?"

She looked down at herself and scanned over her outfit; an oversized pair of sweat pants and an old t-shirt of Brooke's that sagged half way down her thighs; clothing that I was pretty sure wasn't suitable for anybody to travel around outside wearing ten days before the official start of the winter season, let alone anybody like Sam… I mean, people are generally surprised to hear this because North Carolina technically is in the south, but our winters aren't exactly warm down here…

She gave me a quick look that I was unable to distinguish before turning back inside of her room, moving in nothing short of a swift sprint as she grabbed some loose clothes up off of the floor or from her backpack before she hoarded herself away within the bathroom.

I watched her close the door behind her and listened to the sound of the lock clicking. I couldn't help but be glad that she hadn't put up a fight with me on this one. She probably knew it would have been worthless considering if I'd allowed her to go outside looking the way she did, the two of us would not only be murdered by her entire team of doctors and nurses, but by Brooke as well, which reminds me…

Gotta call Brooke, gotta call Brooke, gotta call Brooke…

I got as far as taking my cell phone out of my pocket and setting it up to Brooke's number, ready to press dial before I got distracted by the sound of the bathroom door springing open as Sam, who had just dressed herself in record time, emerged wearing a pair of jeans, a sweat shirt that looked like it was a size XXL over her scrawny frame, and a knit hat that was secured tightly over her bald head.

"Okay, I'm ready, can we go now?" Sam asked me, sounding as if she was growing more and more impatient and eager to leave with each passing second as she began to fasten her winter jacket firmly over her bony shoulders.

"Yeah, come on," I told her, in my distraction, turning off my cell phone and pocketing it as I beckoned with my free hand for Sam to follow me.

I would call Brooke later, it wouldn't be a problem. I just wanted to get Sam out of this hospital before her head popped off of her neck from all of the pressure of anticipation building up inside of it.

We walked back into the hallway, Sam sitting obligingly down in a free wheelchair parked in the corner before I even had the opportunity to get the order for her to do so out of my mouth. I guess she was just too excited about the prospect of re-entering the outside world today to put up much of a fight.

I pushed her slowly along the confusing, winding corridors towards the elevator that brought us straight down into the parking garage where I settled her into the passenger seat of my car before leaving the wheelchair over within the designated drop off area, you know, like the ones they have for the people to drop their shopping carts off at the grocery store...

down towards the elevator that brought us straight down into the parking garage, settling her into the passenger seat or my car before leaving the wheel chair over within the drop-off area, like they have for people to drop their shopping carts off at the grocery store when their done with them stuck between a couple of parking spaces.

I left it within the organized line of previously placed chairs before heading back towards my truck, stepping into the driver's seat where Sam was already seated next to me, buckled up and wide-eyed with excitement.

For a second, my eyes lingered on her, leaving me happy for the sole reason that she was happy.

"What?" She turned and asked me, obviously noticing that I had been staring.

"Nothing," I shook my head back into focus before shifting the gear into drive, emerging out of the darkness of the parking garage back into open sunlight where Sam's face brightened and looked, glued out at the scenery through the window, preserving the experience of natural sunlight that she'd been deprived of for days now.

My mind began to race during our brief drive; all of the excitement of our spontaneous adventure swirling through my brain so that I could barely concentrate on anything else.

But there was a feeling somewhere deep in the back of my mind that I couldn't shake off; a feeling that I couldn't help but think that I had something really important that I had to do that I couldn't remember.

I searched through every crevice and corner of my brain but no matter how hard I tried, my brief bought of short-term memory loss won and I just couldn't think of it.

Crap, what the hell was it that I was supposed to do?

* * *

**BROOKE**

I walked back into the hospital a little bit after noon, returning only after I'd run home real quick in order to grab lunch and pick up some things around the house that I could use to occupy me throughout a day of doing absolutely nothing other than sitting around in that small little box at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital that Sam has been calling home for the past week or so now.

I felt surprisingly refreshed following my much needed visit back home where I'd managed to clean up around the house, shower, run a couple of errands, pay a couple of bills… you know, the usual. And instead of that familiar feeling of panic that always crept up my spine every time I found myself away from Sam for too long, I felt a strange sense of relief stemming from the willingness I'd been embracing during Sam's second round of chemotherapy to leave her with a little bit more space this time around.

I took a sharp right into the familiar oncology unit feeling clean, rested, and confident. Nothing could ruin this day, not even the fact that I would be spending the remainder of it stuck in a hospital room… But at least it was a nice day; I'd probably take her for a walk through the court yard or something a little bit later; at least do something to make this long, seemingly endless hospital stay a little bit more bearable to her.

With my spirits high and my hopes of keeping up with the current pace of this day in mind, I ambled towards the door of Sam's hospital room, which at this point, I would probably be able to find even if I woke up tomorrow deaf, dumb, and blind, strolled through it, and opened my mouth to greet her only to take a silencing double take when I saw that Sam wasn't there.

"Sam?" I turned the corner and knocked lightly against the closed bathroom door, opening it a crack when I didn't get an immediate answer only to find the lights were off and Sam was nowhere to be found inside.

Of course, I couldn't say that I was too worried at the moment. After all, it wasn't uncommon for a nurse to come over and take Sam for a walk through the hallways, sometimes even going as far to taking her up to a different floor just to give her a change of scenery or to whisk her away for some last minute tests or something, so I figured I would go over and check.

I re-entered the hallway and turned towards the direction of the nurse's station at the end of it. The twelve hour nursing shift changed every day once at midnight and once at noon. The front desk was packed with the newest shift of nurses settling themselves in for a long day of work ahead; the nurses from the previous shift however were nowhere to be found, undoubtedly having gotten the hell out there as fast as they possibly could the second they saw that clock strike noon.

"Hey Carol, do you happen to know where Sam went?" I asked the first nurse I saw; an older woman who was having her 35th anniversary of working on this exact floor party sometime next month.

"No, sorry Brooke, but I just got here about ten minutes ago and she wasn't in her room when I checked in there. I just figured that she was out taking a walk or something."

Okay, now there was a slight twinge of worry beginning to creep its way up my spine… Was it possible that she could have just snuck out without anybody realizing that she left?

No, right; I mean, there was no way in hell that nobody would notice a teenaged cancer patient just up and walking straight out of a hospital all by herself.

"Do you know if she's having any tests done or anything like that?"

"Here, let me check for you real quick." Her fingers danced rapidly across the keyboard of the computer whose screen was facing away from me, preventing me from sneaking a peek at the it in order to read for myself just whether or not Sam was in for testing.

Carol's brows furrowed with concern after a couple of seconds of scanning the screen in front of her telling me what the answer to my question was before she'd even said it.

"No…" She spoke, her voice trailing away from her. "She isn't scheduled for anything today. Hang on, I'll ask anybody if they've seen her."

"Okay, I'm just going to check down the hall real quick while you do that and see if she's in another room." I told her, trying desperately to hide the fact that my voice was shaking as she nodded to me and trailed backwards into the private staff room while I meanwhile stepped away from the desk, walking slowly and nervously down the hallway, trying desperately hard not to appear to be _that_ parent; you know, the one plagued with unnecessary concern as she worried to death over absolutely nothing… But as I walked further and further down the hallway, being met with no more success towards finding Sam than I had when I'd started my journey, I found it harder and harder to stop my chest from heaving with worry as my breathing increased and my heart pounded painfully fast.

The circular hallway rounded off, landing me right back to where I had started at the crowded nurse's station without a single sign of Sam anywhere. Carol had yet to return, leaving me to tap my toes maniacally against the tile floor, desperately trying to figure out whether or not I was acting totally insane here or if I really did have a reason to worry…

"Sorry Brooke, nobody's seen her." Carol said, re-emerging from the back room, "I'm going to put out a page to Dr. Miller and ask her whether or not she knows where Sam is."

Her words instilled a new flash of panic through my veins that made me feel as if somebody had just injected ice water through them.

They were calling Dr. Miller; they were bringing out the big guns now… this couldn't be good.

"Here Brooke, why don't you wait in Sam's room, we'll find her, don't worry, she couldn't have gone too far."

I guess that she'd judged by my face, which was pretty obvious at this point, and read through the sheer amount of panic that I was currently experiencing, because Carol instantly grabbed a strong hold of me by the elbow and guided me carefully back into Sam's empty room, only deeming it safe to leave me alone after she'd presented me with several cheerful assurances that Sam would be just fine.

I was left to pace back and forth across the floor; a natural move considering my footprints had already been firmly imprinted into the familiar tile weeks ago.

Five minutes passed, then ten… finally, the twenty minute mark passed by in which the only news that I heard was that the nurses had been unable to find Dr. Miller but that they believed her to currently be up in surgery with another patient and that they were now searching for another means to contact her by.

I tired of pacing rather quickly, instead opting to take a seat down in the chair that pressed again the wall in the far corner of a room, but after a while, even that didn't manage to occupy my mind as I grew far too restless to sit, sending me right back to where I had started; pacing the floor once again.

This vicious cycle between pacing and sitting continued sporadically for the next couple of minutes as the panic settled deeper and deeper into the pit of my stomach and I became nervous to the point that I felt like I was going to be physically sick.

Funny how quickly your mood can change, isn't it?

An announcement through the loudspeaker overhead caught my attention as I looked up at the speaker in the ceiling and listened as an echoing voice bounced off of the walls and rang through my ears: "Code Pink, 6th Floor East. Code Pink, 6th Floor East."

Throughout my stay here in this fine hospital, I've managed to learn a thing or two about the emergency code system that they employed in order to be able to communicate to the staff during a time of emergency while simultaneously preventing a panic amongst everybody else.

For example, you have your standard codes; Code Blue indicates that somebody had gone into cardiac arrest, Code Red means that a fire has broken out somewhere within the confines of the hospital, and Code Yellow means that a mass casualty incident has occurred somewhere within the city limits and the majority of the victims were currently being transported to our fine ER.

But then you have your less common codes; the ones that you only hear ring through the intercoms once or twice, the ones that you never even knew about until you heard them being carried out.

There was this one time during the first week that Sam was in the hospital where a man had jumped a poor old lady whose husband had just died of a heart attack and robbed her in the parking garage before getting away with everything in her bag when I learned that a Code Amber indicated that there had been a theft.

And then, a few days later, a hazardous materials spill somewhere deep within the basement laboratory taught me that Code Green was the code that represented an internal disaster.

But it wasn't until today, as Sam was reported missing to all of the doctors, nurses, security personnel, and other staff of the hospital through a public announcement over the loud speaker system that I discovered that Code Pink was the code word they used to announce a missing child.

It felt like a large span of time had passed which is why I was so shocked when I looked up at the clock and saw that I really had only been in this room for about thirty minutes.

I was in the bathroom organizing the cluttered counter top just so that I had something to occupy my shaking hands with when I heard the door to Sam's room open.

I sprinted so quickly out of the tiny bathroom that I knocked the small cup full of little sterile sponges that Sam used to brush her teeth with every night clear across the room. I heard them scatter across the floor only vaguely as I darted through the door to investigate the intruder, hoping, praying for it to be a nurse or any kind of staff member really, coming to tell me that they had found Sam and that she was safe and sound.

But what I actually saw was even better; Sam, fully dressed and looking genuinely happy was sitting in a wheelchair in the doorway, being pushed in by Julian… Julian, wow, in all of the hectic panic I'd been experiencing in the past half an hour, I had completely forgotten that he was even coming home today.

The temporary relief that had just hit me like a bucket of water to the face dissipated quickly and was instantly replaced by a surge of anger like no other I had ever felt before in my entire life.

Sam stood up and looked at me, a confused gleam in her eyes at my facial expression.

She didn't look too worse for the wear, but that only made my blood boil even hotter due to the fact that it appeared as if Sam and Julian had just returned from a pleasant little outing together where they looked as if they'd had the time of their lives while meanwhile I had been sitting here worrying my ass off, panicking over thoughts and images that were scattering through my brain of Sam lying face down in a ditch somewhere.

So yeah, it was safe to say that I was pissed. In fact, I was pissed beyond pissed, and you know what; I think that I had every right to be.

A million different thoughts entered my mind at once, cluttering my brain so that it made it difficult to actually think of anything straightly.

I tried to control my thoughts for a moment; the organization attempt physically hurting my head and confusing me so much that I had been forced into putting an odd expression on my face that I knew made me look as if I was having some kind of an absence seizure or something...

But finally, only after I had gone completely blue in the face from all my failed attempts at speaking did I manage to push anything close to a comprehensible sentence out of my mouth.

Where the hell were you?" It came out in a dangerous whisper and I watched as the smiles that had previously been plastered across Sam and Julian's smug faces vanished instantaneously upon hearing the tone in my voice. I couldn't help but watch this with a feeling of glee washing over me, happy at the disappointment that I had caused, hoping that I had, even if it was just for a fraction of a second, instilled some of the feelings of sheer panic that I had been sitting here experiencing for the better half of a half hour upon them.

"Julian just took me out to lunch Brooke, it's not that big of a deal, relax."

Oh no, she definitely did not just tell me to relax; not after I had just practically had to be admitted upstairs into the psyche ward because of what she'd just put me through.

"Watch it Sam," I warned her with a trace of venom in the back of my voice. "Do you have any idea how worried I was when I came here and you were gone and nobody had a single god-damned idea as to where you were? Damn it Sam, they practically put the whole hospital on lockdown looking for you!" My voice rose exponentially with every word that I spoke so that my voice carried straight through the hallway, but you know what, I didn't really care.

The girl rolled her eyes at me; a direct relationship growing between my yelling and the sarcasm developing across her features as I glared at her angrily, trying desperately to convey just how pissed off I was even though I was pretty sure that the only thing that I could have done to show Sam exactly how angry I truly was right now would be to transform into Godzilla and tear apart the entire town… but even then, I'm still not so sure that that could have properly projected my anger.

My eyes widened with rage with each passing second so that eventually, my visual acuity pinpointed Julian, the culprit behind all of this madness standing nervously a few steps behind Sam.

His return from spending the past few days away in L.A. was supposed to be different; it should have been different… I was supposed to want to leap into his arms in sheer joy over the fact that I was finally seeing him again, kiss him until my lips literally fell off…

But instead, the only thing that the mother-bear attitude currently raging inside of me wanted to do was pounce on top of him, tear him limb from limb until they would have to use dental records to identify his disfigured body…

My anger began to migrate; passing off of Sam and directly onto Julian.

I had become a crazed woman possessed and I had every intention on unleashing my fury upon anybody and everybody who stood in my way, and in this particular case, that person happened to be none other than Julian Baker.

"You took her out to lunch?" I managed to ask him with an eerie calm behind my voice. "Do you realize how dangerous that could have been?"

"Brooke, I didn't just take her… I… I asked Dr. Miller first… She said it was fine…" He stumbled over his words leaving me immensely satisfied considering it meant that I had gotten to him and that I had gotten to him hard.

Well, at least this meant that he wasn't a total idiot; he knew when he should be scared, and he knew that now was one of those times.

"So what, you ask her doctor to take her out for the day? Well of course she's going to say yes, Julian! She's more worried about Sam having a good time in here than about her getting better!"

I turned away from Julian. Of course, my words didn't have an ounce of either truth or fairness within them but still, I needed somebody to blame for the way that I was feeling right now, and when blaming Sam hadn't worked, and blaming Julian hadn't worked either, I was forced to move on to the next best thing; Dr. Miller.

"Brooke, is everything okay in here?"

Speak of the devil.

Dr. Miller herself knocked on the door not ten seconds after I'd made those horrible accusations about her leaving me kind of nervous that she'd overheard exactly what I'd said.

She took a cautious step into the room, acting as if she was entering a rabid bear cage as opposed to a teenager's hospital room as I sighed and rubbed my hands slowly up and down over my face. Thirty seconds ago I would have cared less about whether or not she'd heard me, but now that I was starting to cool off, a sinking feeling emerged in the pit of my stomach that maybe I had over reacted after all.

What else is new, right?

I said nothing mainly because I had absolutely no idea what I could say. I could apologize, I could back down, I could admit that I had just put the entire hospital into a mild panic state for absolutely no reason, but then where I would be? Not only would I be alone in my defiance but I would also be wrong…

In the end, ironically enough, it was Julian that saved me from the need to come up with some ridiculous story to defend my sudden outburst.

"Yeah, everything is fine," He said taking a step away from Sam. "I think I'll just go. I'll see you later Sam."

He made his move back towards the door, sneaking one final glance over his shoulder so that he could get a good look at me, and then at Sam, who was standing shell-shocked in the middle of the room before he turned around again and pushed past Dr. Miller, stepping quickly into the hallway and out of my sight.

There was an agonizing period of silence in which Sam's eyes followed him longingly out the door, silently begging him to take her with him as Dr. Miller stood awkwardly at the entrance of the room waiting for me to explain why I'd just caused a scene within her pediatric oncology unit…

I took a deep breath; you know what; fine, whatever, I don't need Julian, I don't need anybody, I mean, I've made it this far on my own, haven't I? It's all I need, just me and Sam from now on, two kids against the world for the rest of time.

Besides, I knew that I could live with being lonely as long as Sam was happy anyway.

The only problem with that theory was, as I looked to my right back over towards Sam, that I wasn't so sure if I could be fine with living with being lonely with Sam unhappy too; because, judging by the look in the girl's face as she continued to avoid my eye contact and stare straight out the door where Julian had just escaped from, that was exactly what I was about to get.

* * *

**Okay, so I added a little bit more drama as if we didn't have enough already, but as promised, here's a little preview of what's to come in Part III: Brooke's adoption of Sam becomes official, Julian tries to up his role in Brooke and Sam's life, the long awaited appearance of Jack and Victoria, and Brooke and Sam run into one of their biggest challenges yet… Anyway, I'm starting to think of how I want to end this story seeing as how we're rapidly approaching it, and obviously there are two major paths I can take and to be completely honest, I'm not sure which I want to go with yet. I'm thinking hard about it, I promise but any insight would be much appreciated. So once again thanks for reading hope you enjoyed!**


	30. The Weather Past the Storm

**Well, got the big chapter 30 coming up which is pretty unbelievable to say the least... Just a little heads up, I'm moving back to school on Friday so I'm going to try and get another chapter up either late tomorrow or early Friday but I can't promise anything so don't hate me if it takes a little longer!**

**One more thing real quick, in response to OTHangle's question, no worries, I have elaborate plans for Christmas/Hanukkah/the whole holiday season so don't fret!**

**Okay, that's all, enjoy!  
**

* * *

Chapter 30: The Weather Past This Storm

**Monday, December 12****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

It has been exactly 22 hours, 14 minutes, and 35 seconds, give or take a few of course, since Sam had last spoken a single word to me.

Okay, so what, the girl was a little pissed off at me… alright, a lot pissed off at me would be a more accurate choice of words for this particular situation, but you know, I wasn't exactly pleased with her right now either, and she could sit here and play the sick and helpless little child card all she wanted right now, but we both knew for a fact that the two of us have been through way too much together in these past weeks to be moved by such a petty little argument as this one.

But unfortunately for us, we both possessed this nasty little trait that had a strange tendency to be our ultimate downfall in moments exactly as this one. You see, we have this ridiculously unmovable stubborn side to us that was so strong and so similar that I swear, if it wasn't for the fact that the two of us weren't actually related to each other, I would have thought was genetic.

But whether or not we'd ever managed to somehow pick that up somewhere within the same gene pool would remain an eternal mystery; the fact of the matter now was that it had become obvious to me that wherever we did pick it up from, if we didn't sort through it fast, it was ultimately going to be the factor that ruined us both.

Here's the thing though; I'm not just some person that sits around and waits for her problems to sizzle out around her, no; I'm Brooke freaking Davis, and I don't exactly handle silence very well. Confrontation however, well that was strong point thanks to years and years of practice and more experience than I would ever feel comfortable admitting to.

And judging by the fact that I could practically feel my insides eroding away from the torture of Sam's refusal to speak to me, I felt as though now was as perfect a time as any to dust off my old skills and bring them out into the open again.

"Sam, please will you just talk to me?"

Okay, so it wasn't exactly my best approach ever, but you know what, it was an approach, and a little jump start to kick things off was all we really needed, so at this point, who really cares how good an opening line it was? As long as it worked, right…

"Why?" She retorted back… okay, not exactly what I had in mind when I said 'responding back to me' but it was a start... a very slow start.

"Don't," I stated firmly, laying my dominance firmly down on the table instantly, because now that I've had some experience dealing with Sam when she was in one of her moods, I knew that if I didn't do so and do so quickly, she would see it as an open opportunity to walk all over me, subsequently making me feel even worse about this whole thing than I already did. "Don't make me look like the bad guy here, Sam."

"Why?" She responded back immediately, broadening her shoulders and sitting upright to make herself look taller leading me to believe that she was about to tell me something that she'd wanted to get off of her chest ever since yesterday, and that something probably wasn't going to be her telling me how much she loved me or anything even close to that. "Because you just kicked the only guy who has ever always been there for the both of us straight out on the curb, is that why, Brooke? Because I'm sorry but from where I'm standing, you're definitely the only bad guy that I can see here."

Her words stung as the volume in her voice began to rise steadily throughout the room.

I sighed heavily and began a vicious struggle between myself and my tear ducts… I couldn't cry now; I had to stay strong. I had to accept the blame that Sam was passing onto my shoulders and I had to do so with open arms, because that's what I was here for.

I struggled to come up with a way to explain to her that I couldn't always be larger than life, I couldn't tower above all of the houses, that as much as she expected me to, I couldn't be strong enough to just make all of this go away… but how could I when she's been trusting me this entire time to do just that? She just looked so damn angry…

I tilted up my chin and puffed out my chest in a last attempt effort to look more confident than I actually felt. It was important that I played my cards right here, that I manned up and ultimately stopped simply blaming all of my problems on bad luck and took some responsibility for my actions… for once in my life at least.

"Sam, that's not fair." I dropped my voice into a tone of calmed understanding in an attempt to kick this conversation off like normal human beings as opposed to the barbarian war call that we were used to. "I had every right in the world to be upset yesterday and I know that you know that."

"What do you have to be upset about, Brooke?" She asked me and I could see the tears slowly stinging in the corners of her eyes as she ignored my attempts at civility and increased her volume even louder than before, the pain in her voice splitting a gaping crack straight through the center of my heart. "Are you upset because Julian wanted to take me out to have a nice afternoon for once after I'd been sitting in and out of this freaking hospital for over a month? Is that what you're upset about?"

"No, I'm upset because the both of you put your life at risk yesterday, Sam. You both know very well what could have happened… what could have gone wrong… Sam, Julian doing what he did yesterday and you allowing it to happen without even thinking to let me at least know first… Sam, it was straight up irresponsible. Don't you get it? You are _sick_ Sam, and I know it sucks but you can't keep thinking that you can just go ahead and do all of the things you used to be able to do before all of this Sam, because you can't."

In my frustration, I'd accidentally found myself making my most grave mistake yet; running my mouth further than I probably should have.

I mean, of course _I_ knew that I didn't really mean half of the things that came out of my mouth, the problem however was that there was no way that Sam could ever know that… unless I opened my mouth right now to tell her of course; the thing was, now that I was done rambling, I couldn't seem to find the words that I needed to correct it.

I opened and closed my mouth a handful of times in search for those exact words, but the only noise that I managed to make in the end was this weird little grumble-like thing that I was more than certain left Sam thinking that I had definitely just lost it completely.

The resulting effect was the two of us sitting in a stunned silence for a brief moment, both of us trying to wrap our brains around the extent, the meaning of the words that I had just spoken to Sam.

To question her independence was one thing. To straight up remind her of just how sick she really was… well that was out of bounds territory… Sam didn't need reminding of the fact that she was as sick as she was; she lived it every day of her life.

The both of us saw my mistake instantaneously, and I found myself letting my guard down as Sam pounced upon the opportunity to pull ahead.

"So what, are you calling me irresponsible now?" Her voice had suddenly dropped to a lower pitch. She spoke in barely above a whisper, the angry defiance that I had heard in her voice less than a minute ago suddenly shifting into a tone of defeat… I couldn't tell you which one that I would have preferred to hear.

"Yeah Sam, maybe I am."

Okay, I admit it… that probably wasn't the best thing for me to say at this point. I mean, judging by the look in her face, I had already managed to pin Sam into the corner that I needed her to be in. Now I just felt as if I was kicking her when she was already down…

I was suddenly feeling like a complete and total ass.

She glared at me for a couple of seconds as we fell into total silence. I swear to God, those few seconds were the longest that I've ever had to sit through in my entire life. But then, just as suddenly, with an unexpected swiftness to her motions, she stood to her feet and ripped the entirety of her IV unit out of the outlet behind her bed with such force that I was kind of surprised that she didn't take some of the wall with her.

She started making her way over towards the door and suddenly, there was no more doubt in my mind… I had definitely just said the wrong thing to her.

"Where are you going now?" I called after her. I mean, seriously though, didn't we just have this conversation two seconds ago?

"I'm taking a walk Brooke, relax. I'll stay on the floor." She stomped straight out of the room and I stayed behind, watching with my mouth wide open in shock at what had just happened between us as the silence settled uncomfortably around me.

It was so quiet in the room that I was able to hear the suction cup-like noise of Sam's gripped, hospital-provided socks as she made her way rather quickly down the length of the hall. But eventually, even that faded into nothingness.

For a brief second, I debated getting up to follow her. In fact, my ass was half-way up off of the chair before I reconsidered, ultimately deciding to drop myself back down, figuring that maybe it would be best to give Sam a moment or two to cool off on her own while I was left to sit back here in her empty room and wonder what the hell it was that I'd just gotten myself into.

The stationary silence was something that I was only able to handle for a very brief period of time. It didn't take very long for my mind to begin swirling again, so violently this time that I was beginning to get physically dizzy.

Anger once again bubbled underneath the surface of my skin.

I tried to pretend that I was still angry at Julian, or at Sam, but the reality was, I was mostly just angry at myself.

Standing up, I began to pace, digging deeper and deeper into the already firmly established trench that I had been gradually creating within the floor.

I began to clean casually around the room, using the organization as a method to distract myself from the fact that my hands were shaking, the hope being that maybe if I kept myself occupied, I'd be able to convince myself that I hadn't even noticed them to begin with.

I gathered a generous pile of magazines that Sam had been collecting over the days up into my arms. A stack of _Peoples_, and_ Cosmopolitans_, _US Weekly's_, and_ In Styles_ that had already grown so vast in number that when I placed them in a neat pile at Sam's bedside table, they were at risk of toppling over just from being so top-heavy.

I glared down at them, silently daring them to test my patience by falling back over onto the floor that I had just cleaned up.

I should have just thrown them out; after all, both me and Sam have already read every last one of them cover to cover at least twice.

Of course, while Sam was simply looking to brush up on her celebrity gossip, I had been looking for something much more specific. I was looking for the slightest blurb of a mention, any hint of news on me, or of Julian, but especially of Sam… anything really would have allowed me to go off on a physical tangent, verbally berating each and every one of those damned gossip-hungry sneaky weasel-like scumbags to the closest person that would actually listen…

The problem was, as it turned out, there was nothing of me, of Julian, or even of Sam… not a single damned mention in any one of those stupid magazines. In fact, the more I started thinking about it, the more it seemed as if they had just totally forgotten about us all together.

And once that logic started to settle into my head, I started getting more pissed over the fact that we weren't in any of the magazines than I had been when I found out that we were.

It was hypocritical of me, I'm aware of that, and besides, I'd known straight from the get-go that this is just how this kind of thing works…

The story, well it was starting to get old; the press coverage, the sympathy cards, the phone calls… I wasn't gonna stand up here and pretend that I didn't notice them becoming fewer and fewer with each passing day… It just upset me because I knew that while all of these people had the opportunity to give up on us, to turn a cold shoulder to our continuing struggles and never once look back, well… we didn't exactly have that option.

For us, this story will drag on way beyond all of the magazine articles, and even long after all of those people stop caring; because even after all of that, there will still be me and Sam as we continue to trudge onwards, carrying out our journey until either we finally find our way out of this whole mess or until one or both of us just up and completely disappears... whichever comes first, I guess.

The thing is; I'm starting to get the hint that not even Sam wants to hang around and deal with me anymore.

Sighing deeply I narrowed my eyebrows into a disapproving scowl and reached out my hand, slamming it viciously into the side of the pile of magazines, completely knocking it over in its entirety, watching as the impressive collection scattered across the newly-cleaned floors as bindings ripped down the middle and pages were torn out, flying in every direction…

I looked down at the collage that I had created on the floor at my feet as my chest heaved up and down in a combination of rage and sorrow and the colors and the patterns of all of the pictures of washed-up celebrities and size 0 models showing off the latest fashions blended in front of my very eyes, making my anger, if at all possible, grow stronger.

It grew towards all of those people who were currently living their normal lives without time for even a second thought for the ones who had been forced to set a plate for abnormal every night at the dinner table.

It grew towards all of those people whose biggest worry in life was whether or not they would get out of work on time that day.

It grew towards all of those people with their nuclear families and their 2.3 children and their little yellow lab puppies and their white picket fences and their perfectly routine existences…

And then I finally took a deep breath; I wiped my sweating palms firmly through my hair so that the tangles caught up between my fingers and tugged painfully… but I didn't care; I had finally just realized that I had simply been mistaking that feeling of anger for one of jealousy this entire time.

Do you wanna know a little secret about me? I'm really starting to think that maybe it isn't them who are all a little strange; maybe it's really just me.

Maybe I am really the only one around here who is actually starting to go crazy.

I guess now it's just a matter of trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing about it.

* * *

**HALEY**

I've been having a pretty hard time concentrating lately.

The thing is, all these people seemed to have taken to swarming around me lately, and the only thing that it has actually succeeded in doing is fill my head with a combination of all of their promises and assurances, preventing me from focusing in on a single one of them, subsequently creating this obnoxious clutter inside of my head that has just managed to leave me dizzy and more confused than I had been before.

In fact, the only thing that I was actually certain of these days was that no matter how many times I was actually told that everything was going to be fine, I suddenly just couldn't bring myself to believe it anymore.

The thing was… well, this is just not the way that we were told that our lives were going to end up being like.

I walked through the front door of my house, tossing my bag harshly into the coat closet without so much as a second glance back, way too tired from what had literally been one of the longest days of school of my entire teaching career thus far to really care what sort of mess I left behind.

I was literally two steps into my house, well on my way to the coveted living room couch that I'd been dreaming about ever since I woke up this morning when my cell phone began blaring from the discarded purse behind me.

I released a loud, exaggerated sigh and slowly turned my body back towards the room I had exited not thirty seconds ago, shuffling through my bag which had been laying half-hazard across the floor thanks to my unceremonious toss until I finally located my still-jingling cell phone, looking down only to see Brooke's name flashing before my eyes in blinking lights across the front banner of the tiny phone.

"Hey Brooke, what's up?" I answered quickly, afraid that the call would have gone straight to the answering machine thanks to me taking my sweet-ass time retrieving it; but it hadn't, however, the way Brooke responded to my greeting, I almost wished it had.

"I screwed up, Haley."

My brows furrowed with confusion as I instantly felt my heart flutter under the immense weight of her words. A small layer of sweat began to form across my hairline, and I could practically feel the adrenaline as it began to sneak its way through my worried veins…

Brooke sounded upset; really upset, and usually, when Brooke was upset, it meant that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong… and I didn't need three guesses to figure out what that thing was… Sam.

My mind raced instantly in an attempt to comprehend the full meaning behind her words, the thing was, Brooke Davis had a tendency to be obnoxiously vague during times of crisis.

"She hates me Haley; she won't even look at me. I have no idea what to do…" I was still busy just trying to figure out what the hell it was that she was talking about, but she continued to speak to me in strangely morbid undertones, simultaneously preventing me from sneaking a single word edgewise past her.

"Brooke, calm down." I finally cut her off, mainly because she was being cryptic, and it was really starting to freak me out a little. "What's going on?"

"Sam and I, we had this… this fight thing, and she isn't talking to me… she just stormed out Haley, I don't even know where she went."

My head nodded up and down in accordance to Brooke's words, showing my understanding to my empty house surrounding me.

It suddenly became very obvious the exact reason that Brooke had chosen to call me; I after all, was the person to call for when you know that you've hit rock bottom.

"Brooke, hang on I'm on my way… Don't worry she couldn't have gone too far, alright? Sit tight, I'll be right there." I ended the call abruptly and threw my phone back inside of my bag, feeling as though I might as well have been walking backwards straight back towards the car I had just gotten out of.

It was still warm inside; the residual heat still lingering in the air from my last drive… I guess you could call that a bright side, right?

You see; I am Haley James Scott, and I am an optimist.

I was remarkably good at looking at the good parts of every situation; even those that were the most terribly hopeless.

Here's what I got so far. Number one; I was in my house and back out again so quickly that I didn't even have to worry about the tiring struggle of taking my shoes off only to have to put them back on because I never had the opportunity to take them off in the first place, subsequently sparing my muscles an exhausting work out.

Number two; I could use this trip as a means of practicing my developing directional skills. You see, before this whole thing with Sam came about, I could never remember for the life of me whether I was supposed to take the right on Elm St. or the right on Park St. to get to Tree Hill Memorial Hospital. But now, well now I knew for a solid fact that the right turn was to be made on Elm…

Number three; …well, okay, so I'd only gotten so far as number two but cut me some slack here, the list is a work in progress.

My tires emitted an obnoxiously loud pitched squeal as I turned the wet corner of the parking garage about 20 miles over the posted speed limit.

Scouring the deepest depths of parking spaces, I found myself cursing out loud when I couldn't find a single one on the first, the second, or even the third story… Jesus, didn't people realize that there were people responding to an emergency phone call trying to park over here?

Okay, so that wasn't fair; we were after all in a hospital so more likely than not everyone and their mothers who were parked here were also probably just trying to respond to some kind of an emergency, but still, that didn't mean that I was in any less of a rush than they were.

Personally, I thought that I deserved my very own reserved parking space in this place by now.

But no, as it turns out I was forced all the way up on the damn roof before I was able to find a place to park my car, and considering the fact that I still had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on between Brooke and Sam at the moment, and that nervous twinge was trickling further and further up my spinal cord with each passing second, I think it would be safe to use the term 'speed walk' when describing how quickly I hauled my ass up through the parking garage, through the main entrance, up the elevator, and down the familiar hallways of the ward I knew Sam to be on.

In fact, I was moving so fast that after a while, not even I could control my own movements anymore, and I found myself skidding across the slick tile as I made the final turn into Sam's door, regaining control of myself only after I'd collided face first with the doorframe… which, for the record, was pretty hard.

With my eyes tearing and my nose swelling instantly as a result of the collision, I bounced off of the metal frame straight into my intended room, relieved when I realized that only Brooke had been inside to witness the embarrassment I had just caused myself.

"God Haley, are you alright?" Brooke asked, attempting to hide the snicker behind her voice at my pain.

"Yeah I'm fine," I said quickly, my eyes scanning the room for any sign of Sam even though I knew that I wouldn't find one. "Where's Sam? Is she okay?"

The small hint of a smile that had been on Brooke's face two seconds ago disappeared the instant the words left my mouth and I couldn't help but feel my heart hitch up into my throat a little bit.

"We had a fight." Brooke hung her head seemingly in shame at the revelation but didn't offer me very many more details other than the fact that they fought, which I already knew, so I tried to be as delicate as possible as I took a step closer to Brooke and began my attempts at coaxing a little more detail out of her.

"Okay honey… what about?"

There were a million and one possibilities, I knew that. I mean, considering their level of stress and that build of tension constantly hanging over their heads, I was surprised that every conversation that they had with each other these days didn't turn into a fight.

I guess that just goes to show you how much of an impenetrable bond they share. I mean, whatever they'd fought over to make it as bad as it was, it must have been one hell of a doozy to set them off like this.

"Julian," Brooke forced out the single word after a brief internal struggle, continuing along with her pattern of speaking to me in the vaguest terms humanly possible. "He took Sam out to lunch yesterday,"

I raised an eyebrow… I wasn't exactly following; but I just shut my mouth and continued to listen because that's what I had been called in here to do.

"I went home in the morning and when I got back to the hospital and I saw that Sam wasn't here I started asking around… nobody knew where she was, Haley, they had a freaking emergency code out to look for her… I kind of freaked out."

Okay, now it was all coming together… Jesus, I didn't blame her for being upset. My heart froze at the mere thought of coming to the hospital to visit my sick child only to find that they had disappeared without a trace, nobody having the slightest idea as to where they might be.

I remembered with horribly vivid detail the exact way that I felt when I'd lost Jamie… I guess all I had to do now was multiply that by a hundred and then maybe I'd have a vague understanding as to how Brooke felt yesterday.

"Oh my God Brooke, you must have been terrified." I dropped my voice and walked closer towards her as she nodded her head and closed her eyes in a desperate attempt to erase her mind of the memories, the horror that she had felt.

"I was a nervous wreck Hales, and then when Sam and Julian finally got back… I kind of exploded at the both of them… I may have overreacted a little bit."

"Well… what did you do?" I asked curiously.

"I freaked out Haley, I'll admit it. I kind of went… over the top." She thought about her words carefully before using them, trying to come up with the most romanticized version possible to describe her explosion. "There was a lot of yelling and screaming and long story short, Julian left, Sam won't talk to me, they're both pissed, and here I am all by my fucking self."

I sighed and contorted my face into a strategic downward frown as I placed a comforting hand on Brooke's shoulder and squeezed gently in an attempt to keep her from beating herself up too badly over this.

"Oh Brooke, I'm sorry… Listen, you know Sam, she cares about you way too much to let a stupid fight split the two of you up. Especially after all you guys have been through together… Julian too, you'll see. Just give her some time to herself to think it over; she'll be back before you know it."

Brooke didn't respond. Was that a good sign or a bad? Just to play it safe, I hurriedly continued talking anyway, not wanting to allow her mind to wander too far off.

"Look, she couldn't have gone too far; I'll go find her and I'll talk to her. She'll come to her senses, don't worry… I'll find her."

I physically took a hold of Brooke by her shoulders, pushing her down into a seated position against Sam's made bed just because I knew that if I didn't force her to sit now, she would have just stood there all day long until she literally collapsed underneath all of the pressure.

"I'll be right back Brooke." I called the assurance over my shoulder towards Brooke who gave me nothing more than a short nod back.

Rounding the corner back into the vast hallway, I kept my head swiveling frantically left and right in an attentive vigilance as I looked out for any signs of Sam or else anybody who might know where she happened to stroll off too… I mean, how far could she have gone anyway? Now that I knew she had a reputation around her for wandering off there had to people keeping a stubbornly close eye on her...

Besides, this ward isn't exactly huge, and I knew that as pissed off with Brooke that Sam was right now, she wasn't about to go test the woman's patience by leaving it again.

Just as expected, I managed to find Sam easily, sitting by herself within the empty playroom at the end of the hall on a table and a chair set designed for a four year old, making Sam look like a giant against the miniature furniture.

She was fumbling with a half finished puzzle laying out on the table and for a moment, I watched hypnotized by her IV line which swung back and forth with every movement of her hand, but I snapped myself out of that daze quickly, cleared my throat and knocked softly against the door.

"Sam?" I had obviously given her a bit of a shock given from the fact that my voice was probably the first sound she'd heard in nearly an hour. I watched as she jumped slightly so that her knees hit the underside of the table and tensed her muscles before turning up to me.

"Haley," She recovered quickly, "What are you doing here?"

"What, I can't visit my favorite student?" I asked with an air of nonchalant casualness in my voice that caused her to roll her eyes slightly at my attempt at humor, even though there was a hint of a smile past the sarcasm that lightened the otherwise potently thick air.

"Well how many of your other students do you know that spends half their time in the hospital for you to visit them anyway, huh?"

"Well… I guess you're the only one, but just between you and me, you're the only that I can really tolerate spending this much time around anyway." I dropped my voice into a whisper just for dramatic effect. "You know, you should consider yourself so lucky that you get to spend this much extra time with me."

She let out the smallest of laughs, turning her head in embarrassment as she flashed that smile that I'd been looking for this whole time.

"I'm guessing that Brooke called you in for reinforcements." She opened the door to the inevitable conversation, sparing me the need to do so myself which I considered lucky considering I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was going to say anyway.

I tried to decipher her intentions; was she doing this in order to assert her dominance, trying to be the one to take control of the conversation before I even had the opportunity to? Or was she simply a scared kid trying to be smooth in her attempt at finding out whether or not her mother was angry with her…

I would bet my life to say that it was the latter.

"Yeah, she did." There was no point in lying. Samantha Walker was a lot of things, but an idiot was not one of them. "She's worried about you, you know."

"That's not true." Sam said quickly, pointing her eyes firmly against the ground ultimately leading me to believe that she knew deep down that the own words she had just spoken were false. Besides, there was no way in hell that Sam could have ever sat around for the past month, watching Brooke slave over her hand and foot, travelling to the moon and back just to get her healthy again and still believe that Brooke didn't care about her.

"Sam, how can you think that? After all that you two have been through together, do you really believe that Brooke doesn't care about you?"

She sniffled softly and turned her head in defiance as an attempt to prevent me from seeing her in such a vulnerable state.

"She called me irresponsible."

I sighed as the tiny details of Sam and Brooke's previous conversation pieced together around me.

"You know that she didn't mean that Sam. You out of all people know that Brooke has a tendency to… to say things that she doesn't mean when she's upset."

"Yeah, or tell them exactly how she really feels about them."

I scrunched my face in concentration, desperately willing the words that I could say to convince Sam otherwise to come to my head.

"Trust me Sam, I've had Brooke talk a lot more shit about me over the years than she will ever say about you, and I know that it can suck sometimes, and it hurts a whole lot when it happens, but you know, that's just the way that Brooke is. She doesn't mean a word of what she said. She's just nervous and worried about you. All of that… it was just her nerves catching up to her; you gotta believe me when I tell you that."

I stared closely at Sam but her face didn't change in response to my elaborately concocted motivational speech leading me to believe that maybe there was more than what meets the eye going on over here… after all, that is usually the case when it comes to Sam.

"Hey Sam, come on, what else is on your mind?"

She shrugged and took an extended breach of silence so that after a while, I was starting to think that she was going to avoid my question all together and force me to dig deep to retrieve an answer; but then she spoke again.

"What if Julian never comes back now?" She finally looked back up at me and I tried to give her my best look of comforting reassurance, but the only thing that I could manage was a grimace.

I could see why she'd be worried; abandonment issues weren't just something that you simply got over, and considering Sam's extensive past of being left behind by the people she'd cared about the most, I couldn't blame her for being nervous.

"Sam…" I gave her a sad smile, "I know that you know how much Julian cares about you. He would never, ever, leave you alone; especially not right now."

"But Brooke, she was so pissed, and she was screaming… she told him not to back, Haley. Now what if he doesn't?"

"Trust me Sam, if Nathan never came back every time I'd told him not to, I sure as hell wouldn't be married to him still… Actually, I never would have been married to him at all. The only thing that will do is bring him closer, not drive him away. He will be back, Sam."

The girl smirked, probably just because she was trying to get a mental image of me physically kicking a man twice my size out of my house, but whatever… I'd gotten the point across.

"I guess I just don't want Brooke to be mad at me… or at Julian."

I offered Sam a sensitive smile and placed a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to ease the girls mind and convince her that she was indeed safe with that one.

"Sam, Brooke isn't mad at you. In fact, she's doing a pretty good job of sitting around in your room beating herself up for making you so upset."

"Really?"

I nodded my head as relief glowed across Sam's otherwise pale features. Just call me Haley James Scott; mediator.

"Yup, she told me so herself. Sam, she is so worried about you right now… trust me, she's anything but mad."

"What about Julian?" I couldn't but laugh; mainly because I'd seen Brooke in so many fights such as this where she'd kicked her man out to the curb that I already knew exactly how it was going to play out.

"Trust me, Julian will come back, and when he does he's going to say all the right things and pull out all the right moves and then Brooke will forgive him and things will just work out on their own from there. Don't worry about the two of them. When two people are in love as much as Brooke and Julian are, they won't let a stupid argument ruin everything."

Her small smirk had suddenly become a full blown smile.

"Thanks Haley,"

"Eh, don't mention it." I said, pulling up a second miniature chair next to Sam's, scrunching down into it so that my knees practically touched my chin. "It's what I'm here for, you know that. And listen, if you ever need somebody to talk to, I know that Brooke may not always understand, but don't worry, a good English teacher always does."

She let out another laugh and a short nod.

"Yeah… I guess I better go out and find myself a good English teacher then, huh?"

"Hey, don't push your luck," I told her, giving her a playful nudge with my elbow before turning my attention over towards Sam's masterpiece that was currently laying still half finished across the table.

"What are you working on over here anyway?"

She shrugged her shoulders and scattered her hands randomly about the table to disassemble the 36 piece puzzle of Mickey Mouse playing basketball that she had been putting together before I interrupted, seemingly embarrassed to have been focusing her attention on something so childish.

"I don't know. It was already on the table when I got here."

"You know Sam, even though your puzzle building skills are impeccable, I would think that you want to try something a little bit more age appropriate… ah, like this."

I swiveled in my chair and grabbed the first item that came into my vision; a book of _The Little Engine That Could_ that looked as if it might have been older than I was, and threw it across Sam's lap.

"Aw, how'd you now that this was my favorite?" Sam asked, rolling her eyes and throwing the book back across the table top. "But I was thinking that maybe it's about time I headed back to my room."

I smiled and nodded my head in agreement with her.

"I'm sure Brooke will agree with you on that one. Come on," I stood, extending my hand to help Sam onto her feet as well, following her back down the hall towards her room.

We strolled slowly, her stocking'ed feet keeping the slow tempo of our movements like a pulsing bass drum as I swiveled around Sam to hold the door to her room open like the chivalrous lady I was, allowing the girl to drag herself in first before following suite.

I stood at her hip supportively as Brooke instantly stood from the position that I'd left her in on Sam's bed, remaining cautiously motionless in her spot, keeping a safe distance as Sam looked up and locked hesitant eyes with her from across the room…

* * *

**SAM**

Well… this was sufficiently awkward.

I stood my ground firmly from inside of the doorframe, not really sure where I should go next or what I should say or do exactly, or whether or not I should be the one who made the first move…

I mean, I think it's safe to say that Brooke and I had found ourselves stuck in one hell of corner here.

Currently, we were trapped in a pretty lengthy stare down that has thus far felt as if it had lasted hours as the two of us analyzed what it was that we should be doing.

Neither of us moved an inch, instead choosing to stand defiantly separated as if the floor between us was made out of hot lava as opposed to your standard tile.

"Hey," Brooke ultimately became the first one to break the silence as I knew she would be because that's just the role that she always assumed; Brooke Davis, the humble peacekeeper.

"Hey," I responded to her. My words came out in a low grumble and I scuffed my toes nervously against the floor, choosing to watch my feet the entire time due to the fact that they had suddenly become much more interesting.

"Are you feeling any better?" I looked up slowly back up so that my eyes met with Brooke's once again.

I opened my mouth to speak but my throat was suddenly dried up to the point where the only sound that managed to escape my lips was a strangled cry that I wasn't even sure was loud enough to reach Brooke's ears.

I wasn't really feeling better; in fact, I wasn't feeling better at all, and I knew that I wouldn't until I was completely guaranteed that I had my mom back… The truth was that I needed Brooke and I knew it.

I'm just saying, these last long and torturous hours of us not speaking to each other have me more emotionally drained than an entire month of chemotherapy had.

The tears came to my eyes way before the words did… Shit, I'd allowed myself to get emotional even though I'd spent the entire walk from the playroom back to my own convincing myself that I wouldn't and look where that had gotten me; two waterfalls springing down each one of my cheeks.

But my actions had suddenly taken control on their own accord despite everything that my mind was begging them not to do.

My head shook itself from side to side in response to Brooke's question.

"Not really," I mumbled, my tears escaping through my words so that once I finally did speak, the flood gates really opened up.

A millisecond passed, maybe less, before Brooke's was finally at my side, arms outstretched as she grabbed onto me and pulled my body harshly against her own, allowing for me to bury my face into her shoulder and soak her t-shirt straight through the fabric with my own tears.

The warmth pooled between us instantly and I sunk into Brooke's comfort, falling in so deeply that I completely forgot that before this, Brooke and I had been in some kind of weird… thing.

It was gone; all of it… It was strange really, it's been barely a day of Brooke and I fighting but I had already forgotten just how perfectly my body contorted itself into her shoulder.

I subconsciously pushed myself closer into her, it is after all, always difficult to resist an opportunity to be comforted by Brooke… especially on those days like today, the ones where I feel as if I've been standing only two feet tall while everybody around me just shoves past.

"Shh Sam, it's okay, I'm here now. You'll be okay." My voice of reason whispered words of comfort into my ear to bring me back up to my normal height and remind me that messes like this one don't last forever.

I felt my body begin to sway rhythmically back and forth on its own accord, guided by Brooke's arms as she rocked on her feet.

"I'm sorry," I finally chocked out an almost inaudible apology.

"Sam honey, you have absolutely nothing to be sorry about." She assured me, tensing her biceps around my shoulders so that I was automatically pulled into an even firmer embrace. "It's me that should be apologizing… Listen Sam, I shouldn't have said all of those things that I did. It was just… I… I was worried, Sam; and I was frustrated… You know that all I want for you is to see you get better, and when things happen out of normal… even out of our version of normal… I know I freaked out and it wasn't right, so I'm sorry."

She mumbled her lengthy apology into straight into the hat which I was currently wearing on top of my head so that I was almost unable to make out every specific word she'd said to me, but in the long run, I got it.

I got that I had a tendency to make my mistakes; I knew that, and I was sure as hell that Brooke did too; the thing is, when I used to make mistakes, before Brooke I mean, it was well… different.

With Brooke there's no judgmental scolding, there's no harsh punishment, there's no kicking my ass to the side of the curb to live out on the streets… no, there's just Brooke, always there to remind me that even through all of these mistakes, and trust me, there have been a lot, I have finally found my right place, and I had to place to go back to no matter what happened.

"Let's not do anything like that ever again, okay?" I sniffled as I pulled myself out of Brooke's arms and wiped my eyes on the sleeves of my t-shirt.

Looking up, I watched her return the watery smile, nodding her head vigorously in response to my statement.

"I agree,"

My face beamed.

"Are you okay there, Haley?" I'd almost forgotten that Haley was standing behind me in the doorway the entire time, listening to every word that the two of us had said until Brooke said something.

Swiveling around, I saw her, still standing in her same spot in the doorway as fat tears slid down her cheeks and she only managed a curt nod in response to Brooke's question before she motioned with her hands for us to look away, embarrassed that we had caught her crying over the two of us like she would over a dramatic Lifetime movie.

"Shut up you two." She blubbered, turning her head away from us in an attempt to finish her cry in peace.

I pushed out a final laugh in Haley's direction before finally deciding that I felt comfortable enough to step away from the protection offered in Brooke's arms. I climbed back into bed; the extent of my exhaustion had just hit me, punishing me severely for two whole days of elevated stress levels and more action than it could handle right now… my poor body was begging me for a little bit of rest.

"Tired?" Brooke asked, and I responded in a yawn, nodding through it just to make sure she understood me.

"Well get some sleep, you've had a long day." I didn't hesitate to follow that suggestion; crawling underneath my covers, I secluded myself to sleep; one of the only activities I found I was able to do alone these days, a perfect opportunity for some personal reflection…

Things felt… calmer; I guess that would be the most appropriate word to use.

I mean, Brooke and I were on speaking terms again, and as important as that was to me, I couldn't pretend that that was the only thing that had been on my mind going into today.

The thing is, I saw Brooke, I saw how relieved she looked on the outside, and I saw me and I saw how relieved I looked on the outside, but on the inside… well I couldn't help but feel that I still had a gaping hole somewhere inside of me, and I was willing to bet a lot of money that Brooke felt the same way.

I couldn't help but notice that not once did Julian come up in the midst of our brief apologies.

I won't lie; it scared me, it made me question whether he'd come back, whether Brooke would let him come back… I know what Haley said, and at the time it had made me feel better, but what if she was wrong?

But Brooke hadn't mentioned him, and I didn't want to be the one to start a fight all over again by bringing him up… the two of us after all had just managed to make peace, I might as well let that peace linger between us for a couple of hours before I threatened to break it again…

I tried to read Brooke but she was a hard one; she had mastered rueful disguise years before I met her and I would like to meet one person that would be able to read Brooke Davis like an open book…

I wondered if she really was mad at Julian, if she really did never want to see him again, or, if like Haley said, she was simply holding onto her argument for the sheer sake of argument…

Thoughts of Julian lingered in the back of my mind as I drifted further and further into sleep; what would Brooke and I be like without him around? How would we get through this? And if Brooke really was holding out on him just to make a point… what the hell was that point anyway?


	31. I Guess We'll Just Have to Adjust

**Heyy everyone! First of all, I just wanted to apologize for the wait, I moved back into school last week and things have kind of been crazy but now that they're settling down I'm getting myself back on track. Secondly, just wanted to thank you all for being so awesome as usual and that's really all I've got so enjoy!**

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Chapter 31: I Guess We'll Just Have to Adjust

**Tuesday, December 13****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

Have you ever woken up from an impossibly deep sleep really, really late in the middle of the night for absolutely no reason whatsoever with your heart pounding, your lungs heaving, and your mind absolutely racing, totally convinced that you are dying?

I mean, I just ask because that is exactly what happened to me just last night.

It was damn near exactly 2:30 this morning that I woke up… no excuse me, to say that I shot up in a mass frenzy of panic would be a more accurate description of events, especially considering the fact that I flew upright from my bed so quickly that my head spun and I was forced to lie back down and employ my best deep breathing exercises just to control the impossible tightness in my chest and the pressure in my head that made it feel as if it were about to explode.

I don't know, I guess I must have been dreaming or something… I mean, I don't really remember what it was about or anything like that, or if really even happened, but whatever it was, it must have been one hell of a doozy to have woken me up like that.

I kind of just sat up, wallowing in the dark for a long time while I waited patiently for the loud hum of my heavy breathing to settle from in between my ears until finally, it was replaced with nothing more than the silence of the room, sporadically broken by Brooke's soft snores coming from the cot in the far corner.

I only forced my eyes closed again after I had fully recovered from the brutal awakening I'd just received, trying desperately to fall back asleep, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't, and it was all thanks to that stupid little incessant voice lingering in the back of my head, whispering to me over and over again that I was about to freaking die.

I swear to God, it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, and trust me, I've had a lot of terrifying experiences before.

Every random little noise, every click, every whir, shuffle, or stir suddenly sounded like some crazed serial killer creeping around the corner. Every flash of light from the hallway outside was the spark of a discharging gun, the blast of a bomb…

It was crazy, I mean, I know that it was crazy, but trust me; things are a lot scarier around here when you're stuck in that bizarre incoherence of sleep, surrounded by nothing but solid concrete walls that echo every small sound into an explosion and enhances every shadow into a monster.

It's weird; I mean, usually whenever something like this ever happened to me, I would just be able to shake it off, laugh as if it was some stupid figment of my over active imagination and then go right back to bed without so much as a second glance, but today…

Well let's just say that today was different. Today, it was just lingering, and even now; hours after I'd woken up in that cold sweat, hours after the sun rose, and hours after I had fallen back asleep and awoken with a clear head and an even clearer picture of what happened to me last night… it still just kind of hung around; that imminent cloud of doom that had been hovering above my head ever since the damn day that I was born.

"Your latest CBC results just came in…" Dr. Miller had been sitting in the small swivel chair next to my bed for about fifteen minutes now just rambling on and on about God only knew what, but I had been too busy predicting my ultimate demise to really pay too much attention to her.

Until now that is…

"You're pretty much right on target. White blood cells, red blood cells, even your platelet counts are raising. Of course, your neutrophils are still a little bit low but they're raising so it's really nothing to be alarmed about…"

That's weird… given the way that I'd been feeling, you know, with this day positively looming over my head ever since the moment that I woke up and even before that, I had expected her to come in here and tell me that my blood counts had mysteriously plummeted overnight to damn near untraceable levels, that the cancer had returned with a vengeance, and this time, there was absolutely no getting rid of it, or, at the very least, that my neutrophils count, which had been steadily dropping ever since Sunday, much to the panic of Brooke weren't getting any better, but no…

Go figure on the one day that I predict my life going to shambles, things actually start looking up for a change.

My head drooped slightly until my eyes were finally so low that the only thing that I could make out in my range of vision was the pretzel-like configuration of my Indian style legs, making it appear as if I was paying less attention to my doctor more than it already did.

"Hey Sam, you do know that that's _good_ news, right?"

"Yeah…" I sighed. You see, to all of those who don't really know the ropes of being a leukemia patient quite yet, you would think that simply being told your blood levels are 'right on target' is a good sign; but to a person like me, a person whose been around the bend a time or two, it's different; it's not as much a good sign as it is a disappointment…

The thing is, right on target doesn't mean cured.

"You know Sam… it's a rough spot to be in, stuck in this hospital all day every day, trust me I know, but listen, you should be proud of yourself for where you are right now, for how far you've come." I guess that I'd come off as obvious considering this little motivational speech I was currently receiving. "I mean, I know that everybody else is, and listen, it took a lot for you to get here right now, and just between you and me, I have the weirdest feeling that you'll be out of here before you know it."

I offered her a sheepish grin to express the warmth of embarrassed pride that washed through my veins at her words as my muscles relaxed within themselves, screaming in relief to have a momentary break from their usual exertions of being tensed to the absolute limit with stress.

"You see?" She asked me, "Feels good, doesn't it? Small pinch here, Sam," She tapered away from her previous route of conversation, pausing only so that she could move swiftly and steadily between heartbeats, ensuring no room for error as she slid a thin needle underneath the taut skin on the back of my hand.

I held my breath in expectant anticipation, waiting for said small pinch Dr. Miller had alluded to, but when it never came, I released the trapped air slowly out of my aching lungs and snuck a peak downward, wondering what the cause for the delay was; the weird thing was, when I checked, the needle was in fact sticking up from out of my pale skin… and I hadn't even felt it.

Great, good to know while I have been progressively using little pieces of myself day after ever-passing day for this past month, at least I had managed to gain one thing… total resistance to feeling needle pricks.

I might as well just let everybody line up now. Go ahead, take a shot at me, I won't care; hell, I won't even feel it… I'm sure I'll be able to find a descent amount of people that would want to jump on that line.

"I guess it feels alright." I shrugged off her previous inquiry, really just trying to make her feel as if she'd accomplished something in her attempts to double as my part time psychiatrist.

"That's what I like to here," She smiled at me and I struggled to return it. "Alright, you're all set up over here; will you be okay by yourself?"

I nodded my head; Brooke had only been gone about five minutes or so, leaving with the promise that she'd return within the next hour or two and the strict warning that I best be here when she got back… Yeah sure, we'd made up and hugged it out and all that junk yesterday, but I still think some of those nerves she was feeling the other day were still lingering with fervor in the back of her head, forcing her to remind me anyway just in case.

In fact, I was starting to get the impression that she would be reminding me this for the rest of my life.

"Yeah, I'm a natural loner."

"That-a-girl," She nodded to me in an approving manner, "I'll be back in about a half hour to check up on you and to get that thing out of your arm."

She nodded her head upwards, indicating towards the clear liquid swinging above my head, casually dripping through the newly implanted hole in the back of my hand.

Neupogen, it was called. Apparently, yesterday my blood results had come back only to show a slightly depressed neutrophils count, and this fancy new drug was supposed to try its hand at stimulating my worthless myelocyte cells into creating more before it actually became bad enough to cause a problem.

Confused? Yeah, I would have been too if I'd heard that sentence a month ago, but these days, words like neutrophils and myelocyte had become as common place in my vocabulary as words like 'a', 'you', 'I', or 'us'.

Basically, long story short, my immune system has been sucking more than usual lately.

I held the phony smile on my face until I was sure that Dr. Miller was safely gone from my room and completely out of sight, and the second she was, I immediately let it slide right off my face.

The thing is, usually whenever I'd find myself flying solo, I managed to get pretty high up there; I mean, the room to myself, some free time to think, no interruptions, naggings, hassles… not today though.

I mean, what the hell did I have to be happy about anyway?

Brooke and Julian were walking on eggshells, I was stuck in a hospital forced to listen submissively as everywhere around me, people whispered around me things they thought I couldn't hear about my disease, my treatment, my prognosis… I couldn't even walk down the damn street anymore without complete strangers staring me down, offering me their nervous smiles and silent pity, well-wishes, and that look in their eyes that told me they were silently thanking God that at least it wasn't them…

So you see; not much for me to be happy about these days.

I mean, is it selfish of me to be tired of all this attention? Is it selfish of me to say that I just wanted my old life back, my old family back?

I wanted to wake up every morning for school and walk out into the kitchen to find Brooke and Julian detaching themselves from each other's lips just long enough to tell me to have a good day at school. I wanted to get made fun of for sucking in gym. I wanted to sit in Haley's class and listen to kids compliment me on my writing. I wanted to get a bruise playing soccer, I wanted to fail a big test, screw up my first time driving… I wanted to hang out with my friends, go out to a party and relish over the cheep beer and bad music…

Was that selfish?

I wasn't so sure. I couldn't really call these things as well as I used to be able to anymore, but I can tell you this for sure; it's hard to become accustomed to getting attention when you were so used to being ignored for most of your life.

Yeah, yeah, queue the violins, I know; but unless you've been secluded to a small room for so long that the walls literally begin caving in on you, then you can't talk.

I needed to get up; to run, walk, sit, crawl, walk on my freaking hands for all I cared; anything as long as it didn't involve lying in bed; the problem is, every time I've taken to doing that lately, my head instantly starts spinning, my legs grow weak, and then, worst of all, Brooke would probably come back and see that I'm not in bed and will drop dead of a heart attack before anybody even had the opportunity to come in and tell her that I'm just taking a walk down the hall…

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm really in need of somebody to just come over here and guide me right now, the problem is, as much as I tried finding one, there really is absolutely no map for this thing and it freaking sucks.

I've been getting scared lately, and even though I would never admit this to anybody, this fight with Brooke that I had a few days ago… I don't know, it sparked something strange inside of me, made me totally and absolutely afraid for what was really the first time throughout all of this.

I don't know, maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something at 2:30 this fine morning. Maybe I'd just slept with my palms flat against my face so that when I awoke, I'd done so with my impossible short life-line imprinted into my skin so that it seeped subconsciously straight into my brain without me even realizing it…

Okay, I think that it was time for me to stop talking here before I started needing some serious high dose anti depressants or something, because I'm honestly starting to make myself depressed.

I tried to distract my mind by picking at the tape on the back of my hand that held the tiny needle comfortable nestled underneath my skin but to be completely honest, it wasn't really working.

I had just about lost all hope in the matter when a knock on the door finally managed to completely distract me.

My head snapped up automatically swiveling over towards the doorway.

I froze instantly. My heart leapt up into my chest, relief overpowered even all of the medication that I had had running through my blood stream.

"Julian…"

* * *

**JULIAN**

"Julian…"

I could tell by the tone in her voice that she was shocked to see me, or at least, shocked that I had dared to show my sorry face around here again after what I'd pulled the other day. I was quickly starting to get the impression that she figured that when I had abruptly left her room in a frenzied panic the other day; I had left it for good…

And as if I didn't already feel badly enough about this whole situation, now I had the added weight of having been the one to leave Sam here by herself with the anxious fear that she would never see me again pressing down against my already loaded shoulders… great, just great.

To be completely honest here, her surprise at my return had taken me slightly aback; I mean, did she really think that after all me, her, and Brooke had been through together I could just physically turn my back on the two of them without so much as a second glance?

The thought muddled my mind for a brief moment, but I pushed it aside quickly. The girl was upset, the girl was sick; I knew that, so I also knew that I couldn't hold this against her… in fact, I couldn't ever hold anything against her.

"Hey Samson,"

I moved forward with a bit of hesitancy in my steps, wondering just how far I could go before I began to infiltrate the boundaries that I feared Sam might have put up against me since the last time I'd seen her on Sunday, but when she didn't say anything after those first ten steps or so, I took it as an open invitation and resumed a normal entrance pattern until I was finally at Sam's side.

There was a book open at her feet, but the way the pages were frayed and curled over each other, I could tell that it hadn't been touched in a while. The TV above her head was switched on but the sound was muted so that I was having a hard time distinguishing exactly what I had interrupted when I walked in on her here.

"What are you reading?" I asked simply to make awkward small talk, instantly getting pissed off at myself that the stupid mistake I had made almost two days ago now remained to hover between us like an elephant in the room.

"Brave New World," She flashed the familiar Aldous Huxley novel in front of my eyes where my vision lingered upon the picture of the genetically engineered anomaly illustrated on the front cover. "It's for Haley's class… she's kind of been tutoring me on the side lately, helping me to keep up with my work."

I nodded my head, expressing my knowledge in the fact that Haley had been stopping by a few times a week to feed Sam some of the knowledge that I know she's been craving but had unfortunately been forced to miss out on in these past weeks…

"Sounds good about now,"

Her comment pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Huh?" I asked her stupidly. Of course, I had heard exactly what she'd said, the thing was, I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at.

"A brave new world, everyone designed in a laboratory to be perfect… doesn't that sound like the life?"

Not really," I shrugged, finally feeling comfortable enough to lower myself down into the familiar chair besides Sam's bed, "Doesn't everybody die at the end?"

"No, the normal person dies at the end, so what does that tell you?"

That every last one of us had simply been put here on this Earth to live only to die…

"I don't know," I lied out my answer instead, "Nothing really." I listened as my voice faded into a distant echo as Sam tilted her head down to stare at her thin legs folded neatly across each other in a seated position while meanwhile, my own chin pointed higher and higher to the air until I was staring directly at the ceiling… I had come here for a reason, a very specific reason, and I had to let Sam know that… it was now or never I guess.

"So, uh… I was just stopping by to let you know that, uh… that you might not see me for a few weeks. I mean, now that my movie is finally filming, production is doing a lot more work so I uh, I have to head back to L.A. for a little while."

"When?" As I had expected, Sam lifted her head up, trying desperately to link her anguished eyes with my own, but I just couldn't find myself to look at her, especially when she had such devastation written across her features… devastation that I had caused.

"Tomorrow," I spoke the words that I knew she had been fearing the most and her face molted into a look of sheer panic.

"But… I mean… a few weeks? How long is a few weeks, Julian?"

I think that the worst part of all of this was the fact that I couldn't even bring myself to look her in the eyes and tell her that I would be there for as long as it took me to stop being such a fucking coward and man up to her about all of my mistakes.

But there was a safety in my cowardice; a safety that assured me that no matter what, I could always just follow the highways, the buildings the trees; I could always just allow everything to rush past me in a modern-art blur and sweep through my entire body allowing me to, if even only for just a brief second, forget why I'm here.

Of course, I knew that almost as quickly as that thought will come, it will leave me again, and only then will that other lingering thought come back into my head and remind me that it's not why I'm here, but why I'm not there.

"I don't know Sam," I sighed. "I mean… hopefully I'll be able to make it back by mid-January… maybe a little bit earlier."

"But what about Brooke, Julian? What about me?" I had of course, expected Sam to not exactly take the news of my departure lightly, the thing was, it was a lot easier to convince myself that the look of disappointment on her face wouldn't hurt me when I didn't actually have to face it.

I watched as her chest heaved in time with her increased breathing as her face gradually began to turn beat red with emotion so that I was actually starting to worry about her steadily increasing blood pressure as it combined with whatever cocktail of medicine she had floating through her system right now.

"Sam please, you have to understand… I'm not just leaving you and Brooke forever. I need to do this; you said it yourself from the beginning, Sam. Hel, you threatened physical violence on me if I didn't carry on with my life and take this job…"

I threw my best attempt at a joke into the mix, but either Sam's heart was pounding too hard in her ears for her to hear it, or else she didn't find it very funny…

"But this is different, Julian!" She insisted, "This isn't about me, it's about Brooke! Don't you get it? If you leave now, what will happen to Brooke?"

"Sam…" I sighed at her lack of understanding as to where I was coming from and rubbed a strong hand over my face. "You have to understand, what me and Brooke need right now is some time apart… you know, to figure stuff out. This isn't it for us Sam, I promise that." I begged her to understand, begged her to realize that I'm not that perfect guy she thought I was… far from it actually.

I always knew that Brooke was trying her hardest to adjust to that fact… I guess now Sam had to too. I just hoped that one day they'll just be able to see past all of those things that I still lack.

"Julian, please, you can't just leave. You can't just get up and leave us alone."

I could feel the tears; big, thick, and numerous pressing white hot against the backs of my eyes so that I was starting to fear that my eyeballs were literally about to explode out of the back of my head.

This wasn't exactly how this was supposed to go. I needed to leave, and I needed to leave now.

"Look Sam, I have to go pack and stuff… get ready to leave." I didn't look to see the reaction on her face before I turned my back and took those first painful steps out of Sam's door.

"Why are you giving up on us, Julian?" She shouted after me in a successful attempt to get me to stop dead right in my tracks. "Why are you giving up on Brooke? She needs you… I need you."

A big, fat tear slid ungracefully down my cheek and I hurried to wipe it away before I turned back to face Sam.

"I'm sorry Sam… I just can't."

It was the only thing I could think to say, and apparently, I wasn't the only one out of words. Sam stared back at me, wide eyed and open mouthed but she was out of things to say, out of ways she could berate me… but the silence and disappointment written across her face hurt me more than any of her words ever could.

I averted my gaze and finally stepped out into the hallway… I had just told one of the people that I trusted the most that I couldn't do it… And then I started to think.

What would have happened if Sam said that she couldn't do it when she was diagnosed with cancer? What would have happened if Brooke said she couldn't do it when she struggled to find Sam a place where she truly belonged?

I always thought it was true that Brooke and Sam were much stronger than I could ever be, but now there was no doubt about it… I just never expected that revelation to feel so… bad.

But as much as it killed me, I somehow managed to keep moving forward, travelling further and further away from the only people that really mattered with every step I took and closer and closer to the airport that would take me out of this town, out of this state, hell, completely out of this entire damned time zone…

And I knew that no matter what happened, I would keep travelling straight down that long and lonely road, because no matter how dark, damp, and cold that it may be, I knew that I had to take it because it had been designed for me, and for me alone.

I spent the entirety of the elevator trip down bunched into the corner in a desperate attempt to keep to myself and try not to break down every time an unsuspecting person would enter. I couldn't allow myself to break down in front of a complete stranger, I couldn't allow them to know I had just turned my back on a sick child and the woman I loved more than anyone in my life, and most importantly, I couldn't allow them to know that I was currently feeling like the biggest coward to ever walk the face of this planet as I rounded out of the elevator doors, straight out of everything that I had ever known to trust.

I made the entire trip through the lobby looking down at my feet. I knew the route by heart, I didn't need to look up, and as expected, my legs found their own way to the automatic sliding doors.

I was about two steps away from walking through to the outside world when I was suddenly stopped short; cut off by something very solid, and something very hard.

I bounced backwards, cursing myself for not paying closer attention, but when I finally lifted my head to apologize to whoever it was I'd just crashed into, but when I saw who it was, I was cut short.

Brooke and my eyes locked at the exact same moment and we found ourselves frozen.

Passerby glared at us angrily, a couple even muttering a few choice words under their breaths as we blocked the entrance of the busy hospital lobby, frozen in our shock, just trying to figure out what to do next.

My heart lightened substantially like it always did whenever Brooke entered the room, no matter what circumstances were between us at the time.

I mean, what were the odds? I mean, I don't believe in this kind of thing or anything like that, but I couldn't be certain that it wasn't fate that brought me and Brooke together in the moment that I was preparing to leave completely.

It had only been two days, hell, it's been less than that since I'd last seen Brooke, but still somehow, she looked older, more tired. A sudden pang of guilt filled my already heavy heart.

"Uh… hi," I mumbled, even though I had the strangest idea that I should be saying something else… I mean, I'd once heard a rumor about this thing called apologies and forgiveness… I just hoped that it wasn't too late for me to learn all about it.

"Hey," Brooke responded to me, her voice sounding almost as awkward as mine had.

I offered her the smallest smirk in my own attempt to comfort her, and she returned it even though she didn't have to; she could make me feel better no matter what she looked like…

I had come to this hospital this morning telling myself that I could get through this, I could come here and tell Brooke and Sam that I was leaving, and I could do this because I was stupid enough to think that there was nothing left for me here anymore.

And then that image of Brooke with tears water-logging the undersides of her eyes and her perfect makeup smearing slightly across her porcelain skin, I felt like punching myself in my own face for ever allowing that idea to so much as enter my mind.

Yeah sure… nothings here for me anymore…

Nothing but you.

* * *

**BROOKE**

So far throughout today, I think it's pretty safe to say that I have done nothing short of push my luck to its absolute limit all morning long.

The first time it happened, it was still pretty early. In fact, it was only moments after I'd woken up with a knot in my back and a stiff neck that my cell phone went off, and when I saw that it was only Millicent, I made my first mistake in thinking that nothing could go wrong…

And then I answered it.

I'd found nothing less than a frantic Millie on the other side of the line, carrying on about how inventory orders all across the east coast had been sent out with the wrong information and now nearly every retail store that housed Clothes over Bros products were stocked with the left over clothes from last winter's line.

I handled the situation with a surprisingly calm demeanor thanks to the slight undertone of simply not caring as I recited detailed instructions to Millicent through the phone to place a call to corporate and file all of the papers necessary for placement of an emergency shipment order to all of the stores that had received the wrong orders.

And finally, and here's where that whole pushing luck thing came into play here, I held my breath, crossed my fingers, and kept all of this from Victoria, praying that she would never catch wind of this minor debacle or else I knew I would be receiving a phone call from her where she would most likely just scream her head off at me all day.

But you know what, it's so far been three hours and I still haven't heard a single word from Victoria so I was feeling lucky.

Of course, the day was still young.

The second time I pushed my luck, coincidentally enough, was the second time that Millie called me with the claim that corporate wouldn't approve a second shipment order without my physical presence in the store to vouch for her leaving me in a different kind of dilemma… one that involved Sam and my persistent reluctance to leave her side lately.

I mean, it wasn't like I was afraid that she would go wondering off or anything like that again, really it wasn't; it actually had a lot more to do with the fact that I wasn't so sure that I should be leaving Sam alone right now. She's just seemed so… down, lately.

But I pushed my luck for the second time today, leaving Sam behind in the hospital while I headed to fix the mess at my store praying that when I returned, everything would be the way that I had left it, and lucky me, things hadn't gone to shambles yet… as far as I knew anyway.

The good news is, I was actually beginning to feel confident to loosen the death grip I had between my crossed fingers, and even though I didn't feel safe totally releasing them quite yet, it was good to know that they were getting at least a little bit of a break.

But there was still that lingering worry, that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't explain; the way it dropped every time Sam's name passed through my mind, or the way it tensed nervously, painfully even, every time I thought of what kind or mortal peril Sam could currently be in without me even knowing…

Yeah, yeah, I know; I was being stupid, I was being over worried, I needed to back off… what else was new?

I've been sitting on the couch in the front of my store for nearly fifteen minutes now, twisting my cell phone nervously between my hands while simultaneously sneaking quick glances up at the clock every couple of minutes or so just to count the time intervals as they passed slowly by with no new developments to speak of.

Before I left, I had made Sam swear on her life that she would call me as soon as she was settled into her upcoming chemo round, scheduled to start at noon, and now that I saw watched the minute hand on the clock above me round onto 12:30 without so much as a word… well let's just say that Sam's breaking of her promise to me was doing absolutely nothing for my already hyperactive nerves.

It was around the same time that 12:30 turned into 12:31 that I finally gave into temptation and my fingers danced across the keypad of my phone, dialing Sam's familiar phone number on their own accord.

"Come on Sam, come on, answer," I mumbled to myself as the sound of the phone ringing back to me from the other end settled firmly between my ears, rattling my skull with each tone.

"Hello?" Sam finally answered on the third ring, just as I was truly on the cusp of panic.

"Hey Sam, it's me." I told her, just in case she hadn't already known. "I'm just calling to check in. Did you start chemo yet?"

"Yes Brooke, they got me set up just fine over here, don't you worry, I'm just dandy." She didn't find dandy; in fact, she sounded down-right annoyed that I had just interrupted her peace and quiet.

Now that I thought about it, I'm not actually sure why I had been so convinced that she was going to say something else; that she'd be telling me that something had gone catastrophically wrong in the forty-five minutes or so since I'd left, that she needed me to rush over there instantly to fix everything.

"Is that it?" I pushed her, just in case she had just accidentally forgotten to mention any substantial disaster to me.

"Well…" She cleared her throat and my body instinctively perked up, preparing for the worst. "You know that weird lady that pushes around the cart with all of the blood samples? Well, a few minutes ago, she crashed into Diane-what's-her-name from down the hall right in front of my room… Made a pretty big mess too, it was actually kind of cool… Oh, and about two seconds ago, a bird flew past my window… I think it was an Oriole."

My shoulders sunk once again… okay, I kind of deserved that.

"You know what I meant, smart ass. I meant anything knew with you. Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm fine Brooke, just fine. I swear. I'm just hanging out, watching a movie… absolutely nothing out of the ordinary here. Trust me you are not missing anything exciting."

"Okay, well listen, call me if you need anything, alright? I've gotta go do… what I was doing before." I tried to play it off cool, but the problem was that what I was doing before this phone call was sitting around my store waiting for it to come… and I knew that Sam knew just that.

It was a vicious cycle really.

"That sounds awesome." Sam voiced her approval with a bored undertone.

"Are you sure that you don't need anything?" I figured that I'd ask one more time just in case she'd changed her mind since the last time, or didn't understand what I was trying to ask her, even though I knew both of those excuses were total horseshit.

"I'm sure."

"Okay…" I paused airily to give her space to speak up just in case she'd suddenly decided to change her mind. "I'll see you later then." I finally mumbled after she spoke nothing in response.

"Yeah, see you later." She spoke quickly with barely a gap between our words; hanging up the phone immediately after before I could even think about calling her attention back to me one last time.

I slowly lowered my phone from my ear, leaning my head backwards into the cushiony headrest of the seat and closing my eyes, wishing that it was easy enough to simply sink right into it.

What the hell has gotten into me today?

Not ten seconds after I'd finally shut my eyes, desperate for even a minute's rest, the main phone line of the store went off with an unexpected suddenness; an incessantly high pitched ring that I'd been meaning to change for months now awakening me sharply.

I jumped a little so that my head ricocheted off of the wall next to me before I leapt swiftly up to my feet.

"Do you want me to get that, Brooke?" I head Millicent's call from the back room, but I waved her off; I needed to do something at least semi-productive before I completely lost my mind.

"No, I got it Millie!" I called back to her before finally lifting the phone to my ear on the fourth ring.

"Clothes over Bro's, this is Brooke speaking. How may I help you?"

"Ah, Brooke, it's nice to see that I can finally speak directly with you and not that worthless assistant of yours, Millicent." Victoria's pompous, arrogant, snobbish voice overwhelmed my senses instantly, immediately making my head hurt worse than it already did.

I was suddenly given a very nice reminder as to why I hadn't talked to Victoria in months; because the sound of her voice was enough to make me physically sick.

"Hello Victoria, it's nice to talk to you too."

"I got a bizarre phone call this morning, Brooke. Do you happen to have any idea what it may have been about?" Her abrupt confrontation forced my eyes to roll on their own. Of course I knew exactly what it was about; it was about the fact that about twenty different stores had probably already placed calls to our corporate office, the one in which Victoria was conveniently stationed, complaining that they had received a truck-load of old clothes this morning.

"No Victoria, what was it about?" I faked cluelessness just because I knew that it would humor her.

"A couple of stores who are kind enough to hold the largest profit margins that our company sees called me this morning, Brooke. They called to inform me that as lovely as your last winter's line may have been, they really would much rather prefer receiving new clothes for their store."

Well, at least she'd complimented me on the success of my last winter's line I guess…

"I am very aware of that Victoria. Lucky for you, my worthless assistant Millicent fixed that problem this morning."

"And why wasn't it fixed before it happened, Brooke?"

God, sometimes I really did wish that I could just reach my arm right through this phone and strangle her.

"I'm sorry Victoria, but I have been kind of busy lately with…" I stopped suddenly; my mind was left absolutely blank with reminder that Victoria had absolutely no idea the real reason as to why I have been so turned around lately, the real reason why she'd been talking strictly to Millicent about all of my personal business affairs for this past month, the real reason I had all but disappeared completely off of the face of the Earth…

Victoria still had absolutely no idea that Sam was sick.

"Hello, Brooke? Are you even listening to me?" I had gotten lost my thoughts; in fact, I wasn't even aware that Victoria was still speaking to me until a particularly obnoxious, shrill call managed to catch my attention.

"Yes mother, I'm listening to you," I lied, "Don't worry, I called all of the stores myself and let them know that the newest shipment of the correct clothes will arrive first thing tomorrow."

"And you are willing to settle with losing an entire day worth of sales?"

I rolled my eyes, hoping the expression was strong enough to be transmitted through the phone.

"It will be fine mother. Listen, I have to go, I have a lot to get done today."

"Fine, just let me know the instant that all of the stores have confirmed to you that they have received the shipments tomorrow."

"I will," I practically screamed into the phone, assuring her even though I had no intentions to do such a thing before I hung up my phone hurriedly, much in the same manner as Sam had just hung up on me not five minutes ago leading a sick thought to enter my mind… Did Sam think of me in the same manner as I thought of my own mother these days?

Lord, I hope not.

In a final fit of frustration, I decided to throw the portable phone across the room instead of hanging it back up on its cradle like any normal human being would do, just because I thought it would make me feel better.

The device bounced off of the wall with a resounding thud that made me worry that I'd actually broken it as I watched it bounce off of the wall, dangerously close to Millicent's head as she walked out of the back room before rolling across the floor, ultimately coming to a stop right back at my feet.

"Shit, Millie, I'm sorry…" I apologized as Millie let out a tiny squeak of shock and jumped backwards.

"Let me guess, Victoria?" She offered her best guess and I rolled my eyes in response, nodding my confirmation.

"Yeah… God Millie, I'm so sorry that I left you to the graces of that pustulating pheasant all by yourself this past month." I looked sheepishly up at Millie, terrified that she'd be pissed at me for what I'd left her to deal with… shit, I would have been pissed at me… but on the contraire, I was surprised to see that she actually looked nothing short of humored at the insults I was throwing relentlessly in Victoria's general direction.

"It's fine, it's fine," She waved it off, but there was something in her voice that told me that there was something else going on here… something that she was more than a little reluctant to bring up.

"Listen, Brooke…" Yup, looks as if I'd been right on the money. "You know, during your phone call… well, I was kind of starting to get the impression that… you know… that Victoria doesn't know what's going on… with Sam, I mean."

My heart stopped; I couldn't tell if she was calling me out on it, or merely asking about it… either way, I decided to take the safest route I could think of and simply play dumb.

"She knows," I responded quickly… perhaps a little too quickly. Meanwhile, Millicent was flashing me the most skeptical look that she could muster, obvious in her disbelief towards every word I'd just told her.

"What?" I responded defensively to the look on her face, "You know Victoria; work always comes before her personal life no matter what. She made it very clear to me that she can't get any time away from her busy New York life to come down here and visit her daughter's sick child."

I shook my head and crossed my arms to confirm my lie as I simply went ahead and laid the blame of all of my problems on Victoria's shoulders purely to make me feel better about all of my flaws.

"Trust me, she knows," I topped off the lie with a cherry.

"Okay…" I could tell by her voice that she still wasn't believing a word I was saying, and to be completely honest, I don't blame her too much… I probably wouldn't have believed me either.

But Millicent knew when it was appropriate to push a matter, versus when it was best to just leave it be… and she also knew that this was a time for the latter, so she moved on quickly.

"Well… I'm just gonna go in the back and finish stocking, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead Millie… I'll be fine right here." Of course, I wasn't quite so sure about that one, but I figured that I would at least test it out and allow Millie to return back to her work in the back room while I was left to being worthless in the front; pretending to work, but really just embellishing on all my problems.

Pretending to forget, but really just making it all worse;

Just like I always did.

As surprised as I was with myself, at the end of the day, I did actually mange to sneak a couple productive hours of work into my schedule before I finally found myself stretched so thin, my legs practically walked themselves Tree Hill Memorial.

But with a considerably lighter heart thanks to a full day of distractions, I made it through the double doors of the main lobby, barely paying attention to a damn thing around me until I was suddenly brought straight back to reality by a sharp, unexpected bump that nearly sent me sprawling flat on my ass.

I recovered from the blow quickly, looking up briefly with every intention of mumbling a quick sorry before carrying along on my merry way, but I was distracted before a single word managed to escape my mouth as my eyes locked with the familiar brown ones that I had secretly been longing for these past few days…

Julian…

Our eyes glanced upwards towards each other, meeting at the exact same moment so that we found ourselves frozen in our absolute unknowingness of what either of us should be doing next.

"Uh… hi," He mumbled stupidly, finding himself unable to wrack his brain to come up with anything more clever than that in his awkward state of mind.

An instant warmth spread to my very fingertips at the sound of his voice. I felt better instantly… I guess he just had that effect on me no matter what was lingering between us at the moment.

"Hey," I responded; obviously I was feeling much more creative…

He offered me nothing more than that smirk; the one that if I told him once, I'd tell him every day for the rest of my life should be made illegal due to its effect on women… particularly myself.

"Did you come to visit Sam?" I made small talk as I scuffed my feet into the carpeted ground below me, desperately trying to fill the gaps between the growing silence filling between ourselves and the busy hustle of early afternoon hospital traffic surrounding us.

"Uh… yeah," He matched my inability to make eye contact, also deciding that to look at his feet would be the better option. "I came over here to apologize, you know… for the other day… but I guess I owe you an apology too."

"Julian, I…" I started the sentence, but I couldn't think of the right words to finish it. I felt nothing but guilt. "I'm sorry too." I finally built up the courage to say it and blurted the words before I could swallow them back into my throat.

"It's just…" I continued to speak beyond the realm of necessity just because I believed that I owed Julian the explanation… he deserved at least that; there was that, and the fact that I just couldn't keep my mouth shut worth a damn when I was nervous. "Julian, Sam is one of the few things that I had ever done right in my entire life… I just hold her kind of close, you know?"

He kept his eyes firmly to the ground as he nodded his head up and down in perfect synchronization with my words.

"I know," He verified, "I know because I feel the same way… It was wrong of me, Brooke. I know that."

I wiped at my tearing eyes quickly, suddenly very much so aware of the mass amounts of people shuffling angrily past us in their own attempt to get to where they needed to be; suddenly very much so aware of the fact that almost every last one of their eyes at east glanced passed Julian and I on their way out…

"Listen," He forced my attention away from all of the passersby and back towards the only thing that really mattered. "The real reason that I came down here was to see you guys one last time before I headed back to L.A. for a couple of weeks."

For the first time throughout the entirety of this conversation, I looked up at him and met his eyes purposefully, knowing full well the amounts of confusion and sorrow written across my face.

"What do you mean?" I asked the question, but I knew exactly what he meant.

"They're expecting me in California tomorrow…" He verified my deepest fears.

"So… you're just… leaving?" My voice rose with inclination with every word I spoke so that by the time my sentence was fully formulated, it was almost at a pitch that my own ears could barely register.

Was he leaving because of me? Did he really think that I was mad at him when the reality of it was, I was just scared that I had finally realized that I could never possible do all of this by myself?

It was hard to believe that he didn't think that I needed him, especially when everything inside of me was silently screaming up to him that I did.

But his curt nod and sad eyes confirmed everything that I feared the most; he was leaving.

"But… but when will you be back?" I spluttered, instantly forgetting everything that had been lingering in the thick air between us as I threw my body against his own, wrapping my arms firmly around his waist, terrified that if I loosened my grip even a little, I would lose him forever.

"A few weeks at most," He tried his best at assurance as he wrapped his own firm muscles tightly around the back of my neck. "I'll be back before you know it."

"I'll miss you." I mumbled into his chest, lingering against his skin, taking in his touch, his scent as if it was the first time I'd ever really experienced it, when in reality, it hadn't even been more than two days.

"I'll miss you too," He assured me, "And Sam… more than you will ever know, trust me."

I did trust him; I trusted him more than words could ever describe, and I always would. "But you know that I'll always just be a phone call away."

I pretended that his words made me feel better, but I don't think the watery smile combined with the not-so-assuring nod really did it for him.

"When do you leave?" I tried to fill my voice with an air of self-confidence, of independence. I tried to make him believe that his impromptu trip across the country wouldn't affect me, but I didn't need an instant playback to tell me that, at best, my words sounded like nothing more than a plea for him to stay.

"Early tomorrow morning… I should probably get going; get ready to leave." He stepped away from our embrace, and I was having a hard time distinguishing whether he simply hadn't caught on to the desperation in my voice, or was just ignoring it.

"Oh… uh, yeah… yeah, of course," I stumbled awkwardly around my words and nodded to him as he automatically began shuffling his feet backwards towards the door.

"I'll call you when I get in."

"Okay," I tried my hardest to convince him that everything would be just fine, but when that one traitorous tear slipped from underneath my right eye, I knew that all of my efforts would be futile.

But once again, whether Julian simply didn't notice or had chosen to ignore it, I would never know, because the next thing I knew, his body had slipped through the circular revolving door, and I found him taking no more than one more glance back over his shoulder before I blinked once and he was gone; just another face lost in the crowd.

I stood my ground for an extra moment as people continued to shuffle past me; angry for being in their way, confused as to why a sobbing fashion designer was standing in the middle of a hospital lobby with her heart pinned starkly against her chest, or else, simply just strategically avoiding staring at me, embarrassed for me that I was standing here making an absolute scene out of myself in public…

But after a while, even that started to get old, and I managed to somehow found my way back upstairs to where I belonged, or at least to where I would be able to get emotional in peace as opposed to one of the most public places that I could of.

When I walked back into Sam's room, I found the girl safely in her bed; seated in a strategic Indian style, staring at the wall and, despite all of the horror stories I'd been making up in my head all day, looking just fine…

But despite the fact that she physically looked just fine, I couldn't help but notice that she still appeared to be as thoroughly miserable as I was.

"Brooke… what's wrong?" Her head tilted up, finally noticing that I had been staring at her from the doorway this whole time.

I shook my head in response to her question, trying to lie silently and pretend that there was nothing wrong, but once again, tears became my enemy and wrote my thoughts all across my face.

"Nothing," I tried to lie through a false, tearful smile, but the stern look that lingered across Sam's face told me that she wasn't buying it.

"Did you just run into Julian in the hallway?" She read me like an open book, and I was starting to get kind of pissed at myself for being that easy to figure out.

"Am I being that obvious?" I threw in my own attempt at a joke but it failed horribly as I advanced into her room and threw myself down into a chair.

"You're always obvious when something's up with Julian…" Yeah, that was Sam for you; always the confrontational one, she was… it killed me sometimes, it really did.

"Did he tell you that he was leaving?" She asked sheepishly as if the mere memory of his unexpected announcement brought physical pain to her.

I cringed; the thought of the girl… of _my_ girl being in any more pain that she already had to be causing me physical pain.

"Yeah… he did, Sam…" I admitted with a nod, "How are you taking it?" I decided to push the weight onto her because I wasn't sure if I could handle it all being all on top of me at the moment, especially considering the fact that I was currently feeling too weak to lift so much as my own arms at the moment.

She just shrugged her shoulders; her eyebrows folding backwards and her eyes tilting downwards in a way that was more than enough to tell me exactly how she was taking it…

Not good; not good at all.

"I miss him already." She admitted and I nodded my head; I would have to agree with that one.

"Me too," I told her before fading away, embracing the moment of silence to gaze up at the girl.

It amazed me how remarkably strong that she could be; how much pressure she was able to hold in her arms without even so much as wobbling… I admired her for it constantly, but sometimes I couldn't help but wish that she could somehow just pass that trait onto me… or at the very least somehow pass me some of that weight.

"Hey, listen, Julian will be back before you know it… Look, I brought you back some stuff from home that should cheer you up." Luckily, I had actually collected a decent amount of worthless junk from around the house for that sole purpose; to distract both me and Sam from thinking too much about Julian… Of course, this situation wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind when I'd done this, but I guess it still counts… right?

I surrendered the bag that I had strategically arranged various DVDs, magazines, books, and other things of that nature, allowing her to shuffle through it as I myself was self-assigned the harrowing task of sifting through the daily mail that I'd miraculously remembered to grab out of the mail box on my way back to the hospital.

I peaked over the tops of the envelopes as I filtered them through my hands to get a good glimpse at Sam. As expected, the attempt was rather successful as my little bag of wonders was currently doing a very good job of at least appearing to distract Sam…

I mean, either she was genuinely grateful or else she was a really good liar… but either way, it satisfied me, and as I looked down at the mail splayed between my hands, I could only hope that I could have as much luck forgetting as she appeared to be.

Okay, first envelope; Bill…

Okay, no, still thinking about Julian.

Second envelope; catalog

Nope, still thinking about him…

Third envelope; an official notice from the town of Tree Hill, North Carolina reminding residents that garbage disposal day is changing from Thursdays to Mondays starting next week…

Well, as intriguing as that may be, it wasn't working… yup, you guessed it, I am still thinking about Julian.

Fourth envelope; a letter from the North Carolina Department of Social Services regarding the petition for adoption I had placed with them.

Ugh, I just couldn't get Julian out of my mind… wait a minute, what was that last one?

I flipped eagerly backwards through the small pile of envelopes until I relocated the exact one I had just seen… I needed to physically hold the object in my hands. Read it over slowly this time with a more open mind just to make sure this wasn't my mind playing some kind of sick trick on me or something like it usually was…

No, there it was, clear as day; the response from the adoption papers that I had sent in weeks ago was here, right in my very hands…

With shaking fingers, I carefully ripped the top seal of the envelope open and removed the contents as if it were gold.

My eyes scanned rapidly, yet with an unmarked precision over the small print words as I read to myself:

'Ms. Brooke P. Davis,

We are pleased to inform you that the petition for adoption registered on Friday, November 18th, 2011 in regards to instating full, legal custody and guardianship of the minor Samantha L. Walker has been reviewed and approved by the North Carolina Department of Social Services.

The official legalization of the adoption remains pending until your scheduled mandatory court review at the New Brunswick County Court House on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 12:30 p.m.

Regards,

Kathleen Donovan, Director of N.C. Department of Social Services.

My heart leapt instantly into my throat; I suddenly felt as if I had just dry swallowed an entire bag of cotton balls… Slowly but surely, my eyes began to widen, my heart began to pound and suddenly, I began to feel as if maybe, just maybe, things weren't as bad as I had initially thought they were.

"Brooke…" Sam spoke to me with hesitancy in her voice, probably afraid that I was currently stroking out or something judging by the expression on my face. "Brooke, are you alright?"

I couldn't bring myself to answer. My mind was currently just so overwhelmed with emotion that every time I even tried to make a noise, the only thing I could manage was to flap my mouth open like a dying fish…

"You know that everything's gonna be okay Brooke, right?"

My eyes glanced up towards Sam in surprised admiration at the words I'd just heard come out of her mouth… After all of this, after everything that we'd been through together, who would have ever thought she'd be the one comforting me?

"Huh?" I was so shocked by this revelation that I had to ask her to repeat them just to be sure I had indeed heard what I thought I heard.

"I said that everything's going to be okay… I mean with me, and with Julian… everything." Through a tearful smile, I gave her a vigorous nod of agreement, passing my eyes rapidly between the paper in my hand, and the new-found daughter in front of me; for the first time in a very long time, finally believing that maybe she was right, maybe everything would be okay after all.

My smile broadened into a genuine glow as Sam's comfort spread warmth throughout my entire body as if I had just drank a hot cup of tea or something. Pride glowed through my body at her ability to come up with the strength that I seemed to have lost in the time that I needed it most.

I clutched the papers between my hands in such a tight grip that they wrinkled and almost tore under all of the pressure, but I eased up; I wanted to savor this moment, keep the evidence that it was actually possible to feel so alive for those days where I might need a reminder.

I stood to my feet, reaching an arm out and pulling Sam close into my body before the girl even had time to realize what hit her.

"I think you're right Sam," I whispered to her, flattening my palm across the back of her bald head to push her closer into my shoulder. "I think that maybe everything is going to be okay after all."

* * *

**Okay, first of all people don't hate me too much for this chapter please! I promise, Julian's just in a rough patch right now but he'll be back sooner than you think! And also, this is not the last we're gonna hear from Victoria so don't get too worried. I just thought I'd add this little side note here so people don't come knocking on my door with pitchforks and torches hahaha. Thanks again for reading, you guys rock!**


	32. Once There Was A Way to Get Back Home

**Okay, so don't hate me! I know it's been forever but my computer has been on its way out for a while now and finally crashed about a week ago and being the lazy ass that I am, I didn't back anything up so I literally lost everything I had and basically had to start over from scratch. So now I'm just trying to piece together all my ideas for the rest of this story back up and such but don't worry too much I've got this. Thanks for being so patient with me despite all of my sucking!**

Chapter 32: Once There Was a Way to Get Back Home

**Wednesday, December 14****th****, 2011**

**HALEY**

Let me just start by being the first one to tell you that these days, me seeing anything that even resembled a double free period was such a rarity that it was damn near unheard of.

First of all, my regular schedule was already hectic enough as it was, usually leaving me buried up to my damn neck in work, thanks in part, to my tendency to procrastinate. What, with classes, and lesson plans, all the papers to grade and extra help to give, and now, with tutoring Sam a couple of times a week tacked onto that list, I felt like I didn't even have time to so much as come up for air these days.

Then of course, you have to throw in the added factor of the rapidly dwindling semester, and the fact that as we rounded closer and closer towards the coveted winter break, the mid-term exams and term papers that had a tendency of piling up around this time of year faster than I could keep track of them didn't exactly do much to reduce my stress level.

So, with that being said, you now might have a better understanding as to why the fact that I was suddenly given the gift of two free hours with nothing to do and nowhere to go was such a mind-blowing anomaly.

My brain practically took me to Tree Hill Memorial without even thinking about it, because these days, that seemed to be all I could do with my free time. Not that I was complaining or anything, no, not even close, it's just that even though it's been nearly two months, I'm still just not quite used to making this lifestyle into my daily routine.

"Hey, what's going on?" I called out to nobody in particular as I walked into Sam's crowded room where a small group of young medical students surrounded Sam and her doctor, watching with hungry eyes and hands scribbling notes so quickly across their papers that they appeared as nothing more than a blur. Meanwhile, Sam, at the center of all the attention, ignored the commotion surrounding her, instead choosing to talk animatedly up to Brooke as if they were the only two people in the room.

Needless to say, I found myself just a little bit confused.

"Hey Hales," Brooke stood from her seat and strutted towards me, wrapping me into an open embrace and squeezing firmly, leaving me to wrap my confused arms back around her shoulders, hesitantly returning the hug.

"Uh… hi?" My greeting turned into a skeptical question as I began to get nervous that maybe Brooke somehow accidentally ingested some of Sam's drugs or something, because that was the only explanation that I could come up with as to why Brooke was acting the way that she was. Of course, I couldn't lie and pretend as if it wasn't nice to see her as happy as she was.

"Free period?" Brooke rambled on, offering me not so much as a hint of explanation as to what was going on or why today was such a cause for celebration. In fact, based on the look that was currently prominent in Brooke's eyes, I was almost convinced that the only news good enough to warrant such happiness would be that by some sort of miracle, overnight Sam's cancer had suddenly disappeared, that her chemotherapy treatments would be over, that she could go home and go back to living her normal life, that we could all go home and go back to living our normal lives…

"Yeah… um… what's going on?" I asked, looking over Brooke's shoulder, taking in the surroundings about the room, looking for any sort of clue that could possibly give me all the answers I was looking for.

"Eh, no big deal really," Brooke played her answer casually, but I could tell by the smirk on her face that despite what she was saying, it was in fact a big deal; a very big deal judging by the looks of things. "I just got a notice in the mail yesterday is all; the petition for adoption that I filed with the court for Sam a few weeks ago was accepted. I'm going down there today to sign all of the final paperwork."

She beamed throughout the entirety of her explanation, studying my face carefully as my muscles relaxed and my eyes widened in realization of just how big this news really was. I could feel the expression on my face, previously masked with such confusion, now matching the thrill that was on Brooke's.

I suddenly forgot where I was, forgot that I had to control my emotions as I accidently emitted a loud, high pitched, and slightly obnoxious squeal that originated straight from my throat and wrapped Brooke up into our second embrace within a matter of mere minutes, squeezing her body into mine much tighter this time around, as the source of our celebration became more obvious.

"Oh my God Brooke, that's amazing!" My voice echoed across the room, causing Sam, Dr. Miller, and about half a dozen medical students that I had never seen before in my entire life to look up at me; some with disapproving scowls, others with amused smirks plastered across their faces, as Sam tried to hide a bemused laugh of sorts that she allowed slip in response to my klutzy cheerfulness.

"Uh… sorry," My face glowed an embarrassed shade of deep red that made me flush with heat and become consciously aware of dropping my tone. "So when are you going over there?"

I was jittery with excitement, my feet shuffling in an odd, stand-in-place sort of jig as I took full advantage of this feeling, mainly due to the fact that I have had precious little things to be this happy about these days.

The thing was, I have considered Sam to be a part of my family for months now, but now that it was finally being made official after over a year of waiting, I couldn't help but get as excited as I was. It was after all, the first time I came to realize that I would soon be introducing Sam as my nice rather than as my student.

"Well, Sam is getting released today as soon as these… freaking medical students over there stop using her as a damn test dummy." She nodded her head over towards Sam, who was sitting amidst these students, waiting uncharacteristically patiently as the group of six or seven students took turns in reading the exact same vital signs on her… if they only knew the importance of what they were currently holding up.

Brooke and I watched from afar with our arms crossed and our faces contorted into stern, attentive looks as we tried to match the seriousness of genius radiating from the other side of the room that was currently making me, and inevitably Brooke as well feel completely and utterly stupid.

But no matter how hard we tried, as Dr. Miller continued to lecture these kids barely older than me about things I couldn't even wrap my head around, I could feel my eyes glazing over and a dull look settling upon my face so that by the time the doctor stood fully upright, thanked Sam for her patience, and excused everybody from the room, they probably thought I would be their next practice patient for their rotations in the psyche ward.

"Brooke, Sam is all set to leave. I'll be back in a few minutes with all of her discharge papers and then we'll get the two of you out of here." Dr. Miller nodded her head towards Brooke, who returned the move back in acknowledgment of the doctor's instructions, before the older woman finally followed the coral of medical students out into the hallway.

I followed the small group with my eyes until they completely disappeared around the corner before turning back, only to find Brooke already at Sam's side, gathering some things up into her arms and packing them into her backpack to prepare for their imminent departure.

"Do you have everything all ready to go? We kind of have to hurry, we've gotta be at the courthouse by 12:30." Brooke ranted her game plan to Sam, only half paying attention to the girl as she continued to precariously shove various objects into her bag.

"Yeah, I got everything." Sam responded to her, twiddling her thumbs together. I couldn't help but notice the fact that the girl's voice had sounded low and distant as she spoke, making it sound as if something was on her mind, whatever it was bogging down that head of hers sinking straight down into her larynx, resultantly muffling her voice from creating any noise above a whisper.

The fact that there was something wrong stuck starkly out in my head so that for a moment, I hesitated where I stood, unsure of what to do, unsure of what was wrong.

I looked over towards Brooke, curious if, like me, she'd picked up on the tone of Sam's voice amidst her rapidly moving raid of the room. But judging by Brooke's slowed movements, in combination with the way her attention had suddenly snapped up, fully focused upon Sam, she had… I should have known that she would; these days, when it came down to Sam, you couldn't slip much of anything past her.

"Hey, are you alright? Do you feel okay?" Brooke asked the girl with concern laced heavily in her voice as she shot suddenly upright, hovering over Sam and smothering her with worry so quickly that I literally blinked my eyes and Brooke had gone from one side of the room, packing her bags, all the way to the other side where Sam was sitting nervously atop her bed.

"Yeah, yeah, I feel fine… Come on Brooke, let's get out of here, like you said, we've gotta get to the court house." Sam plastered a tiny smile onto her face, but it was nowhere even close to being a convincing one.

"Hey, come on, what's wrong?" Brooke tried her like at persuasion, taking the time out to sit down on Sam's mattress and pull the younger girl close towards her body.

For a moment, Sam was silent in her acceptance that she had been caught in her act, choosing to look down at her folded legs instead of speaking so that the previously light air suddenly grew thick with tension.

"Are you nervous about today?" Brooke asked, looking firmly down at Sam, trying to coax the answer out of her.

"Are you sure about this, Brooke?" Sam chose to ignore her question, instead speaking with such bluntness that even I was taken aback. Brooke meanwhile, was trying to look undeterred by Sam's question, but I couldn't help but notice the sparkle of pain evident in her eyes as she tried to confront the fact that maybe Sam didn't quite want this as much as she did.

"What… I mean… are you having second thoughts about this, Sam?" She tried to keep her voice straight, but she'd been through this before, and it practically killed her the first time; I was quite sure that Brooke wouldn't be able to survive a disappointment of that magnitude a second time around.

"No!" Sam shouted, instantly, a firm alertness in her voice that assured Brooke this had nothing to do with that; and Brooke visibly relaxed under this security. "No, it's nothing like that, it's just… I mean… I don't want you to think you have to adopt me, you know, just because all of this is going on… just because I'm sick, you know?"

Brooke looked like she could have laughed; and as the color began to drain back into her face, her muscles visibly relaxed, and she pulled Sam more tightly into her chest, she actually did.

"Sam, Sam, Sam, when are you gonna learn that you're never going to be able to get rid of me that easily."

This time around, a genuine sparkle accompanied the smirk that danced across Sam's face, a comfort sinking inside of her towards Brooke's assurance that there were no feelings of obligation involved in any of this.

"I don't know, I mean, I guess I just kind of feel bad for all the shit I'm putting you through. Seriously though, I just don't want you to feel obligated to do all of this just to make me feel better." Sam continued to speak, sounding much older than her years as she tried to convince both herself and Brooke that it would be okay to turn back while they still could.

"First of all, don't say shit," Brooke scolded like only a true mother could, "Secondly, I don't want you to ever think of yourself as being a burden on me. You know that I love you, and you know that this is what I want for us, sick or not, Sam, I want you to be my daughter; especially if that means giving you the most kick-ass last name to ever exist."

I felt a tear or two swell into my eyes as I smiled down at Brooke and Sam, watching the interaction between mother and daughter that made my heart swell in its genuineness; genuineness that couldn't have been more real even if the two of them did share any of the same DNA.

There was something about those two; about the bond they shared, about the secret connection that I didn't quite understand… that I don't think even they fully understood either… but whatever it was, I was just glad it was there.

"Brooke?" A knock on the door forced my head around back towards where Dr. Miller had suddenly reappeared in the doorway. "Everything is all set up and ready for you over at the nurse's station."

Brooke nodded, offering one final glance of reassurance towards Sam before detangling herself from around the girl's arms and stepping off the bed, slinging both Sam's and her own duffle bag around her shoulder before assisting her daughter-to-be off of the bed and out of the room, allowing me to trail slightly behind them across the hall and towards our destination.

"So Sam's next round of chemo is all set up and scheduled for Saturday at 9:00. She's going to be in the outpatient wing this time around, so you can just bring her over to the clinic across the street and take her home after each treatment. Just one thing, her white blood cell count is still kind of on the lower side of normal; it should be fine, but just in case, just make sure she stays extra cautious while she's home." The doctor rallied off her list of instructions, watching as Brooke nodded her compliance towards them as she bent down and began to tackle the small tower of discharge papers waiting for her atop the large desk.

I hung back a little bit, crossing my arms and leaning against the wall, just trying to look as if I had somewhere to belong as Brooke rapidly scribbled her signature one page after the other across the papers and Sam drifted over towards a small row of chairs down the hall, parking herself next to a small girl who could have been no older than seven. The child was adorning a bald head identical to that of Sam's and one of those blue surgical masks placed precariously across the center of her face in order to prevent any sort of infection from entering her ravaged immune system.

I watched Sam interact with the girl; leaning in close to whisper something in her ear that was impossible for me to make out given our distance, but that didn't stop me from seeing the way the smaller girl's face brightened as a hint of a laugh entered her otherwise sickly features in response to whatever it was Sam had said to her.

I couldn't help the wide smile that formed on my face as I watched Sam talk to this little girl, producing more and more laughter on both of their sick faces. I gushed with pride towards the girl that I would be calling my niece in a matter of mere hours.

"I can't believe that that girl is about to be my daughter." The sound of Brooke's voice, accompanied by a small scoff of disbelief appeared over my shoulder and I found myself snapping my eyes away from Sam and back towards Brooke, who was looking admiringly down the hall at the interaction between Sam and the little girl.

"It does seem pretty crazy…" I agreed, "But if anybody deserves it, it's you two. Really Brooke, I mean it."

"Thanks Hales." Brooke said, finally turning her eyes away from Sam as she smiled towards me.

"Hey, I was thinking," I spoke up after a moment of silence, "Something as huge as this deserves at least some kind of a celebration."

Brooke raised an eyebrow instantly; a combination of confusion and concern etched in her eyes, afraid that me throwing said celebration would be asking too much of me, even though it would be far from it.

"Are you sure, Haley?"

"Are you kidding? If there was ever a need for a party, it would be this. Trust me; we all need something to celebrate right now. Besides, with Nathan in New York playing basketball, I need something other than Jamie to keep me occupied. Nothing big, I was thinking maybe I'll just cook a little dinner, call in Peyton and Lucas… Don't worry, I'll go over to your house and I'll clean up and cook, and when you and your new daughter get back, we'll all be there waiting for you."

"That sounds great Haley, thanks," She offered me a watery smile of appreciation before wrapping me into a bone-crunching hug that she held for so long, I was almost convinced she would never let go.

"Come on Brooke," I told her, finally pulling her away and guiding her towards Sam. "The two of you have somewhere important to be; let's get you the hell out of here."

* * *

**BROOKE**

First of all, I want to let you all know that I'm not the nervous type.

There have been a lot of moments in my life where I have been hesitant, uncertain, worried, and even downright scared; but being nervous wasn't really my forte, which is probably why I was having a really hard time accurately identifying this foreign feeling that was currently careening through my body as I allowed my foot to subconsciously press harder and harder against the gas pedal of my car, moving me as fast as I could legally drive… and maybe even a little bit beyond that, towards the country courthouse.

Parking the car was a blur; I don't even remember walking through the large stone entrance of the enormous building, and I definitely couldn't tell you how the hell I'd managed to get into the room that I currently found myself in; but here I was, just me and Sam by ourselves in this huge room with windows bigger than me and an ugly carpet on the ground, seated at the end of an extremely long table with at least twenty chair tucked underneath it.

I wasn't exactly sure how this whole thing was going to be done, but given the size of the room, I was starting to worry that they'd have an entire jury in here or something evaluating my competence as a parent… I mean, I don't remember them ever mentioning anything like that, but what if Sam was considered a special case or something? What if they don't think I can handle all of this? What if they don't think I'll make a good mother? What if they think it's my fault that Sam got sick? What if…

"Brooke," I only stopped this repetition of frenzied panic overloading my brain when I heard Sam call out my name. "Are you okay?"

It was only after she'd actually said something that I finally noticed the fact that my feet were tapping so quickly against the ground below me that my calves were starting to get sore as I jabbed the tip of the pen I was holding continuously in the soft wood of the table below me digging a small hole within it… Okay, I take everything I said before back; maybe nervous wasn't the right word to use to describe me right now; maybe crazed would be a little more accurate.

"Yeah," I tried my hardest to sound convincing but my voice came out at such a high pitch that it bordered a Hertz level that human ears couldn't even register. "I'm fine."

She shook her head softly in response, the corners of her lips twitching upwards in a sly smirk that told me that she was silently making fun of me inside her head before she let it slide and turned her head away.

"Ms. Davis?"

I leapt upward at the sound of my name so sharply that my knees bashed against the underside of the table, creating an echoing bang to echo off the walls of the large room and a twinge of pain amidst my thighs that I trudged through as I stood to my feet in greeting of the extremely official looking woman with a stern-set face and a gray pant suit who had just stepped into the room and eased the door shut behind her before approaching Sam and I.

"Yes?" I responded in confirmation that she was in the right place, as I jutted out my hand, shaking with nerves as she accepted it in a firm grip before signaling for me to sit.

"Hi, I'm Elizabeth Berger," She introduced herself before sitting herself directly across from Sam and I, "I'm the head of the Department of Social Services for this district and I have been assigned to oversee the adoption process that you have filed for Samantha here."

She gestured with her hand towards Sam, who instantly turned to face me, raising her eyebrow at the official nature of all of this while meanwhile, the woman in front of us remained apparently oblivious towards Sam's motions, mainly due to the fact that she had just occupied herself with a large folder that looked about as thick as a textbook, leading me to believe it to be the file and life story of both Sam and myself.

"So, for the most part you have both already gone through the mandatory processing procedure that is necessary to finalize Sam's adoption. The official fostering process, the home inspection, all the interviews have been conducted, and Sam's six month supervising period… all of that is already complete, and most of the paper work was been completely processed, so now, what we are going to do today, before we finalize everything, I just want to ask the two of you a couple of questions, if that's okay."

She raised her head and looked expectantly between the two of us for an answer as Sam turned her head towards me for some reassurance, which I gave to her in the form of a slight nod and a soft smile, trying to silently tell her that everything would be alright, watching as she turned her head back towards the woman, where she gave her a short nod of confirmation.

"Great," She nodded, turning slightly so that her entire body was directly faced towards Sam, concentrating her full attention on the younger girl who was looking more and more nervous with each passing second, worried about being addressed by somebody of such a higher distinction than herself.

"So basically Sam, what I really want to hear from you, is how you've been since you started living with Brooke."

Sam looked relieved at the simplicity of the question. I guess she'd been nervous that this woman was about to give her some impossible task, but upon being asked a question in which she could actually procure an answer, she seemed to find herself pleasantly comforted in the reassurance that she could get through this.

"Well… um… I guess it's been really good, a lot better than I'm used to, anyway. Brooke's really been the only person I'd ever lived with where I felt like I actually belonged somewhere." Sam caught a current of words and followed it, looking down towards her hands folded into her lap in sheepish embarrassment as my stomach began to perform those back flips that they always did every time Sam complimented me unexpectedly. "She's really the only person who's ever really given me a chance…"

I felt my face glow with pride and my heart lighten substantially as I listened to Sam gush for several minutes, retrieving every question that this lady threw at her without falter. I don't think I'd ever heard Sam speak this much in her entire life, but there she was, playing the game of question and answer with this woman for ten minutes, twenty minutes, a half an hour before either Sam was out of things to say, or Elizabeth Berger was out of questions to ask.

"One last thing Sam," The questionnaire seemed to go on for hours, so when I heard her straight up state that this was it, my breath caught up in my throat and my chest tightened with anticipation. "I just want to hear why you think that Brooke would be a good mother to you."

She looked out towards the window and hesitated for a brief moment, thinking about how to answer that question. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she turned her head back to face the woman; chin high, and eyes full of the confidence I always told her to have in herself…

This whole thing seemed official to me already. In fact, it seemed official to me long before this court date, this adoption, this paperwork… the truth was, Sam had really been my daughter ever since day one.

"I guess I just never realized what it was to be really cared about before I met Brooke… She's good to me… she's good to everybody. People should consider themselves lucky just to know her… I mean, ever since I got sick… I know I couldn't have made it this far without Brooke. I know I never could have even thought about being able to get better if I was with anybody other than Brooke."

I could feel the tears brimming at the undersides of my eyes as I turned to Sam and gave her a being smirk of pride that she returned modestly before rolling her eyes away from mine in embarrassment.

"And have things changed with Brooke… I mean, every since you did get sick?" The woman's professional attitude faltered slightly over her uncertainty of how she should word her question and address this obvious barrier that was probably making our particular case slightly more unusual than any she had previously encountered.

"Well, she does worry a lot more." Sam tried to joke around in an effort to lighten the growing thickness in the air and the woman smiled at her attempt.

"Well it's not always a bad thing to have somebody who worries about you."

"I guess not…" Sam nodded her head in agreement with the woman, watching closely as she gathered the massive piles of papers up in between both of her hands, shuffling them neatly in a motion that told both me and Sam that she was done with her questioning of us.

Sam and I looked at each other nervously… I guess this is it.

After all we've been through together; this was finally looking like it could be the light at the end of the tunnel, metaphorically speaking, of course… But I couldn't say that I had ever imagined this moment being quite like this. I mean, how could I?

Long before now, long before we were sitting in a courthouse waiting for the finalization on our adoption papers, long before Sam was ever in and out of hospitals getting treated for cancer, long before she even left for an entire summer to live with her biological mother, I had made up these decorative, elaborate plans for Sam, and for our family. Elaborate plans that involved me watching her graduate high school, go to college, get married, start a family of her own…

I would be completely lying to you right now if I told you that any of those original plans involved being in the state that we were currently in.

Sam and I held our breaths painfully in our chests; I could feel my face turning blue as I watched the woman in front of me with wide eyes as she scribbled some extra notes over a few sheets of paper that I couldn't quite make out thanks to the tiny print and my damned near-sightedness that I'd been cursing ever since I was a little kid… I guess I'd just have to wait for her response like any normal human being would.

"Okay Brooke, Sam," She nodded between the two of us, flipping a piece of paper that she'd just branded her signature across and placing it gently in front of me.

My eyes were instantly attracted to the large red X at the bottom that read 'Signature of Adoptive Parent' underneath…

My breath get stuck somewhere between my lungs and my mouth; did this mean what I thought it meant?

"It appears to me that the two of you are an absolutely perfect match, Brooke, I think you will make a fabulous parent and an excellent role model to Sam, so I'm approving your petition for adoption. If you can just sign on all of the marked lines and initial at the bottom of the last page, you will be all set."

I probably wouldn't have been able to control my smile even if you injected me with some weird anesthetic that paralyzed all of the muscles in my face responsible for smiling. With tears in my eyes, I turned to Sam, and she turned back to me. In that instant, I watched as the color drained back into her face, her eyes glowed, and she smiled so broadly that for a moment, even I managed to forget that she was sick; and I was willing to bet that she did too.

I quickly gathered myself back into the present, hurrying through the small novel of paperwork in front of me without even bothering to actually read any of it as I scribbled my name with illegible handwriting on every dotted line and red X that I saw.

With shaking hands, I finally flipped onto the last page; the small box beckoning me to place my initials inside; the two letters that were destined to change everything, the two letters that would make Sam officially mine.

I slowed my movements and tried to take in the moment, take in the difference that I felt, that would obviously exist between my being Sam's foster mother and being her real mother…

Slowly, I touched the pen to the paper, trying to realize through all of the hectic chaos that had been my entire life, how exactly it was I'd ended up so perfectly right here.

A couple of years ago, if you'd asked me where I thought I would be right now, I probably would have told you that I'd have already been married to a rich man; a doctor, maybe a lawyer… I would have more kids under my belt than I could ever handle, and more pressure and responsibility than I could keep up with without making myself completely miserable…

I'm not really sure when all of that changed, when I'd decided to go from 'Brooke Davis, burnt out housewife to Brooke Davis, confident business woman, striving single mother, but somewhere along the line, it did. Somewhere between all of that fuzzy haze and white tape, I managed to find love, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

The ink glistened in its simplicity, the "B.D." that was staring in front of me not even coming close in reflecting its actual significance.

I paused briefly and made a quick pass to glance around the room. I was half expecting for fireworks to erupt, for balloons and streamers to fall from the ceilings… In fact, I had done such a good job in convincing myself that all of that would happen that when it didn't, I was more surprised than I probably would have been if it did.

But none of that mattered, because what I heard next was better than any firework or balloon ever could have been; it was the sound of Elizabeth Berger's voice, never loosing an ounce of its professional nature as she spoke once again.

"Congratulations Brooke and Sam," She nodded her head between the two of us and I turned to look at Sam for the first time since she'd officially become mine, taking in all the minute details and trying to find a physical difference in her appearance to accompany the physical change in her life…

"There will be an official review six months from now just to check in and see how everything is going, but apart from that, everything is completely legalized. You will be getting all of the paperwork that you need for your files in the mail, probably within the next day or so. It will include the official decree of adoption, and also Sam's new social security card and birth certificate with her new last time on it, and you can use that to change any legal institutions that already have her registered under the name Walker; her school, any bank accounts… hospitals," She added that last bit with a hint of awkwardness in her voice, but I think that Sam was too busy grinning like a fool to notice.

We held our excitement, conducting ourselves properly simply for the sake of company as the woman who was currently intruding on our quality, first official mother-daughter bonding time stood from her seat, shook our hands once more, and finally left with one last note of congratulations before she shut the door behind her.

For a brief moment, neither Sam nor myself did anything other than take in the reality.

I stood from my seat first.

"So," My voice trailed with a cautious neutrality behind it, just in case Sam wasn't feeling quite as ecstatic as I was, "How does it feel?"

She didn't actually say anything in response to my question. Instead, she simply pushed herself away from her own chair with such force that it toppled backwards behind her, stood up, and rushed to me so quickly, that she appeared as nothing more than a blur that I could barely make out until I felt her arms enclose around my shoulders with such force that I staggered backwards, almost sending the both of us sprawling across the floor.

But I regained my bearings quickly and returned the embrace, wrapping Sam so tightly into my arms that I was kind of surprised when she didn't sink straight through into my skin.

"It feels pretty good." She mumbled into my shoulder, where her head was firmly buried.

"It feels right," I agreed with her, speaking more to myself than I really was to her.

"Samantha Davis…" She gave her new name a test drive, trying to embrace the way the words sounded on her tongue.

"It's got a nice ring to it." I commented with a slight nod, pretending as if I hadn't spent hours of my alone time sounding out just how that name would actually sound long before this moment was even a thought, let alone a reality.

"Hey… this is huge!" Out of nowhere, Sam shouted her revelation; suddenly pulling her body back away from mine, her eyes wide and her face settling into a look of deep concentration.

"And you're just figuring this out now?" I asked her with an amused gleam in my voice at her delayed realization.

"No, I mean, this is like… really huge… I mean, we have to celebrate."

"What'd you have in mind?" I asked her, "A big rager maybe, I bet if we leave now, I'll be able to pick up a keg or two before the liquor store closes. And if we time, we should stop and grab some glow sticks." I planned out this imaginary party that both Sam and I knew would never even have a chance of existing, watching as Sam gave me an eye roll to show how little she appreciated my sense of humor.

"You know what I mean," She tried to specify, leaning into me as I wrapped a long arm across her bony shoulders.

"Sam, how long have you known me, and you honestly didn't think that I would have anything planned for a day as huge as today? Come on now, I'm slightly disappointed because this means I'm losing my edge."

"You never had any edge…" She joked with me and I couldn't help the fake jeer that came from my mouth… If only Sam knew me five years ago… No, scratch that, I would hope my daughter doesn't ever find out what I was like five years ago.

"So what is it?" She asked, looking up my slightly taller frame, allowing her feet to guide her as I dragged her out of the room and into the hallway by her shoulder,

"Like I'm telling you," I scoffed to her; of course, keeping the secret of the surprise Sam had in store for her wasn't that difficult, mainly because I myself had absolutely no idea what Haley had planned for the two of us once we got home.

"I guess it'll just have to be a surprise." I breathed my words out so that got lost in the air as we stepping outside back into the open world; and with my arm still tightly around Sam and a swagger of confidence prominent in our step, I guided her through the open path and back up the parking garage towards our awaiting car, eager to announce the presence of our brand new family to the entire world.

* * *

I'm not gonna lie to either myself or to anybody here at the moment; I'm a pretty fast driver. But even my lead foot, the drive from the courthouse back to my house is, at the bare minimum, twenty minutes. And with the rush hour traffic that we were lucky to get out of court just in time to hit, you can easily tack at least another twenty minutes onto that.

Poor Sam kept trying to sneak pitiful glances up at me the whole time, trying to guilt me into telling her what I had up my sleeves so that by the time I was finally guiding her back up the path to our front door, I was sure that my suspicious glance was permanently embedded onto my face in much the same way that the equally prominent curious look was embedded across Sam's.

The younger girl made it up the path first, unlocking the door with a slight air of hesitancy in her motions as if she was nervous that my idea of a surprise would be that I placed a rabid black bear or something on the other side of the door that was ready to pounce out and maul her the second it was opened…

As if.

Of course, knowing Haley, what actually was waiting for her in that hallway was probably something to the near equivalence of just that…

"Sam and Aunt Brooke are home! Sam and Aunt Brooke are home!" I heard Jamie's voice before I actually saw the tiny blonde-headed blur sprint up the hallway in a mad dash straight towards our general direction, and in an instant, I knew I had been correct in my previous thoughts about said rabid bear behind my door…

I watched Sam as her muscles tensed instinctively in a bracing for the blow that we both knew she was about to receive as Jamie launched himself through the air, and, I swear to God, flew at least fifteen feet before landing with a perfect gracefulness right between Sam's awaiting arms.

The girl staggered where she stood for a brief moment, but somehow managed to regain her balance while simultaneously managing a firm grip against Jamie's hip bones, boosting him higher against her chest so that they were both eye-level.

"What's up Jamester?" She asked the boy, giving him a slight smile behind tired eyes; the exhaustion from this whole days hectic blur of events suddenly starting to hit her and hit her hard.

"Momma says that I can come over and eat dinner with you and Aunt Brooke tonight because, um… because you're my cousin for real now." The boy struggled to form a comprehensive sentence amidst his excitement combined with a complete sense of confusion towards the actual situation and the cause for all of this celebration. But either way, his response made Sam beam; appreciative towards the acknowledgment of her official induction into this extended family for the first time.

"Yeah bud, I guess we sort of are…" She thought out loud to herself, ultimately drifting away into her own little world, a dreamy little grin forming on her face for a moment before she managed to shake her head out of her daze and re-focus her attention on the time at hand.

"So does this mean we're getting something good for dinner, because I'm starving?" Sam asked Jamie as she placed him firmly back down onto his own two feet before grabbing his hand and making the move to let him guide her out of the hallway and back towards where the awaiting kitchen stood just around the corner.

"I wanted McDonalds but my mom said no." I could practically picture the frown in the boy's face, even though I could no longer see him as he disappeared down the hallway, following Sam like a little puppy dog.

I found myself sitting in the foyer for an extra moment or two, smiling as Jamie's comment sunk into me while meanwhile, Sam's response got lost down the extended length of the hallway as she continued her adventure towards the kitchen.

I had to give a lifetime's worth of credit to my friends in this moment; every single one of them had done way more than their fair share in taking care of me, in taking care of Sam… I mean, here was Haley, coming to my house despite her own family that needed to be cared for; going out of her way to cook and clean for us, making absolutely certain that everything on the menu was clean, organic, steamed, fresh, and whatever else I had been spending the last two months freaking out over in my efforts to keep Sam continuously healthy…

Yeah, Haley has been good beyond good to me… they all have, and I couldn't come up with the proper words to use to extend how deeply appreciative I was of all that.

A sudden eruption of noise exploded from the direction of the kitchen, serving the dual purpose of indicating to me that Sam had finally arrived at her destination on top of causing me to wonder just how many people that Haley had actually invited over, because by the sounds of it, she had set up a miniature rock concert within the confines of my kitchen all within a matter of hours…

I guess that was my queue to go in there and check this out…

I entered not too far behind Sam just as the small crowd was finishing their welcome hugs and words of congratulations towards the younger girl.

To be perfectly honest, I was kind of shocked when the only people that greeted me when I turned the corner into the kitchen was Haley, Lucas, and Peyton, because judging by the noise that had just echoed into my ears all the way from the other side of the hall, I was expecting much more… But to be honest, I kind of preferred it just the way it was…

"Brooke!" My name rang straight through my head as Peyton ran over to me, "It looks like some congratulations are in order, B. Mom!" She shouted, and I barely had an opportunity to gather up my surroundings before Peyton had pulled me into a strong, unexpected hug, squeezing me tightly for several long seconds before finally pulling away.

"How's the fine life of motherhood treating you?" She asked, subconsciously shifting Sawyer against her other hip, subconsciously flashing the symbol of a common bond now shared between the two of us as I beamed.

"The fine life of motherhood is treating me pretty good so far, I must say, P. Sawyer." I assured her, nodding my head and flashing her one last smile as the sight of a serious-looking Haley putting the finishing touches on the feast she had elaborately created flashed across my eyes.

"Hales, you didn't have to do all this." I laughed at her overachieving tendencies, trying to take in all the food, the decoration; everything that Haley had just put several tiring hours behind, representing her slaving away in my own kitchen.

"Are you kidding me? Do you think I would ever miss out on an opportunity like this? Come on, when is it ever gonna happen again, huh? Now get your ass over here, sit down, and tell us everything about today. And I want details, Brooke, don't you dare leave anything out!"

Haley gave me strict instructions, guiding me down into the seat located at the head of the table before quickly sitting down herself, instantly silencing the crowd so that I suddenly became very aware of the fact that all eyes were on me, everybody beaming up, genuinely eager to hear the exact story of how Sam had come about to be my daughter, of how Sam had come about to be a part of all of their families.

I smiled despite myself; the thing was, lately it has seemed as if troubles were something that just seemed to attract to me like glue…

No, forget that; troubles were getting a flat tire on the way to work. Troubles were losing your cell phone at a bar after a particularly rough night. Troubles were struggling to come up with enough money to pay your electric bill when your living on a tight budget…

But your daughter getting cancer, your boyfriend flying across the entire damned country where he would return only God knows when, trying to keep your head afloat despite the constant desire to just sink in and drown already, those weren't troubles, those were down-right catastrophes…

But not tonight; tonight I simply sat at my table with Haley to the right of me, Sam to the left, and the rest of my unconventional happy family precariously scattered along the remains, and suddenly, I realized that for at least tonight, for at least this very moment, whether in the midst of simple trouble or harrowing catastrophe, for right now, all of that seemed to be behind me, and that was all I could ever really ask for.

* * *

It wasn't until a little while later, long after everything finally settled down, long after I'd taken off my restrictive dress clothes and swapped them for an oversized pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt, and long after I'd laid down in my bed to relax against my comfortable mattress and warm pillows that the impact of today finally hit me.

It was like I couldn't take the smile off of my face no matter how hard I tried as I typed away at the laptop currently resting on my knees, pretending that I was working, but accomplishing absolutely nothing beyond staring transfixed at my desktop background, my eyes burning a hole through the picture of me, Julian, and Sam on Wrightsville Beach from that memorable day right before Thanksgiving…

"Brooke?" I was distracted by the sound of my own name accompanied by a light knock on the door, and my eyes swiveled upwards to find Sam standing hesitantly in the doorframe.

"Hey," I pushed the computer off of my lap and sat myself upright in a silent invitation for her to advance inside; an invitation that she picked up on instantly as she strolled into my room and sat herself down on the empty side of my bed which normally contained Julian.

"Did you have fun tonight?" I asked her, starting some simple small talk as she nodded and smirked.

"Yeah," She nodded, "It was nice." Her voice was genuine but it tapered off at the end, leading me to the knowledge that there was something else. I could read Sam like an open book; I knew that there was something else that she desperately wanted to say, a reason for her paying me this late-night visit…

"What's on your mind, Sam?" I asked, trying to coax the thoughts out of her head.

"I just couldn't sleep, that's all." She shrugged, "This is like… one of the most action-packed days I've ever had in my entire life." I couldn't help but laugh as I nodded my head in agreement towards her statement.

"Yeah…" My voice trailed so that it sounded almost dream-like as I too got caught up in my own thoughts, "Yeah, I guess that goes for me too."

There was a brief moment of silence in which Sam folded her knees up closely into her chest and became suddenly very interested in the pattern of the pants she was wearing.

"Hey, what's up? Come on, you can talk to me. Are you feeling okay?" I asked, worry furrowing in the back of my voice as the idea that maybe this excitement she spoke of was maybe too much excitement for one day entered my head for what was surprisingly the first time all day.

"Yeah, I mean… I guess I'm just still getting used to this whole 'being a Davis' thing. I guess I just kind of convinced myself that nothing would change, you know. That just because I've already been living with you for so long and just I've practically considered you to be my mom since I moved in that it would all feel the same… But it doesn't. I feel… different."

She struggled to find words descriptive enough to let me into her thoughts, but in the end, that was the best she could manage to come up with.

"Different in a good way, I hope."

"Definitely different in a good way," She nodded her assurance, "I'm just not quite sure how just yet." She voiced her confusion towards this mysterious new feeling with lack of anything completely descriptive, but that was okay, I knew what she was trying to get at… I felt the same exact way after all.

There was simply a different feeling in the air surrounding us, a different way the light bounced off of our faces to reflect the features back into our eyes… It was a difference that I didn't quite expect, but had managed to hit me anyway… But don't get the wrong idea here, this difference wasn't a bad change, no, for once, this difference had the potential of actually being something good… finally.

"Yeah, I know what you mean." I offered her my vague response to match her even vaguer answer.

"What about you?" Sam's questioning of my feelings suddenly snapped me back to attention.

"Huh?"

"You've been acting weird all day," She pointed out, blunt in describing her observation, "What's up?"

"Nothing," I smiled softly at her expression of concern towards me, "Today's just a big day, that's all. I got a lot to think about… in a good way, of course." I added that last bit into my speech quickly, afraid that not doing so would give her the wrong idea.

"Are you sure that it's all good?" She asked, and I raised an eyebrow in authentic confusion towards her question, nervous that she had already gotten said wrong idea that I had been so worried about.

"What do you mean?"

For a moment, all she did in response was nod her head over towards the direction of my computer, where the picture of me, her, and Julian was still glowing brightly underneath the cover of the screen; our permanently still images bouncing right back into our very own eyes.

Her intentions were suddenly getting much clearer.

"I know that look," Sam said, humoring me with her ability to play the concerned parent card when she knew full well that that was my roll. "You're thinking about Julian."

"Sam…" I breathed out the beginning of what could have been a well played response, but after that, I got stuck. I didn't know what else to say; she'd caught me red-handed and she knew it. At this point, it would have been completely worthless to try and sweet talk my way out of this one.

"Did you tell him?" Her question intercepted my response.

"I…" I started the lie, but once again, I couldn't find the right words to finish it. The truth was, I had written him a pretty elaborate text message earlier all about how my adoption of Sam had finally been made official, about how our small family was being strung together tighter and tighter with each passing day… but in the end, I backed out of sending it, and now, all it was doing was floating around in that limbo of draft messages somewhere within the confines of my phone.

"No," I reworded my initial sentence into a more truthful response, "I haven't told him yet."

"He misses you, you know." Her comment came totally out of left field, and as a result, it naturally caught me off guard.

"You talked to him?"

"Yesterday," She shrugged it off as if it were no big deal. "He told me that he misses us, you especially just because he hasn't really had the opportunity to talk to you. But he says he might be able to sneak away to visit sooner than he thought."

"Does he know about today?" I asked as my heart clenched in my chest, mainly because I would have been disappointed in myself if Julian had heard the news from Sam rather than from me. I at least believed that he deserved as much as me telling him.

"No," She assured me firmly, "I figured that you'd want to tell him about that one." I nodded my head simultaneously assuring her that she had been correct in assuming that on top of extending my appreciation of this move.

"Do you think that you guys will ever make up?" She asked me after a brief moment of silence, her eyes glistening with concern as I set my face into a look of sorrowful apology, sorry for ever worrying the girl enough to make her think something like that.

"Come here, Sam," I beckoned for her to move closer to me, allowing her to rest her body against my own so that her back was pressed firmly to my chest and her head rest against my shoulder in perfect contortion.

"I know that you've been nervous about me and Julian, but the two of us… well let's face it, we were meant for each other. Julian and I, we're gonna be fine, Sam."

I watched Sam swivel around, the expression on her face telling me how elated she truly was with my comment.

"Really?"

"Really," I nodded, "So stop worrying so much kid, that's my job." Sam beamed at me, turning back around to face forward as she unconsciously hiked further up into my arms.

"That's good," She yawned, "Because I'm starting to get used to this whole family thing we've got going on here."

"Me too, Sam," I whispered, as my arms tightened across her shoulders.

The two of us sat there for a long time; long enough for Sam to finally succumb to her exhaustion, falling asleep against the warmth of my arms, long enough for my computer to shut itself down, ultimately falling victim to a dying battery, and long enough for me to slide my own eyes shut where I fell asleep peacefully against the uncomfortable head board…

The thing was, moments as perfect as this one rarely came around for me or for Sam these days, but today, things changed.

I mean, obviously ever since the day that Sam had come into my life things have changed… And even after that, ever since Sam had gotten sick, things have changed even more… The fact of the matter was, my new normal was to run around like a chicken with my head cut off just trying to keep Sam alive; so forgive me, but I was going to embrace this opportunity to rest my tired legs, exhausted eyes, and heavy heart, if only just for a minute…

Sure, I guess you could say that the two of us together are a little bit dysfunctional, but you know what, who isn't a little bit dysfunctional? The point is, Sam is mine now, and I'm hers, and I plan on keeping it just like that; so dysfunctional, yeah sure, maybe we are, but the point is that we love other just the same, and in the long run, that's all that really matters to me anyway.


	33. Blame It On Bad Luck

**So this chapter is just gonna be a short little transition chapter just because the next one is kind of a big turning point in the plot (even though you won't know it for a few chapters) and I'm excited to start writing it! Once again thanks for all the reviews and such and just to let you know I'm well into the next chapter so hopefully I'll have it up soon!  
**

Chapter 33: Blame It On Bad Luck

**Thursday, December 15****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I didn't get much sleep last night.

To be completely honest with you, I actually spent the majority of my night relishing over the excitement that had simply filled up to my very core, ultimately proving to rape me of all things even close to resembling sleep.

When I was finally sick of pretending that I was going to accomplish anything by lying in bed all day, I got up, surprisingly wide awake, and actually managed to perform the morning tasks that had since become a daily routine for me. I showered, cleaned the entire house until it was spotless, and made breakfast, accomplishing all of this while simultaneously leaving Sam peacefully asleep right across the hall, still comfortably in my own bed.

Now well into the early afternoon, I found myself finally relaxing in the familiar interior of my very own kitchen, leaning casually against the marble counter top doing absolutely nothing other than try to figure out exactly what it was I should be doing with all of this rare free time that I had on my hands today.

I considered getting off my lazy ass; considered waking Sam up just so I had something to do, considered calling Haley and Peyton to meet them up for lunch or something… and just when I started doing so much considering it made my head hurt, my doorbell rang and threw my attention away from considering anything at all.

For a brief moment, I tensed at the suddenness of the noise, swiveling my head sharply over my shoulder, backwards towards my closed bedroom door, afraid that I would see Sam stumbling angrily out, fuming at me for being awoken by the noise on this first day that she actually had been able to sleep in for weeks now.

I waited, body perked at the ready and ears poised as I listened out for any signs of Sam, but I never heard them. In fact, the only thing that I did hear was the sound of the doorbell chiming throughout the house for a second time, a beckoning call for me to move faster to the door.

Hiking my bathrobe further up my shoulders, I finally found the strength in my muscles to lift myself off of the counter, sauntering over towards the front door where I made out the shadow of an extremely tall, slightly broad man through the outline of the grooved glass.

I squinted my eyes, attempting to get a better picture of who it might be but my best efforts came up short. I crossed my fingers in the hopes that it might be Julian with one hand while with the other, ripped the door open with an expectant smile on my face that faded away the instant I saw that it was not Julian at my doorstep, but my similarly physique'd mailman who, on top of his handful of normal, everyday mail that he was holding in his hands just for me, was also fiddling with an oversized manila envelope with an official looking authorization stamp printed right smack across the center.

"Brooke Davis?" He asked for my confirmation of my own identity even though he knew exactly who I was; he has after all, been coming to the exact same house to deliver mail to the exact same person for about two years now…

"Yes?" I gave him the answer he desired anyway, watching as he fumbled for a moment to gather my overwhelmingly large pile of mail before passing it along to me.

"I just need you to sign for this," He motioned towards the mysterious envelope in his hands that he extended towards me along with a clipboard that had a single piece of paper attached to it with a large mark on the bottom that was beckoning for my signature to be placed upon it.

I scribbled my name with a nearly illegible rapidness, moving quickly in my eagerness to find out just what the hell could have been in this package.

I handed the clipboard back to him, barely uttering a goodbye before I ducked back into my house and closed the door behind me, twirling the package over and over again between my hands in search for any sort of proper identification as to where it came from and what it might be.

The answer hit me quickly, square across the center of my face as the official seal of the state of North Carolina, sitting impressively in the upper right hand corner of the envelope came into my line of vision.

In a hurried excitement, I disregarded the rest of the bills and junk mail that I had received as part of my mail package, throwing them abandoned across the counter top half-hazard before ripping into the one envelope that actually mattered like a savage beast, reaching in with my hand, and pulling out a thick handful of papers all pertaining to my adoption of Sam.

I decided to make myself comfortable at the counter before diving in to the mini-novel that I now had in front of me, pulling my full mug of coffee close, sipping on it casually as I began to shuffle through the paperwork, trying to sort through the stuff that was really important versus the stuff that could be classified as worthless junk that I would probably never even read.

The package started off with an official letter of congratulations combined with a brief thank you that was cute and well written and had a small brochure attached to it that basically told me how special I was for being so willing to commit my life to the foster kids that had such a difficult time being placed into permanent homes…

I skimmed through the rest quickly; the little shpeel on what I could expect upon adding a new member to my family, the way my life will change and the way some things will stay the same, and a little guide sheet that could help both me and my adoptive child adjust to our new lives…

I threw that stuff in the corner, shuffling through that B.S. quickly before finally arriving at the meat and potatoes of the matter; the good stuff, the papers that confirmed Sam's identity as my daughter, the only ones that were actually important…

The first thing I pulled out was Sam's new birth certificate; the one that had her name shining proudly in newly-written ink; Samantha Davis and my name in smaller font in the bottom right hand corner underneath the inquiry for the name of the mother.

I found myself grinning broadly despite myself as my heart did an almighty leap out of my chest and my stomach flip-flopped with the acknowledgment. That smile never disappeared from my face as I continued to flip through paper after paper; Sam's new social security card, a notice about the official post-adoptive process that still needs to be completed, including a set date for my final home inspection, and finally, one last official-looking memo all the way at the bottom of the pile.

I picked it up and read through it slowly as to take in all of the information, but as I continued to read it carefully, I almost wished that I'd never picked it up at all. I felt my eyes grow wider and wider with every paragraph I passed and my jaw slacken, dropping my mouth wide open until you could probably drive a car through it.

That bizarre look in my face remained there all the way up to the end and beyond, as I finished the letter with its very blunt, summarizing final sentence that left my brain swarming:

'And as a result, your daughter, Samantha Davis, is no longer covered by the state of North Carolina's government health insurance plan. Please contact your personal health care provider immediately for information about including her into your normal plan.'

I literally spit the coffee that I was drinking right out of my mouth, littering the important papers sprawled across the counter with regurgitated coffee while simultaneously burning my skin with the hot beverage as it dripped steadily down my chin.

Choking slightly on the residual liquid that I'd actually managed to keep in my mouth, I forced myself to re-read the letter one more time, just to confirm that my eyes weren't deceiving me, that I hadn't just made up the entire thing… but no, I got through it a second time, confirming to myself that it was true…

Sam had officially been dropped from the government health insurance plan that had previously done us so well… Sam was officially uninsured.

And if there was one thing that Sam could not be right now, uninsured was it.

"Oh… shit…" I muttered to myself as the recognition of the impact of this situation hit me like a slap across the face.

"Shit!" I screamed louder the second time around, listening to the echo of my own voice as it carried through the house so thoroughly that I was actually surprised that I'd managed not to wake up Sam.

"Shit, shit, shit!" I stood from my seat with such force that the stool I was sitting on flew backwards, crashing with a loud bang against the tile floor of the kitchen. I didn't even bother to pick it up as I did the only thing that I could think of doing to make a moment like this potentially better; I began pacing.

Back and forth and back and forth I walked across my kitchen in an attempt to settle my mind into being able to think of a productive solution that could possibly rectify this situation that I was currently in.

Now, usually I am not one to throw such profane terms around, especially with my kid sleeping just a few doors away from me, but you see, this was obviously not a usual situation; this was a situation that totally warranted me throwing a couple of curse words and beyond around; in fact, I was surprised that I'd actually been able to restrain myself before I broke my knuckles against the wall that I currently wanted to punch a hole through.

Okay Brooke, don't get all worked up like this, that's not going to do you any good. You just need to sit down, think this one through, and actually do something that will fix this rather than something that will probably just make it worse…

Lifting my chair back to an upright position, I sat back down, taking a couple deep, steady breaths in an effort to control my breathing before I turned back to the offending letter, stained brown with my spit up coffee, and read through it for a third time, this time looking for anything that could possibly help me find out where I should start in my attempts to fix this problem.

It took a couple of minutes, especially considering my vision was cloudy with tears of anger and frustration, but eventually, I managed to find it; a phone number stamped in miniscule font across the bottom of the page, inviting me to cal with any questions or concerns that I should have…

Oh I had a question and concern all right…

I punched the number viciously into my cell phone, raising the device to my ear just in time to hear an automated voice message begin from the other side of the line, telling me to dial the number 1 if I wished to schedule an appointment, the number 4 if I was looking for a referral, the number 5 if I had any inquiries about my insurance plan, the number 8 if I wished to speak to an attendant, and 0 if I wanted the instructions to be replayed in Spanish.

I punched the number 8; I wasn't about to be beating around the bush here, I wanted to speak to an attendant and I wanted to speak to that attendant now.

"North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, this is Rachel speaking, how may I help you?" The tone she spoke in as she passed this simple greeting came off to me as almost nagging, condescending in a way as if she knew that her company had just dropped the insurance plan of my daughter currently getting treated for cancer… Of course, I knew that that would have been impossible, but that didn't stop me from disliking this woman straight from the start… Of course, that was probably just because of how pissed I currently was with this stupid North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services right now.

Yeah sure, I knew I wasn't being fair, and I really didn't mean to take it all out on her. She was probably just some kid right out of college just looking for any sort of semi-well-paying job that she could find, but unfortunately for her, she just so happened to be the first person that I made contact with in the midst of an angry tirade.

"Hi, this is Brooke Davis I'm calling in regards to a letter that I received in the mail this morning. The adoption of my daughter was just finalized yesterday and this morning I was told that she is no longer covered by the state's health insurance plan."

I tried to sound as friendly and as intelligent as possible in order to make her think that I actually knew what I was talking about, but at the same time, I made sure to add that little edge in my voice that made her know that I was pissed.

"Yes Ms. Davis, after the finalization of adoption, the child in question is no longer covered by the state's insurance plan. You're going to have to call your own insurance company and add her onto your plan; it might take a couple of days to get her name on the card, but…"

"And you didn't think to let me know this before just dropping her cold turkey?" I cut the woman off mid-sentence, not even bothering this time to mask just how angry I was.

"You should have received a statement along with the pre-adoption package sent to you that states that the NCDHHS would no longer carry her on a plan starting twenty four hours after the finalization of the adoption."

This was getting me absolutely nowhere, but still, my chest heaved with determination. "Do you think… is it possible for me to get an extension on her coverage for a couple of days, just so I can get her on my own plan before you drop her?" My voice went from anger to desperation in a manner of nano-seconds and I knew it wasn't a good plan to let my guard down, but this lady needed to know that I was currently identifying her as the woman who held Sam's life in her hands.

Being pissed was getting me nowhere, and plan B involved me trying to pity her into feeling particularly merciful towards me.

"I'm sorry Ms. Davis; we're not authorized to cover any minor who isn't an official ward of the state of North Carolina."

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to remove the phone from my ear for a moment, nervous that if I listened to this lady speak any longer, I really would have gone off the deep end in a rage-induced tangent; something that wouldn't end well for either of us.

"Ms. Davis? Ms. Davis, are you still there?" I heard her voice echo from the ear piece of the phone that I was currently holding at hip as I questioned whether or not I should just hang up and gather myself for a moment, but with Sam's well-being in mind, I chose not to, deciding that I was going to stick with this until I got where I wanted to be.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm still here."

"What I recommend that you do is to call your health care insurer immediately and let them know the situation and that you need to add your child to your insurance plan as soon as possible. If it's an emergency situation, you can claim a waiver to the state of North Carolina, and they will be able to reimburse you for any out of pocket expenses paid for a doctor or hospital visit up to 50%."

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my noise in between my thumb and index finger. I understood that she was doing everything that she could to help me out, but I had a feeling that state reimbursement wasn't about to go as far as to pay for 50% of the extended cancer treatments that Sam was scheduled to undergo beginning in two days.

I thanked her quickly, hanging up the phone as fast as I could considering how much of a rush I was currently in, running over to the refrigerator where I knew the business card of my own health insurance company was magnetized to.

Mirroring the number on the card onto my phone, I dialed.

"Horizon Health Insurance, how may I help you?"

I took a deep breath, quickly collecting exactly what it was that I needed to say, exactly what it was that I needed to get done. The thing was, I wasn't quite sure that I really knew exactly what that was; but I was a master bull-shitter, and I planned on dusting off those old skills right now.

"Hi, this is Brooke Davis calling, I have a company plan with your insurance and recently adopted a child and I need to put her onto my plan." I squeezed my eyes and gritted my teeth in anticipation for what would come out of this one as the instant sound of fingers tapping against a keyboard rang through my ears from the other side of the phone.

"Okay… Ms. Davis, you have a plan with the company Clothes over Bro's, is that correct?"

"That's it," I nodded, hoping that this positive confirmation would be the start to something good.

"Okay, what you need to do in order to add your daughter's name to your plan is to file paper work that will include her basic information and a brief medical history survey as well as copies of the official paperwork you received from the government in order to confirm her adoptive status. After that, all of the papers will be processed and she will be added onto your plan within one to two weeks."

I subconsciously let a low grumble of frustration out of my mouth. I just wished these people could understand and appreciate just what kind of situation I was currently in right now and do something to help me fix it.

"Listen, I realize what the normal process is, but I don't think you understand; the state just completely dropped her from her state insurance literally one day after I adopted her without even letting me know." I was on an emotional rant, and even though I was positive that this lady I was talking to didn't give a shit about my personal problems, she was going to hear about them anyway. And once I got started, there was absolutely no stopping me. "Sam can't go one or two weeks without being insured, she is a leukemia patient… her next round of chemo starts on Saturday and she needs to be insured for when that happens. I need to get her on my plan and I need to get her on it by today."

I laid my demands flat out on the table, but when I didn't get an immediate response to them, I started to get a little bit nervous… It wasn't until a couple moments later that she spoke the words I'd been fearing the most.

"Ms. Davis… Just to let you know, if your daughter already has a pre-existing condition, it will be very difficult to get the approval to add her to your insurance plan, especially if she is in mid-treatment."

My mouth fell open and I began spluttering incoherently for several minutes, finally falling into silence, speaking only after we held this uncomfortable quiet for a solid minute.

"Are you serious?" It was the only thing I could think of saying, as unprofessional as it may have sounded.

"I'm sorry Ms. Davis, but our insurance company generally does not pick up those with pre-existing conditions so…"

"She's a sixteen year old girl with cancer, are you really going to tell me that you're not going to cover her?" Tears began welling into my eyes for what seemed like the millionth time today as I once again, moved on to my plan B of playing the pity card, because honestly, at this point, it seemed like the only thing that might get me any success right about now.

"If you want, I can schedule you an appointment to speak with our head of department to try and set up a deal… By the looks of things I can get you in to meet with him by… next Friday."

"I don't have until next Friday!" My anger came out clear as day in my voice as I shouted at her.

"Well maybe you can just…"

"Clear your head of department's schedule. I'll be there in an hour." I offered her this nonnegotiable direction, hanging up on her before she had the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. I pressed the end-call button with such fervor that I indented the small button deep into my phone, and that ended up frustrating me even more until I flat out just threw the entire device hard against the wall before I had time to control myself, watching as what had just been a very competent Blackberry shattered against the wall in front of me.

"Crap," I muttered to myself, bending forward as I began to collect the pieces, instantly identifying the wreckage as totally unsalvageable. I needed to stop destroying cell phones… it has happened way more times than I would ever admit.

Sitting myself back down against the counter, I buried my face into my hands in an attempt to ease my currently racing mind into telling me that everything was going to be okay, that I just had to organize my thoughts and do something other than panic.

It took me a couple of minutes of deep breathing exercises and repeating over and over again in my head that everything would be okay until I was finally able to feel my legs again and I managed to actually stand up and walk as I moved towards my bedroom.

I eased the door open quietly; somehow or another, Sam managed to remain fast asleep throughout my entire tirade, but watching her sleep peacefully right in front of me just made my blood boil more… I needed to sort this problem out, and I needed to do it now.

I dressed quickly; I had somewhere I needed to be, I had a fight I had to put up, I had somebody I had to fight for… and if it came down to it, I had some people that I would have to physically beat into submission.

I chose to leave Sam asleep, scribbling a quick note to her, deciding that I trusted her enough to take care of herself during the hopefully brief time period I would be gone… but still I sent brief calls, from my home phone of course, to both Peyton and Haley just to let them know that Sam was by herself… just in case.

And with that I was off, the thought running through my head that if anybody was ever to say that I wouldn't go to the world and back to do something for Sam, well then they clearly didn't know me very well, because as I stepped into my car, and took off, I was ready to drive all the way to the end of the world, all in the name of Sam.

**SAM**

I was awake for a long time before I finally mustered up enough strength to physically get up and let Brooke know… In fact, it was nearly noon by the time I actually rolled off the mattress; surprised that Brooke hadn't come barging in yet just to check whether or not I was still alive…

I didn't really do much in those hours I lay in Brooke's bed wide awake; stared at the ceiling mostly, listened to my iPod for a little while… but for the majority of the time, I just sat against the mattress, my cell phone resting against my slim chest in the hopes that I would feel it vibrate against my skin with the text message I had been waiting for all morning.

It was about 1:00 in the morning when the shrill ring of my text message alert, coming in from Brooke's side table next to me, woke me up. Of course, at the time, I'd been more pissed that it'd woken me up and hadn't realized the importance of the moment, so I chose not to haul my lazy ass up out of bed to check what was happening, but in the morning, when I woke up with the thought of this mystery text still firmly in my head, the first thing I did was check it out.

I grabbed the small phone before making a bee-line straight back into bed, slipping under the covers, flipping open the phone and reading the name on the screen, instantly feeling my heart leap up into my throat.

Jack,

I smiled despite myself, feeling the heat of excitement flush into my cheeks as I fumbled for my thumbs to reveal the message to me.

'Hey, just wanted to let you know tomorrow's my last day of school before my winter break and my parents are letting me come down to Tree Hill to visit.'

I read his text once, then once more just in case I'd read it wrong. But after the fourth time through, I was finally able to convince myself that this wasn't just my eyes playing some sort of sick joke on me, but it was real; I was going to see Jack again after months of painful absence.

The muscles in my face stretched to nearly painful levels as the corners of my mouth tipped upwards until they practically touched my eyes, I was smiling so wide.

I had texted him back without hesitation; 'YES! I'll be here, can't wait to see you.'

And after that, I shut my phone, holding onto it tight as I waited for Jack's response.

Gradually, the minutes ticked by; I figured he had either left his phone at home before going to school, or else slept completely through school, choosing instead to add a few extra hours to his sleep cycle instead of strengthening his mind, or whatever.

Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes later, my smile finally began to fade as realization struck me like a bag full of bricks right over my head.

Jack didn't know about me. He didn't know that I was sick, he didn't know that I had spent the past two months getting infused with toxic chemicals, he didn't know I was dying…

What the hell was I going to do about that? It was far too late to simply give him a phone call and say "oh and by the way, I have cancer…" Yeah, I figured that wouldn't go down very well…

It was currently rounding noon, two hours after I'd sent my original text to Jack and I was still no closer to figuring out what I was going to say to him than I had been when I'd initially found myself in this debacle. I mean, I could just grow some balls, figuratively speaking, of course, and just straight up tell him… in fact, I had gotten as far as physically dialing his phone number on my phone, but then I started having reservations… What if he got mad at me? What if the shock of me being sick couldn't override the pissed off factor that came with the fact that I'd been dealing with this for two months without so much as telling a soul… I mean… was that allowed? Is it socially acceptable for you to be pissed at a cancer patient?

For my sake, I hoped not.

I quickly chose not to call him, reverting back to my old theory of not telling him, that, for one thing, this was something that I needed to tell him in person, and finally, for another, that what it really boiled down to in the long run was that I was just a damn coward that couldn't keep up with this whole emotional aspect of life in general.

Finally, I felt my phone buzz against me, and I literally leapt up from my bed so quickly that my head hurt, flipping my phone open again to finally read Jack's reply message.

'Awesome, I'll text you tomorrow when I get in.'

'Sounds good.' I texted back, suddenly much less enthusiastic than I had been the first time I texted him, mainly because of the conundrum I was currently trying to decipher in the back of my head with very little success.

I didn't really expect a text back from my last, strategically vague text, which is why I was perfectly fine when I didn't get one. I figured it left me with a clear head for some strategic planning that I really had to start doing now; besides, I was suddenly under a very limited amount of time; Jack was coming in approximately twenty four hours, and I needed to be ready for him when he did…

Maybe I could get through this without him having to find out that I was sick at all…

I finally got out of bed, figuring if I was going to start, I was going to have to start now. I needed a cover to explain my appearance, and I needed it fast.

With the idea that disguising myself into looking like a healthy person rather than having to come up with some totally unbelievable explanation to all this, I snuck out of Brooke's bedroom and crept through the halls hoping that I wouldn't run into Brooke, because I knew that I looked suspicious, and I knew that it would without a doubt leave to some pretty awkward questions…

But I made it through the kitchen, down the hallway, and to the living room to where Brooke's laptop was practically calling my name from the coffee table, and I didn't see, hear, or else identify any type of indication that Brooke was even in the house, let alone waiting to sabotage my attempt at deception.

"Brooke?" Even though I'd previously been trying to avoid her, I never thought it would actually be a reality, now I was kind of worried.

I paused and opened my ears to listen for a response, but I never got one.

"Brooke?" I called out again, this time making my way back through the hallways in my search.

The closest I came was a mysteriously out of place piece of computer paper placed on the counter top that had Brooke's familiar untidy scroll written across it in an obvious message to me.

'Sam, I had to run out for a minute but I figured I'd let you sleep. I'll be back in a few hours, if you need anything, my cell phone's broken so you probably won't be able to get me but Haley and Peyton both know you're here alone so don't be afraid to call them. Don't forget to take your medication when you wake up. See you in a little while. – Brooke.'

Well that was convenient.

I pushed Brooke's not further up the counter, deciding to heed to her advice as I rounded into the kitchen and downed a morning's worth of pills, pouring myself a bowl of cereal before deciding to take full advantage of my time alone, not knowing how much time I had left.

I put my feet up on the coffee table and pulled Brooke's laptop onto my legs, opening it up and going to work immediately.

I've heard about shit like this in magazines and like, on Oprah and shit; people did it all the time, sponsored makeovers and free wigs and stuff donated to cancer patients… I mean, I didn't really know how it worked, but I figured I'd start somewhere, right?

The Google main screen reflected off of my eyes, but to be completely honest with you, I wasn't even sure what the hell it was that I was supposed to type.

Eventually, I settled to type 'makeovers for cancer patients' no matter how ludicrous that statement may be, relieved at the one million plus results, my hopes raising high that at least one of them would point me to the right direction, I leaned back, made myself comfortable, and had it.

I lost track of just how long I spent sitting here in the silence of the living room with Brooke's laptop growing warmer and warmer on top of my legs, but I can tell you that by the time I ran into anything remotely interesting, my eyes were getting tired from staring so intently at one spot for so long and my head was pounding from the glow of the screen.

I spent a couple of hours just sitting there looking up methods that would make me at least look normal again, even if I couldn't feel that way; makeovers, wig shops, things that would go back to making me feel like I belonged… well, at least as much as I could ever feel like I belonged.

The sound of the door flying open and slamming shut again distracted my attention away from a home-made wig shop only three blocks away from here and I jumped slightly and closed the computer screen, trying to look as innocent as I possibly could as Brooke came stomping into the living room.

I immediately forgot to pretend like I had nothing up my sleeves at the look on Brooke's face. She looked suspicious, I looked suspicious, and as our eyes met with each other's, we both looked very suspiciously at each other.

"What's up?" I asked, shifting slightly on the couch, trying to present my body in a confident manner.

"Nothing," She told me, shaking her head just a little bit too vigorously to totally convince me that she had just gotten back from saving puppies or volunteering to help starving African children or something. "What's up with you?"

I shrugged my shoulders and scrunched my face into the most innocent look that I could muster.

"Nothing really,"

She nodded her head slowly at me, looking like s he didn't believe a word that I said but was worried that if she pushed me to tell her what was going on, I would retaliate with equal force, asking the exact same thing of her.

"Um… I'm just gonna go over… over here." She told me, pointing towards the kitchen before disappearing around the hall.

I followed her out of the living room with my eyes, raising my eyebrows and scrunching my face in suspicion as to where the hell Brooke had just come from, and what the hell she was doing to make her look so utterly disappointed and pissed off… But whatever it was, it must have been something bad because I swear to God, as she disappeared down the hallway, I could have sworn I heard the sniffle of forced holding in of your tears.

For a moment, I considered asking her what was wrong, considered going into the kitchen to try to force her to submit to my questioning while simultaneously at least trying to make her feel better, but judging by the looks of things, it all seemed pretty hopeless to me…

I mean, I had my secrets, and apparently, Brooke had hers too. But no matter how guilty the two of us may have been, that didn't stop me from wondering just what the hell was going on around here today…


	34. Forever Young

**Well, for once I've got nothing to say so here's the next chapter hope you enjoy!**

* * *

Chapter 34: Forever Young

**Friday, December 16****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

Let me just start of by saying that me buying a house that came fully equipped with a cliff-side balcony overlooking the entirety of Tree Hill's vast riverfront was probably one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my entire life.

To be completely honest with you, if I didn't have the peace and tranquility of some alone time on the river every once in a while, I probably… no, I definitely would have just lost my whole damned mind a long time ago; and right about now, well I sure as hell needed a little bit of peace and tranquility…

That's the exact reason as to why you could currently find me right here; sitting out on my balcony despite the near freezing temperature outside, happily surrounding myself with both Peyton, and an extra sized bottle of White Zinfandel that's had my name written on it all week; because I really was about a nanosecond away from complete breakdown, and what I needed right now more than anything else was some friends, some fresh air, and needless to say, some alcohol, to get myself at least semi back on track over here.

After all, any day that ended with me and Peyton reminiscing the hours away was considered a day well spent in my book; and not to sound selfish or conceited or anything, but I think I deserved a descent day well spent right about now…

My back glass door separating the inside of my house from the back deck slid open with an accompanying whoosh and I swiveled around to see Haley emerging through, sliding her body down low against an empty lawn chair with a look of exhausted triumph smug across her face so that it appeared as if she could have passed out cold right there on the spot.

"Here you go, Hales," I didn't hesitate before I picked a clean wine glass out of the pile and poured a generous serving inside. "You look like you need this."

She extended her arm, accepting the gift gratefully before gulping down half of the wine in one impressive sip.

"So," I asked, comparing our chugging capabilities by taking an equally as large sip of my own, "How'd the tutoring go?"

I slipped the question in casually, inquiring towards the progress of the tutoring sessions Haley has been more than generous towards offering Sam for the past couple of weeks now. I mean, I know that Haley had her own hectic schedule that she had to keep up with, and her unwavering efforts to keep Sam up with her own course curriculum just to ensure that the girl would be able to continue alongside her class into her senior year, hopefully at the start of the next school year, was flattering.

But today was a little bit different. Today, Haley had come straight from her last day of teaching at Tree Hill High School before the beginning of her much deserved winter break, right here to give Sam her final two hour tutoring session of the year, so yeah, I'd say Haley more than earned a relaxing night on my balcony and a large bottle of wine all her own…

"It went great Brooke," Haley nodded her head to me in assurance as she took another large swig from her glass. "Sam is really keeping up, she's doing better than most of my regular students are; you should be really proud of her."

"Oh trust me, I am," I nodded dramatically to emphasize the truth in that statement before I raised my wine glass high above my head in the formation of a symbolic toast. "To Sam being a hell of a lot smarter than I ever was in high school, and to tutor mom for finally having some free time on her damn hands to come out here and drink with us."

Haley smirked at my small speech; her amusement probably stemming from the dual fact that I was currently speaking under the influence of a slightly alcohol-diluted mind combined with a genuine appreciation towards the authenticity of what I had just said… Needless to say, there was no hesitation in either Haley or Peyton's motions to raise their own glasses in the air and clank them against mine before all three of us returned the glass to our mouths, downing everything that remained at the bottom.

"Need a refill?" I asked the group, knowing exactly what the answer would be before either of them even said it.

"Is that even a question?" Peyton asked me as two glasses extended towards me as my slightly shaking hands poured out three more servings of wine, successfully draining the bottle of a single drop of liquid.

I turned the bottle in my hands, rotating it slightly just to test out the lighter weight of it now compared to how it felt not very long ago when it had been full.

"Hang on," I said, pushing myself off of my chair into a standing position, making the move to head back inside. "I'll be right back; I have to go get another bottle."

* * *

To be completely honest, I probably wouldn't be able to tell you just how long the three of us actually stayed out there, but I can tell you this much; after about a half hour of dabbling with the idea of moving our little pow-wow from the balcony into the kitchen due to the steadily dropping temperatures into unbearable levels, we managed to finish our third bottle of wine between the three of us, and after that, we didn't even notice the temperature outside anymore.

I divulged, but I really couldn't help myself, I mean, it's been far too long since I'd allowed myself anything even close to this level of social activity to come into my life, and with Sam safely tucked away in her bedroom, and the best of all of my friends surrounding me, how could I not get lost in my favorite pastime of drinking wine and shooting the breeze with two of the people that I loved the most.

"So B. Davis, how have things been with Sam ever since you became B. Mom?" Peyton asked, pulling me out of the deep hypnotization of watching the boats travel up and down the river.

"You know, things are going pretty well," I smiled up to her, "It's nice, really… I got all of the stuff in the mail yesterday." I announced proudly, holding my head upright at the mere memory of shuffling through page after page of documents all telling me that Sam had finally become my daughter, telling me that from now on, Samantha Walker would be better known as Samantha Davis.

But then my smile began to falter gradually, the dark reminder of that final page, that burden that had clouded this otherwise blissful process, the burden that continued to plague the growing stability of our blossoming family…

Yesterday afternoon, I found myself making the nearly hour long trip to the North Carolina headquarters of my lovely, committed, and oh-so-helpful health insurance company, barging straight through the reception area and wasting absolutely no time in creating a dramatic scene for all those that were present as I demanded an immediate meeting with the head of customer affairs. Immediately afterward, after I was told that I couldn't just meet with him unannounced, and that I needed to make an appointment, I made it quite clear that I was willing to sit here and wait as long as I had to in order to ensure that I would be meeting with this man today.

Three hours. I sat in the same damned chair for three hours, still as a freaking statue; barely moving, barely even blinking, as I just stared straight ahead looking through the door in front of me like a crazed woman, waiting for whoever it may be that I was supposed to be settling this problem with to come out here and hear my plea.

Of course, I wasn't exactly sure just what it was I was going to say once I did finally get back there, but lucky for me, I had three solid hours to think about it until finally, the director of customer affairs did get back to me, shutting me into the privacy of his over-sized office, pretending to give me the courtesy of personal conversation when in reality we both knew he was just trying to stop me from causing such a ruckus amongst all of the potential customers currently flooding into and out of the building.

My appeal with this man began in a semi-professional manner. I strategically laid out my dilemma and followed it up with a well thought of proposition towards a decision I thought to be appropriate to fix said dilemma. But gradually, time slowly ticked onwards, and as it did, I found myself no further towards a solution than I had been before, and as I watched this suit-wearing, bonus check cashing, multi-millionaire, corporate prick on the other side of this desk in front of me nod his head without listening to a word I was saying as he told me that there was very little that he could do for me, I finally snapped.

I screamed and I fought, I kicked, I screamed, and I carried on in an uncontrollable tangent with little success until finally, I was forced to play the celebrity card, making sure that this guy knew who I was, and just how much of his yearly prophet percentages stemmed from my company…

It wasn't exactly a path I wanted to go down, but in all fairness, I did get a little bit further with him after that revelation until he finally managed to push me straight to the top of the appeals cases, making sure that I knew that my request of getting Sam's name on my health insurance plan would be of their ultimate concern… But of course, my visit wasn't a complete success story…

The fact of the matter was that even in a best case scenario situation, even if my request was approved, it would still take them at least two more weeks to start covering Sam's medical expenses, and two weeks of leaving Sam uninsured almost felt to me like I was still getting nothing at all…

But in the end, I ultimately settled, identifying a lost cause when I saw one… I mean, so what, I would have to pay a few out-of-pocket expenses for Sam's treatments… Yeah, sure, we were talking a couple tens of thousands of dollars here, maybe even bordering in the hundred thousand range, but I'm luckier than most other people are in the same situation as mine… I could manage this for at least a little bit while simultaneously managing to keep my feet on the ground… Sure it would be tight, but it wasn't exactly impossible… and anyway, I was willing to make that kind of sacrifice if it meant keeping Sam healthy.

I relayed my heroic account of the tale slowly back to Haley and Peyton, watching as their eyes widened and their faces reddened with each passing second; a reaction I knew had nothing to do with the alcohol slowly creeping through their veins and everything to do with a matched horror that I felt towards the injustice of it all.

Their expressions of anger were nearly simultaneous.

"Oh my God, Brooke, that's awful. How the hell could they do something like that?" Peyton practically shouted, her voice echoing across the vast riverfront and beyond as I just shook my head, unable to offer her any more of an explanation other than a miniscule shrug.

"Did you call social services?" Haley suggested, "Maybe they could do something to help."

"I tried," I sighed, the frustration of the entire situation slowly reestablishing itself deep within my brain after I'd done such a good job today of trying to block it all out. "They said that the best they could do for me is to reimburse me for up to 25% of all of the bills I accumulate for up to a month following the finalization of the adoption."

"At least that's something," Haley tried to offer me some sense of comfort, but I could tell by the tone in her voice that she was just about as satisfied with that offer as I had been… not at all.

"Brooke, there's gotta be something that we can do; maybe I can host a charity event or something." The ideas and suggestions were instantaneous in flooding out of Peyton's mouth as a desperate yearning to help in any way she could etched itself across her face. I'd almost forgotten what an impressive resume of fundraising events she held before now…

But she'd already done so much for me, they all had; I felt bad, I felt like a needy burden that always had to have somebody taking care of her… I couldn't ask them to do any more than they already were.

"Thanks guys, really, but I think I've got this one covered, it just might take a little bit longer than I expected it to."

"Hey, listen Brooke," Peyton put her best foot forward, recognizing my tone of avoidance of her request immediately, pulling her body in closer to mine as she contorted her posture into a stance that strongly voiced her displeasure towards my plan on doing this all by myself. "We both know how stubborn you are, which is why I'm not asking, I'm telling you to take our help. That's a big thing to do on your own and you have enough to deal with as it is, so seriously; don't be afraid to ask for some help."

She delivered a short speech that I followed up with a nod, even though I wasn't really so sure just what I was silently getting myself into… This was kind of supposed to be a low-key problem that I was supposed to be able to easily handle, but now… charity events, and fundraisers… it was all amazing and it absolutely melted my heart to the ground, but I didn't exactly want the world to know that I was having trouble getting my daughter medical care…

"Thanks guys, but I think I'll be okay… Just do me one favor; Sam doesn't know anything about what's going on with all of this mess… She has enough on her plate as it already is, I just don't want her to find out about what's happening with all this crap until I really know what's going on myself."

I pleaded for them to keep my secret, and sure, I may have been a little bit tipsy, but I managed to contort a serious look on my face that told both Peyton and Haley that I fully understood everything I meant when I said that this was a secret not to be taken out of this room.

"Of course, Brooke," Peyton nodded her best assurance to me, even though her skepticism towards the idea of secrecy was notably prominent in her eyes.

I nodded back, holding my demeanor of proud confidence that I had mastered so well over the years. Of course, meanwhile, deep inside, my mind was screaming at me to believe Peyton and Haley, but my stubborn side prevented me from actually saying that…

"Hey, listen, I've got some good news for us all." Haley spoke after a brief silence told us that our previous conversation was over and it was time to change the subject, preferentially to a lighter topic that would lift my spirits back into the air and not make me want to cry just as much… "Me and Nathan decided that we want to have Christmas dinner at our house this year, what do you think? We can invite everybody over and have a big family meal… I was thinking me, Nathan, Jamie, you two obviously, and Sam, Julian, Lucas, Sawyer… maybe I'll give Mouth and Millie a call… just to get everybody together again."

"Yes!" I shouted before Haley even had time to finish her sentence. Three days ago, while me and Sam were stuck sitting in the hospital waiting for Sam to finish what seemed like her millionth round of chemotherapy, her doctor had laid out a very detailed schedule of her upcoming therapy sessions, making sure that it was known that she had successfully put her best foot forward to make sure that Sam would be spending Christmas at home with her family; a possibility that, I won't lie, I had been nervous about. The enthusiasm in my voice was proof of how satisfying it was to find out that on top of having some time away from our hectic lives for a change, Sam and I would also be able to gather together with our little unconventional extended family and get in some of that bonding time that I felt we'd been deprived of lately.

"Sam will be home, and we don't have anywhere else to be… It sounds perfect Hales, thanks."

I felt as if I owed her a million more praises of gratitude, and honestly, I probably would have done just that, thanks to my bizarre tendency to ramble on obnoxiously when I'm drunk if Peyton hadn't cut me off to accept her own offer, followed instantly by Haley delving into her planned menu, already prepared for an event over a week away like typical Haley.

I relaxed into my chair, only half listening to what either of them were saying as they carried out a conversation between themselves, satisfied with me throwing in a half-assed nod and a "yeah, uh-huh" every once in a while just to make it sound like I was paying attention. But the truth was I wasn't; the truth was, I was far too excited with the prospect of transforming into a normal family again to get caught up in what I would be eating, what I would be buying, what I needed to do until then…

And of course, in the long run, what it all boiled down to, was that I was more excited, more grateful to known that I had somewhere, somebody, no… somebody's to fall back on no matter how hard it might be sometimes to hold my head up high and keep on walking.

* * *

**SAM**

It was a lot later into the night, just as the clock blinked from 9:59 to 10:00 that I found myself barely able to keep my eyes open anymore. In all fairness, given the fact that I rarely was awake past 8:00 these days, I was impressed with my abilities of stifling steep yawns as I turned the pages over in the book I was reading, staring blankly down as the tiny print finally began to blur together into incomprehensible sentences indicating to me that I was fighting a losing battle with sleep.

I marked my page I had left off on with a doggy ear and slowly stood up off of my bed with the final intention of shutting my light off before I would crash into a much anticipated sleep when something distracted me in the form of a loud bang that echoed sharply off of the sensitive glass window to my right. Something had just hit it, and something had just hit it hard.

I leaned forward nervously in an attempt to assess the damage from a safe distance; whatever it was, it hadn't hit hard enough to cause any lasting damage or anything like that, but it still left me mighty suspicious…

I took a slow step forward towards the window facing my front lawn before I jumped backwards when I heard the noise again; this time louder and more sharply than the first time.

Shit, what the hell was that?

I was just starting to get suspicious that a group of birds decided to host a mass suicide outside of my bedroom window when I peeled back the curtain, squinted my eyes out into the darkness of the outside, and tunnel-visioned on a tiny, solid object spiraling towards me; jumping when it panged against the window in a crash that originated right in front of my eyes.

I jumped back again; whatever that was, it sure as hell didn't look like a bird; in fact it looked more like a… a rock?

I followed the object's trajectory in a curve back down to solid ground towards its starting point and felt my heart literally stop beating in my chest when I found what awaited me at the bottom.

Jack.

He was currently bending forward, crouched down from his position along the driveway gathering more pebbles into his hands, inevitably destined to be thrown at my window so that he didn't notice my sudden appearance. I took this opportunity and ducked back out of sight behind the safety of my curtain as my brief, fleeting moment of happiness slowly faded into one of pure, unadulterated panic.

Needless to say, Jack still didn't know about me, and because he still didn't know about me, there was no way in hell I could let him see me like this…

I had almost forgotten about my current little dilemma after this afternoon when Jack texted me to let me know that I'd have an entire extra day to think about a solution considering the announcement that he probably wouldn't be able to come see me until Saturday… But now with the unexpected arrival… well what the hell was I supposed to do now?

Panicked, I scoured through the entirety of my room, throwing things half-hazard across the floor subsequently trashing the place worse than it already was as I ran around like a madman in search of something that could hold my cover for at least a little while longer… After a few more seconds, I managed to find what I was looking for in the form of a dark blue knit cap just large enough for me to cover the fact that I was completely bald from the safety of my window while also providing a decent enough color contrast to obscure the sunken and decrepit features that had befallen my own face.

I quickly slammed it down on top of my head before throwing an oversized sweatshirt over my shoulders and rushing over to the window so quickly that I tripped over one of the various garments currently strewn about my bedroom floor and fell right into it so that I only narrowly avoided getting beamed in the center of the forehead with one of Jack's rocks by a half an inch.

"Jack?" I whispered out to him, but I had to control even this simplest of moves considering the fact that there was nothing more that I wanted to do right now than scream out my sheer delight of finally seeing him for the first time in months while jumping from the window ledge straight into his awaiting arms in a form of greeting.

"Hey," He responded back to me with that characteristically awkward tone so typical of Jack in the back of his voice, his single word accompanied by a slight twitch of the shoulders and a smirk in the corners of his mouth to reveal an upright grin.

"You could have used the door you know." I told him, just to make small talk. The truth was that I was secretly glad that he had chosen to come to the window. The window was always where the princes ended up when they travelled to faraway lands in order to rescue the fair maiden, which seemed to be a good metaphor in my case because right about now, I could definitely use a hero, which was lucky for me, because Jack seemed like he really needed somebody to save.

He shrugged, quickly catching onto my game of playful banter so that his eyes were forced downward towards the dirt in embarrassment, concentrating solely on his own toes as they scuffed a small hole in the dirt. It was immediately obvious that Jack hadn't changed one bit since the last time I'd seen him, and for that I was grateful; at least one of us has managed to hold on to a sense of normalcy.

"I figured that this would more sentimental, or whatever." He explained his motivation, "And to keep up with the theme of nostalgia, I propose a trip to the diner for some coffee or something… you know, for old time sake."

I smiled at his proposal; the idea, especially the part about retaining our old sense of normalcy, seeming strangely satisfying to me.

"Well obviously!" I accepted his invitation instantly, the memory of the way things used to be clouding my mind in such an overpowering manner that I was half way out the window before I remembered that things in fact weren't the way they used to be anymore…

"What's up?" Jack called, apparently noticing my sudden hesitation.

I wish that I could tell him what was up; the truth was, I knew that there was no way in hell that Brooke was going to let me leave the house at this time of night, there was no way in hell that she was going to let me go out without her, and there was definitely no way in hell that she was going to let me go out at 10:00 at night in the middle of winter to a scummy old diner… Of course, she would have had a point…

"My mom's asleep, Jack… I don't think that she'll let me go out." I tried to explain my motivation behind the hesitation using the vaguest possible terms, but the truth of the matter was there wasn't a lot of details about this story that I felt particularly comfortable with sharing from out my bedroom window.

"Then just climb out the window, come on, you're an expert on doing that by now." Jack tried to persuade me, tried to get me to just loosen up a bit and go out with him, tried to get me to forget about my problems if only for a little while… but he sure as hell had one thing right; although my skills were definitely a bit rusty, by now, if I was good at one thing, it was my ability to climb out this window to land safely on the ground below me.

But a lot has changed ever since then… a lot more than Jack could ever know.

"Come on, what are you waiting for?" He called out to me in a loud whisper, watching me carefully, and probably a little bit nervously about the prospect of me denying him as I continued to hesitate.

My mind was pulling me back and forth in every which direction pertaining to what it was that I should do. There was that little angel Sam on my left shoulder constantly reminding me of the potential consequences of what me sneaking out in the middle of the night just to go out with Jack could mean, but meanwhile, the little devil Sam on my right was yelling at me that it was just one night, that nothing would happen, that I would be stupid to miss this opportunity to go out with Jack.

Have you ever seen those cartoons when you were a kid? The ones where the character has to make a difficult decision and ultimately chooses the route he knows is wrong only to be met up with some sort of strange demise, leading to the moral of the story that you should always make the right decisions in life?

Well I guess that when I was a kid, I didn't watch those cartoons frequently enough, or maybe it was just the fact that they never dealt with the subject matter of what to do when you're a cancer patient being tempted out into the world of potential infection, because in the long run, that influence that the little devil Sam had over me won, because the truth was, it was much too strong to even think about avoiding.

I wanted to see Jack. No, I had a god-given right to see Jack, and if anybody deserved a brief night out on the town, well it was me, if I do say so myself. In retrospect, the answer had been plain and clear in front of my face the entire time, it just took me this long to finally notice it.

"Okay, I'll be right there, hang on, let me get dressed." I called back to him before I ducked back inside of my bedroom, hustling through the pile of laundry on my floor with a firm idea in mind that as long as I was careful in picking out just the right disguise, I might just be able to get through this night without having to mention a single word of cancer to him.

I mean, was it so wrong for me to just want to forget about it for just one night?

I double checked myself one last time in the mirror, adjusting the cap on my head so that I was certain that it was placed on firmly and wouldn't be going anywhere to expose my disguise before I lifted my hood up over it, the thick gray fabric covering the majority of my face so that, and I'm saying this strictly for lack for better phrasing, I looked much less like a cancer patient than I had before…

Finally, I threw on a clean pair of jeans and after going back and forth a few times, ultimately decided to put a large wool jacket on in order to further cover up the fact that I was probably about thirty pounds thinner than I had been the last time I'd seen Jack…

"Okay, I'm coming down." I finally called back down to Jack after a couple of minutes after I was totally certain that my disguise would be fool proof.

I climbed through the window carefully, very wary of the fact that any unnecessary jostling would probably leave some suspicious bruises behind that would potentially result in a thorough investigation by Brooke tomorrow as to just how I got them… Of course, considering the fact that I had absolutely no intention of Brooke ever finding out just what I was currently up to, I remained careful as I lowered myself down the short distance between ground and window, landing safely on my own two feet.

The moment I gathered my footing, I immediately launched myself into a sprint… well, as much of a sprint that I could manage, you know how it is, not stopping until finally, I reached Jack, colliding my body against his as I wrapped him up in what was a very firm, very lengthy embrace that I probably could have held for days if given the opportunity.

He returned the hug willingly as I carefully adjusted my body against his own, wary to the fact that if I made myself as tall as humanly possible, it would be much harder for him to feel the bones underneath my thin body or if I avoided shifting to the left too much, he would never feel the awkward lump of the catheter protruding proudly from the center of my chest… Of course, the position was uncomfortable, and the longer I held it the more painful it got, but in the end, it was totally worth the near collapse of my muscles underneath the strain just to have the opportunity to be held by Jack again.

"So where are we going?" I asked casually, my body screaming at me to finally break apart our hug before it gave out completely so that I let go and expertly moved into the shadows without generating an ounce of suspicion from Jack, perfectly masking out his ability to pinpoint any one of my disease-ravaged flaws.

"Well, I was thinking of embarking on one of our classic diner trips for right now… I didn't quite think of any elaborate plans for an after party, but I figured that we could come up with that on our own while we're eating… or something like that." He smirked at me, proud of his accomplishment at making plans and I immediately returned his enthusiasm, linking my arm around his own before pushing him onward down the sidewalk in the direction I knew the diner to be; the direction that I just automatically walked in every time I was with Jack… even this many months later.

"That sounds like a plan to me." I told him as we set off on our half a mile or so long adventure towards the diner that I haven't been to since returning from leaving Rebecca's house… it just posed too many awkward questions, I'm sure you understand; I just hoped to God she wouldn't be there now, that would be even more awkward…

"So, your mom, huh?" Jack asked coincidentally, so that, just because I'd been thinking about Rebecca at the time, I thought he might be asking about her.

"Huh?" I asked in an attempt to get him to clarify.

"Before, when I asked you to come out with me you said that you couldn't because your mom was asleep and she wouldn't let you… So when did Brooke become mom?"

"Oh," I voiced my understanding, looking down to my feet as I smiled despite myself. These days, it was getting so that I didn't even really notice it anymore when I would refer to Brooke as my mom rather than just calling her plain old Brooke… It was after all, legally the truth now, and with that notion firmly in my mind, the word 'mom' just seemed to flow off the tongue a lot easier.

"Well, it was made official on Wednesday." I confirmed what I knew he had been thinking, "The adoption is all finalized and everything, so I guess I'm officially a Davis." I spoke with pride, but I was eager to steer conversation away from the topic of myself just so that I could avoid any awkward questions about what I'd been up to these days and all that, so I changed the subject. "How about you, how are your foster parents treating you?"

"They're good actually, they're pretty cool, you know." He spoke with a tone in his voice that told me how surprised he still was that what had been such a horrible situation for him actually turned out on a good note, especially after all he'd been through. "They've been helping me, you know; get back on track and everything… so I like them… It still sucks being so far away from you, though." He threw in that last comment because I knew he was trying to get some bonus points with me, and when he glanced down at me to see if his plan had worked, I gave him a brief eye roll and the slightest of smiles just to let him know that it had.

We were deep into a comfortable silence when we rounded the corner into the park, a classic shortcut route towards our destination of the diner. All the lights had been shut off hours ago; that whole, the park closes after sunset rule was strictly enforced by the Tree Hill Police Department as if they didn't have anything better to do with their time other than sit around and make sure kids didn't try to sneak in after hours to smoke weed on the swings or something… Of course, even though I usually found this rule annoying, and the shadows the park made in the dark at night kind of creepy, today, I was rather grateful for them, just because a dark environment was just what I needed to keep my cover…

The problem was that this cover was starting to get pretty hard to keep up with when my body was screaming at me against everything that I was currently doing to it.

I could feel myself shivering despite my best efforts to control it, freezing under the worthless protection of my best winter clothes as my muscles grew wearier and wearier in their protest against what was easily the longest walk I had taken in two months, leaving me exhausted and barely able to keep up with Jack's large footsteps… and we weren't even half way there yet.

Great, maybe this wasn't such a good idea as I'd originally though. Maybe I shouldn't have been such a damn coward and just told Jack what was going on at the beginning, that way I wouldn't have found myself in this mess to begin with. But no, Sam, you always have to take the hard way out, don't you? Yup, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now… think again.

"Hey, are you okay?" Jack asked, and it was only after he spoke up that I noticed that I stopped walking, my calves having basically just giving up on me, refusing to move altogether as I panted heavily with my hands on my knees in an effort to catch my breath, cursing my decrepit body for resembling a 90 year olds rather than a teenager's.

"Yeah," I nodded, trying to put the most truthful look on my face I could muster, and I guess it worked, because Jack just shrugged and turned back around to continue his walk.

And then all of a sudden it hit me.

I had gone into this little trip with Jack with the idea in mind that maybe, by keeping the truth from him, I could erase it all together, if only for a little while, that maybe I could reinstate that sense of perfection in my life that I'd seemingly lost so long ago… at least for one night. But that adrenaline of deceit was starting to fade rapidly, and a new found notion was washing through my mind, screaming at me that I'd waited long enough, and that Jack needed to know the truth and he needed to know it now… He deserved that much.

"Hey Jack?" I called his attention back and he stopped again, turning back around so that his eyes focused right onto my own.

"Yeah," He looked into my eyes, probably easily distinguishing the fact that I was currently conducting an internal battle deep within the depths of my own mind against myself… I struggled to wrap my head around what would be the easiest, the least painful way for me to tell him this impossibly difficult news.

"If you knew I was dying, do you think that it would change anything between us?" Those words just kind of… slipped out. I don't know, I couldn't say I chose them per se, I just tried speaking straight from my heart and that was somehow what I managed to come up with.

There was a miniscule pause that lingered between the two of us for a moment in which neither of our faces made the slightest change in reaction to what I'd said; but then, slowly but surely, after about a second or two, his eyebrows raised, his face relaxed, and a smile grew within his features until it erupted into a full-blown laugh; a laugh that I tried to return, but my effort resulted in nothing short of a grimace… if only it were a joke, right?

"What?" He asked, laughing through his question.

"Nothing," I said quickly, shaking it off as I instantly changed my mind about telling Jack, instead choosing to simply look down at the ground, stick my hands in my pockets, and keep on walking forward, despite everything my body was telling me against the idea.

"Hey Sam, wait up," He called after me, jogging the couple of steps required for him to catch up to me, a task which he performed easily. "What was that about, really?" He wanted me to stop and explain myself, because now that it was more obvious that I hadn't been kidding around with him, the smile disappeared from his face completely.

"It's nothing," I insisted, ignoring every signal he was trying to throw at me in an effort to stop me from walking and to talk to him, to let him know what was going on inside my head…

"Seriously Sam, something's going on with you," My heart constricted with nerves deep inside my chest as anxiety over whether or not he'd caught on to my secret overpowered me and I tried to ignore the fact that I could feel him staring a hole in the back of my head as if he was trying to x-ray vision the answers out of me.

The only thing I could do was turn away from him; keep walking down the dark path, and bury my face further into my sweatshirt, praying to God that he wouldn't notice the dark circles under my eyes or the sharp cheekbones protruding starkly from underneath my skin.

"It's nothing," I insisted again, using my shoulder to push past his inquiring gaze, all the while keeping up steadily with my current pace, ignoring just how tired I was getting, concentrating solely on just much I wanted nothing more than to simply drop the subject.

But Jack wasn't done; I felt his arm reach out to catch me in an effort to physically stop me from moving, but it had all happened so quickly that I didn't even have time to process the fact that he had completely missed his intended target of my shoulder and instead, grabbed onto a fist full of the hood and hat currently protecting my bald head.

In fact, by the time I did notice it, it was already too late, because in one fluid motion, I stepped forward at the exact same time he yanked back, and before I knew it, my disguise had been physically ripped off of my head, suddenly exposing me for exactly what I was; a big, fat phony.

At first, he just kind of stumbled backwards a little bit with a look of disbelief shining across his face as if he had been shocked completely stupid, just the same way as most people react the first time they get a good look at me… I watched his eyes dart back and forth, scanning my body in an attempt to figure out whether this was real, or whether I was just trying to play some kind of sick joke on him.

"Sam, what the hell is going on with you?" He spluttered a little bit before he finally managed to spit out the sentence.

I sighed; I guess that I should have known better than anybody else that trying to keep up with a lie never worked; that as your secrets become darker and darker and you hold on to them tighter and tighter, that finally, with time, when they inevitably come out, it just bites you harder in your ass than you ever could have imagined.

"Come on," I reached out and grabbed onto the hand that he was holding limply at his side; his fingers were like wet noodles in their inability to physically wrap around my own, but I couldn't blame him too much; instead, I dragged him to the end of the path and up the sidewalk into the old abandoned house on the corner that we used to sneak into and sleep in when we were both having particularly bad nights at home.

The planks nailed across the windows that Jack had ripped off in order to gain access to the home over a year ago were still lying untouched under the exposed window, and I climbed in first before Jack followed me.

Our blanket was still set up in the corner, slowly collecting a thin layer of dust across it from its months without use, but I ignored it and sat upon it anyway, pulling Jack down with me before resting my head against the comfortable crook of his shoulder.

"I started getting sick a few months after you left." I started my explanation after a few moments of silence, going slowly while presenting it in a tone that hopefully didn't make it sound as if I were blaming it all on him.

He didn't say anything, instead, he just kind of sat there and listened to me; it was one of the many reasons why me and Jack blended together so well; we could both be really good listeners when the other needed one.

"Then, towards the end of October, it started to get worse and then one day, Brooke took me to the hospital and it turned out that… that I had leukemia." I paused in order to give him the opportunity to say something, anything, but the only thing he was able to manage was a small nod indicating to me he understood the story thus far. "I've been doing chemo for almost two months now."

I took a deep breath; now that the burden was off my chest it was remarkably easier to breathe. Now it was just a matter of whether or not Jack was ever going to talk to me again for keeping this from him that was weighing me down.

"I'm sorry Sam…" His voice was full of concern, but I could hear him struggling to identify what else he could say, and I could hear him paining with the fact that I hadn't confided in him sooner, that I'd been doing this all on my own for so long now.

"Hey, don't worry; really. I mean, the doctor's say that it's totally treatable and that they caught it way early so it's okay, I mean, I'm gonna be fine, it's just that I have to get there first. Trust me; it looks much worse than it actually is." I smiled to him, putting my best look of assurance on my face even though, some days, not even I was totally convinced of the logic of what I was saying.

"Really?" He asked, leading me to believe that he had fallen for it, that I was correct in my tactic of playing of his total lack of understanding towards the situation and lie to him a little bit more, however, a little bit less than I had been before so that I felt okay about doing it.

"Absolutely," I nodded, digging my head deeper into his shoulder as I stifled a steep yawn; the events that had occurred in the past half an hour or so ultimately wiping me out completely.

Jack was talking to me; I could hear his voice settling into my ears but his words were starting to mold together so that I couldn't even make them out anymore. My eyes felt like physical weights determined to remain in the closed position; my brain was foggy and unable to comprehend any more of the world surrounding me.

I gave in to it all; just sat there and let Jack do the talking, his voice infiltrating my ears and filling my mind with that low, soothing drawl I loved so much as my eyes finally slid completely closed, my brain shut itself off, and I finally wandered off into a deep, peaceful sleep.


	35. Here Comes the Rain Again

**Here's the next chapter. Enjoy!**

Chapter 35: Here Comes the Rain Again

**Saturday, December 17****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

"SAM, BREAKFAST!" I screamed loudly throughout the house, listening as my voice rang out with a hint of harshness as I watched the digital clock on the microwave round upward from 6:59 to 7:00 a.m. on the dot.

Of course, I knew that Sam hadn't exactly been too keen on the whole 'breakfast' thing these past few weeks but on the mornings that she was actually home as opposed to being stuck in the hospital, I still liked to call her up bright and early in my own personal effort to retain at least somewhat of a sense of normalcy for her. I mean, she hated me for it, of course, and usually she would just take to sitting at the counter, sulking and swirling her food across her plate with a pout on her face, but I liked to think that's just because of how much she missed it all…

But still, I continued to push this particular routine, hopeful that maybe the day would finally come where the two of us could successfully pretend that I was waking her up to get ready for school as opposed to waking her up to get ready for a round of chemotherapy.

I paused briefly after shouting Sam's name, not really surprised when I didn't get a response right away… Well at least this much was still normal. No matter how sick Sam ever got, she would never lose her hostility towards my insistency to force her up much earlier than she preferred, or her willingness to try any method possible just to get a few extra minutes of shut eye in before I physically ripped her out of her bed…

In fact, I think that the only time that she ever preferred being stuck in the hospital as opposed to being at home with me was when the nurse's let her sleep in a little bit longer than I ever did.

"SAM! Come on, wake up, you've got chemo in an hour!" I yelled again, stepping to Sam's bedroom door, knocking harshly so that the rapping of my knuckles against the wood echoed across the entire house, and inevitably, right through Sam's sleeping ears.

Now, usually this was about the time that I would hear Sam mumble some sort of lucrative protest, and that was my cue to force the door open and barge in where I would find Sam lying in her bed with a pillow smashed over her head in an attempt to block out the sound of my voice.

But today was different. Today, nothing but pure silence greeted me, and I found myself hesitating, the deviation from our regular routine settling uncomfortably in the form of a flutter that spread through my heart.

"Sam?" I asked again, my voice escaping gentler, more nervous the second time around as my heart pounded in a steady rhythm through my head. With adrenaline coursing through my veins, I grabbed the doorknob with shaky hands, turning it slowly, afraid to open the door, afraid to see what I would find on the other side.

"Sam?" I called my final warning as the door swung open, hitting me instantly with the freezing December breeze filtering steadily into the room from the open window on the far wall. Shivering involuntarily, I took a hesitant step inside, scanning across her messy room where my heart did an instant plunge from my chest straight down into my knees.

Sam wasn't here.

My eyes widened involuntarily in shock as my breath got stuck somewhere between my lungs and my throat, choking me until I practically felt my face turn blue with hypoxia. My mind began to race with various excuses, impractical reasons as to why Sam wasn't in her bed while simultaneously trying to avoid the one obvious choice that I didn't want to think about.

Maybe she just woke up in the middle of the night really hot and got up to open the window for some fresh air… and then maybe she went to the bathroom… Yeah, yeah that made sense; that must be it…

"SAM!" My voice cracked as I screamed louder than ever, this time with the addition of a twinge of panic, erasing the confidence that I normally prided myself for always speaking with.

I darted out of Sam's bedroom and back into the hallway, and practically ran… well, okay, I won't lie to you, literally did run through every single room of the house, losing a little more of my cool with every passing minute that I didn't find her…

I looked in the bathroom last, knowing full well that it was my last opportunity to find her safe and sound, but I was once again, only met with disappointment… Sam wasn't there. In fact, the spotless room indicated to me that nobody has been there for a while, and that fact was confirmed by Sam's pill box, lying where it always was on the sink, still holding her medication from both last night and this morning, untouched and waiting to be taken in its designated slots.

My body shook vigorously under the pressure as physical tears swelled underneath my eyelids… Come on Sam, where the hell did you go?

My mind began to race; where was she? How long has she been gone?

I tried to think of the last time I'd seen her, but in my panic, a thick layer of fog had clouded over my brain and I found myself unable to think of much of anything…

Okay, breathe Brooke, concentrate… last night after Peyton and Haley left, I checked up on her and she was in her bedroom… that was probably around… 9:30… Jesus, that means she could have been gone for more than nine hours by now…

I sunk my knees, lowering myself down the wall until my ass finally met with the cool tile layered pristinely across the floor, leaving me to throw my head between my legs in an effort to ease the nausea that was currently seeping through my stomach.

I tried to focus on what I should be doing right now; the problem was I had absolutely no idea.

Should I call the police? Should I go out to look for her? But then what I left and she came home sick or hurt and I wasn't there to help her?

Okay Brooke, relax, panicking isn't getting you anywhere. Don't panic Brooke, don't panic, there's absolutely no need to panic… Oh who the hell was I kidding, there's every need to panic right about now; my daughter was missing. My daughter was missing and she was sick, and I don't even know whether or not she's even alive…

Yeah, that seems like a pretty good reason to panic to me.

I tried to wrap my head around a reason behind why Sam would ever leave, why she would ever think that it was okay to just get up and go in the middle of the night without even telling me… especially when she knew all the possibilities of what could go wrong… But the more I thought about this, the more illogical it seemed; I mean she would never do that, right?

My mind wandered into the unthinkable; what if somebody took her or something? Do people actually do that, kidnap kids with cancer? I mean, even criminals have to have some sort of code of ethics, right?

Okay Brooke, stop this right now, you're just starting to sound crazy. Here's a logical idea, maybe you should call Sam. Yeah, that sounded good, I'll just call her on her cell phone, and then she'll answer, and I'll be able to physically ask her where she was and she would tell me that I was being stupid, that she was outside sitting on the front steps, ready to go and waiting for me to come out and take her to her chemotherapy round…

The more I repeated that notion in my head, the more I was able to convince myself that it was actually true, which is why, as I sauntered back into the kitchen and dialed Sam's familiar phone number in my home phone, my heart felt considerably lighter than it had before.

I tapped my fingers nervously on the counter top as I listened to the sound of the phone ringing back to me once… twice… and then something happened; on the third ring, the sound of my front door opening and closing caused me to swivel around so quickly that I the bones of my vertebrae cracked from my neck down to my tail bone in perfect synchronization; my heart stalled, and my senses remained poised as I waited for Sam to walk through the kitchen asking why it was taking me so long to leave.

"Sam!" I called out, racing into the living room, feeling physical pain as the momentary relief that I had previously enjoyed vanished instantly at the sight of not Sam coming through the front door, but Haley.

"Hey Brooke, sorry I'm running a bit late, but I promised Sam that I would go to her treatment with you guys today." Haley spoke casually without a care in the world as she balanced a styrofoam tray full with three coffees in their designated slots.

I watched, frozen in open-mouthed disappointment as she picked one of them up in her hands and turned to extend it over to me before she froze, her eyes finally meeting with mine as realization that something was wrong slowly dawned across her face.

"Brooke, what's wrong?" She looked panicked, and I felt kind of responsible for that, the thing was, I just couldn't bring my mouth to open in order to produce an explanation.

Haley didn't hesitate; before I knew it, she'd practically thrown the coffees down on the end table besides her, wrapping me up into her arms.

Her motions seemed to trigger something inside of me, like she hit a button that flipped the on switch or something, because the second her body made contact with mine, I lost it; the flood gates opened. My face scrunched up into wrinkly anguish as the tears leaked out despite my best efforts to control them.

"It's Sam…" I finally managed to choke out.

I felt Haley's fingernails dig into my shoulders in a sharp, sudden panic as she pulled away from me in order to get a good look into my face, trying to read it accurately as her mouth hung open and her eyes widened in a frozen look of shock that instantly told me that she had automatically assumed the worst at my words.

"Oh my God Brooke… oh my God, she… she's not…" Tears welled underneath her eyes and I jumped up firmly in order to prevent this false assumption from coursing any further through Haley's body before the poor woman had a heart attack in front of me.

"NO!" I shouted it confidently enough, but the truth was, I had absolutely no idea what the answer to that question was; Sam could be anywhere, she could be anything…

No Brooke, stop, you can't think like that…

"No, nothing like that," I repeated one more time in order to convince the both of us that I had meant what I said… Of course, I couldn't help but notice the sound of hesitation that was present in my voice the second time around...

I watched as Haley let go of my shoulder with her left hand in order to clutch at her chest in an attempt to stifle her racing heart beat while meanwhile, her right remained firmly clamped onto my shoulder, her nails digging a hole through my skin she was clutching onto me so tightly.

"Jesus Christ Brooke, don't do that me." She spoke, panting out of breath as if she'd just run a full marathon.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just… I went to wake Sam up for breakfast this morning, and when I went into her room… she was gone." My eyes were clear of any remaining tears but my voice still emerged low and raspy in my characteristic tone of distress… you know; the one that made any and every one of my emotional breakdowns very difficult to hide.

"Gone?" Haley asked, her eyebrows furrowing into a look of confusion, "What do you mean gone?"

"I don't know," I sighed in the frustration of how little I actually did know, "The window in her room was open… I think she might have snuck out, Haley. I have no idea where she is, I have no idea how long she's been gone, she didn't answer her cell phone when I called her… What if something happened to her?"

I rambled endlessly in my panic as Haley clutched onto my shoulders with both hands once again, this time in a much gentler touch considering the fact that she was now trying to calm me down.

"Okay, okay…" I could practically hear the mechanical whir of the blades churning inside of Haley's head as she searched for a solution to our problem. "Maybe… maybe she just needed to go out for some fresh air. I mean, she's been cooped up in this house for so long… Maybe she just took a walk down the block or something." She offered me the same coping mechanism I had just tried and failed at using mere minutes ago; the one in which I tried to convince myself that Sam was just fine while that little voice in the back of my mind just kept screaming at me that she was anything but.

"Listen Brooke, I'm gonna go call Peyton and tell her to come over here and stay here with you just in case Sam comes back. I'm gonna go out in my car to look for her." She leaned in closer, pulling me into a firm hug that I knew was meant to be reassuring, which is why I ignored the fact that I could feel her body shaking underneath my own.

"She'll be fine; she'll come back, okay?" I nodded at Haley's words as she pulled away from me.

"Call me the second she gets back here."

"I will," I promised, watching as Haley turned and practically sprinted from my house. I stood stock-still in my living room for several seconds, listening as the sound of Haley's car starting and her tires bottoming out as she sped out of my driveway filled my ears…

I stood there for several minutes, just breathing deeply… in and out, in and out, until I finally felt confident enough in the ability of my legs to carry my body weight to take me back to the kitchen, and back to my phone, still sitting off the hook on top of my counter.

Reaching out, I grabbed the device roughly, pounding the digits of the number that I had long ago memorized firmly into it before I lifted the phone to my ear and waited…

"Hey, it's Sam; I'm not around so leave a message or whatever." Sam's recorded voice rang through my ears and I felt my face flush hot with a new wave of frustration.

"DAMN IT!" I shouted, hanging the phone up with an unnecessary force before immediately turning it back on in order to dial the number once again.

This morning, I learned that it takes an average of about thirty seconds for me to dial Sam's phone number, allow the phone to ring with four complete tones, and finally, listen to Sam's voicemail the entire way through. I learned this because eventually, I found myself using these timed cycles of unsuccessful phone calls to count the minutes pass by.

It was about eight minutes and sixteen phone calls later that I once again heard the front door open and close sharply.

I threw the portable home phone to the ground, briefly praying that it didn't break considering I'd shattered my cell phone against that very floor mere days ago as I took off in a run towards the living room, once again praying to God that I would find Sam in the doorway, but once again being met with disappointment as not Sam, but Peyton barged across the room towards me.

"Brooke, Haley just called me, have you heard anything?" Peyton asked, wasting no time in getting straight to the point as she threw her arms around my shoulders in an embrace that I leaned into gratefully.

"No, not yet; and she's not answering her phone either… Peyton, I have no idea where she is… where the hell could she have gone? What if something happened to her?"

"Hey, hey, hey, listen to me Brooke; she is going to be fine, okay? Do you know if she has her wallet or her phone on her or anything?" Peyton asked, attempting to use the method of logical conversation in an effort to get me to relax a little.

"I… I don't know… I didn't see them in her room or anything… but she's not answering her cell Peyton, I…"

"Hey," Peyton cut me off before I could go on another rambling tangent, "Listen Brooke, if something happened to her, and she has all of her stuff with her, you would have already gotten a phone call… I'm sure she just went out for a few minutes to get some air."

That was exactly what Haley had said… Maybe they synchronized it with the idea in mind that maybe the more people told me that, the more I'd start believing it…

I took another deep breath, desperate in my attempts to steady myself… God, I thought that it had been bad when Sam went running off with Jack and his crazy brother that one time, but let me tell you, this was a thousand times worse…

Wait a minute…

It was instantaneous; the second that I remembered all of those times that Sam used to run off in the middle of the night what seemed like so long ago now, I also remembered where she would go, what she would do, and most importantly, who she was with…

"Jack…" I whispered out loud to myself, my face brightening with understanding, dazed with my stupidity in not being able to think of this sooner.

"What?" Peyton asked, looking down at me for some clarification.

"Jack Daniels… Sam was talking about him yesterday. He's coming up to visit her… He's here, he's here and he's with her right now… That's who she's with."

Peyton's face beamed like she'd just struck gold as she flushed with the confirmation that Sam was at least with somebody trustworthy.

"Okay, okay, so at least we know that she's safe with him, right? Do you have any idea where they could have gone?"

I shrugged and shook my head, trying to deduce exactly where it was the two of them may have ended up together.

"The diner… Maybe the school… or Jack's old house… I don't know Peyton, they could have gone anywhere."

"Okay, listen, that's a good start Brooke, alright? Come on, why don't you have a seat, I'm gonna call Haley and let her know that Sam is with Jack. At least she'll have a better idea where to look." Peyton said, as she grabbed a strong hold of my shoulder, physically pushing me down onto the couch as she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket to call Haley.

I accepted her invitation to sit instantly. My legs have been feeling like Jell-O for the past several minutes now, and I couldn't help but think that if Peyton hadn't made me sit down, I probably would have just fallen down anyway.

I had just gotten comfortable sinking down into the cushions when my legs rebelled against me, shooting upward on their own accord before my head even recognized the sound of the front door opening for the third time that morning.

"Oh my God, Sam!"

I watched in frozen relief as the girl dragged her feet through the doorframe, but I sprang into action instantly afterward, not even giving her the opportunity to close the door behind her before I sprinted to her and pulled her into my arms in such a tight embrace that I probably could have broken one of her ribs.

The relief that was currently washing over me was what it must feel like when you take a drink of water after spending a week trapped in the desert, when you swim across the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean and finally find land, like any of the other impossible similes that I could come up with in order to express just how good I felt right now… but I'm pretty sure that words could not properly describe it.

"I'm sorry Brooke…" I heard her mumble, her words getting lost in the fabric of my t-shirt as I continued to clutch her tightly.

I didn't say anything, in fact, I just held her there for several long minutes, but after a while, I slowly began that monumental feeling of relief dissipate into sheer anger… Now that my mind wasn't clogged with the gratefulness that Sam was home safe and sound, I was able to sneak in the idea of just how pissed I was at her for putting me through this to begin with.

"Where the hell were you?" I screamed so loudly that I was afraid that the neighbors would hear me and call the police in order to investigate a potential domestic dispute.

"I'm sorry…" She repeated, but I cut her off before she could offer me any possible excuse, because I knew that any story she told me would just make my blood boil even hotter.

"Do you have any idea how worried I've been Sam? Jesus, you could have been dead on the damn street for all I knew! What the hell were you thinking?" My mouth rambled in an unstoppable force of nature as all of the nerves that I have been holding in ever since I walked in on Sam's empty bed unraveled and emitted themselves through my voice, causing me to rant, rave, and carry on like a damn maniac.

"Will you listen to me for one minute please?" Sam begged, ripping herself out of my grasp.

"Okay," I took a deep breath, repeating to myself over and over again that it was okay to relax for at least a couple of minutes. "Go,"

"Jack…" She started her sentence with a confirmation of everything that I already knew, "He came home last night and we were just gonna go to the diner and then come right back, but we were walking through the park and we got kind of caught up, and we… we fell asleep."

My jaw dropped open so that I swear to god I felt my chin hit my chest.

"You fell asleep…" I tried to process the information, speaking slowly with a surprising calmness, but that was only because I was trying to decide which method would be most effective when I killed her, "…In the park… in the middle of freaking December!"

My voice crescendo'd venomously, growing louder and louder until Sam physically recoiled in the fear that I was going to actually kill her… Of course, a part of me wanted to, but considering I'd just spent the past half an hour panicked with the idea that Sam was actually dead, I figured it would be hypocritical of me to just turn around and kill her myself.

"Sam, you are sick. You have cancer, do you not understand that?" My emotions were fluctuating so rapidly that I couldn't keep up, which is why when the tears started forming under my eyes in exacerbation, my body bringing me back to the terror of what could have been, my brain, which was still set on being angry, had to struggle to keep up. Ultimately of course, the confusion was too much to bear, and I just ended up crying even harder… I didn't think it was possible, but it seemed as if I suddenly felt worse than I did before.

"I get that Brooke, thanks." She snapped at me, looking away so that I wouldn't be able to see the look in her eyes that told me she knew exactly how badly she screwed up, but I caught it anyway… I considered calling her out on it, but I didn't, because I knew that if there was one thing that we Davis women couldn't stand, it was admitting when we are wrong.

"I don't think you do Sam," I sighed as I felt a new-found disappointment filtering through my brain as the tears slowly began to silence. I understood that Sam was only sixteen; that she was still just a child, but still, as much as it sucked that she had to grow up way before her time and take on more responsibility than any of us were ever ready for, she did. "You are sick, Sam. You're sick and you could have caught… God only knows what out there… You could have died for Christ's sake."

She continued to stubbornly refuse to meet my eyes, but I didn't mind, because it told me that she understood exactly where I was coming from.

"I'm sorry," She said it for a third time; probably because that was the only thing she could think to say.

I sighed as I considered yelling some more, considered getting up closer into Sam's face and attempt to make her understand just how panicked she actually made me, but then I got a good look into Sam's eyes and I instantly changed my mind…

It was a weakness that I'd never experienced before, but Sam just had that special power over me, the one that has undoubtedly saved her life on more than one occasion, that one that allowed her to charm her way out of punishment just by looking at me…

In fact, the more I looked at her, the less mad I got. The truth of the matter was, the threat had passed, Sam didn't look any worse for the wear, and I was more than willing to put this all behind us…

"Fine, it's fine, it's over and it's fine." I waved her off, taking a steep exhale as I rubbed my sweaty palms over my face in an attempt to physically rub the last forty five minutes out of my memory.

"So… am I in trouble?" Sam asked, looking up at me hesitantly as I sighed and folded my arms across my chest.

"No, you're not in trouble." I said it softly, but with a stern emphasis behind it so that she knew that even though she wasn't in trouble, I was still pissed about what she'd done.

"But listen to me Sam. You can never, NEVER," I emphasized the word, sticking a finger into Sam's face so that she really got the point, "Do that ever again. I swear to God Sam, if you pull that crap with me one more time…"

"I won't do it again, Brooke, I swear."

"You better not," I mumbled with a threatening tone before turning back to Peyton who was standing nervously in the corner looking very unsure as to what it was she should be doing exactly other than sitting and watching, waiting to intervene just in case I throttled Sam.

"Hey, I should probably go call of the Calvary. Haley's got Lucas and Nathan out looking for Sam too, I should probably tell them she's home." Peyton said, identifying the passing threat as she slunk between the two of us, snaking her arm around Sam's shoulder and pulling her tightly into her, just to lighten the mood a little bit.

"Now that I think about it, Haley probably as the whole town out looking for you at this point, kid."

"The whole town, huh," Sam asked sheepishly, clearly embarrassed about the accidental escalation of her escapade… as she should be.

"Yeah, you know Haley… let me think… it's only been about… fifteen minutes or so since Haley found out that you were gone," Peyton laughed as she analyzed the watch on her wrist, "I think that means… if I do the math correct… that approximately 95% of Tree Hill has probably been informed by now."

I watched as Sam looked down at her feet, allowing a small smile to escape from her mouth.

"Listen guys, I hate to break up this moment here, but we've only got about fifteen minutes until your chemo round starts… Come on, we can stop by the diner on the way there and get some food… I mean, considering you missed out on that opportunity yesterday." I finished my sentence with an acknowledgement towards still retaining a sense of humor and a smirk, just to make sure that Sam really did know that I wasn't mad at her.

Her eyes met mine as her face lightened and her cheeks glowed red with embarrassment.

"Yeah, that sounds good," She nodded, "Let me just grab my backpack." She pushed passed me and out of the living room, travelling down the length of the hall towards her bedroom. I watched as she disappeared around the corner, finally allowing myself to relax for the first time in nearly an hour. I slouched my shoulders and sunk my exhausted body into a chair as my head sunk low until my eyes were facing the ground.

"Hey, she's fine Brooke." Peyton said, sitting on the arm rest of my couch so that she could pull me into an awkward half-hug.

"Yeah, I know… I just can't stop thinking about what could have happened."

"But it didn't."

"Yeah, but what if it did?"

"But it didn't." Peyton insisted firmly, "You can't think like that Brooke. Trust me, do not get wrapped up in everything that could have happened, it will drive you friggen insane. Trust me, I know."

I rubbed my eyes together trying to block out the exhaustion as I nodded and pulled into her a little bit further.

"Thanks for helping me look for her, Peyton."

"No problem, B. Davis." She assured me, her arms snaking tighter around my shoulders.

"Hey, I hate to break this up, but I'm gonna be late for chemo." The sound of Sam's voice infiltrating my quiet time was ultimately what caused me to pull away from Peyton and look up, watching as Sam sipped casually on a water bottle, adjusting the back pack around her shoulders with a little smile on her face that told me that she was amused with herself for the little joke she'd just told.

I rolled my eyes, channeling Sam in my moment of sarcasm. Yeah, sure; that was certainly the reason why she was going to be late…

God, this kid was lucky that I loved her.

* * *

**HALEY**

I found my way easily to the outpatient oncology wing not long after Peyton called me with the announcement to round up the guards because Sam had finally come home no worse for the wear despite being a little bit on the chilly side on account of the fact that she'd spent the night asleep in the park with Jack…

Sound suspicious?

I know, I thought so too.

I spent the entire time it took for me to walk from my car upstairs to Sam and Brooke trying to think of what I was going to say to Sam… Yeah sure, Sam had become like a niece to me in these past few weeks, so that part me wanted to deliver Sam a stern talking to about just how stupid what she did was, but the other side of me knew that Sam did live with Brooke, meaning that it was an absolute certainty that she had already been ripped a new one… and probably beyond.

"Hey Little Miss Adventure, I heard you had quite the action-packed night yesterday." Fifteen minutes of thinking about it, and that was what I ultimately came up with… I'd chosen to go the comical route, and I laughed at my own joke as I shuffled past the rows of patients receiving outpatient chemotherapy straight to Sam, who was currently having her own central line of poison getting connected to the port just below her neck.

The routine had become so familiar that I barely noticed it happening anymore… I wondered if that's the same way Brooke felt… I wondered if Sam still received a shock every time she felt the liquid begin to drip into her veins… I wondered if Sam still received a shock from anything anymore.

The girl refused to offer me anything more than a little shrug, but the second Brooke looked away, she grinned and delivered a quick nod in my direction.

"I saw that Sam, and don't you think that I'm not still mad at you." Brooke spoke sternly towards Sam without so much as looking up from the magazine that she was reading… I couldn't help but laugh even if the situation was a serious one; it just amazed me how quickly Brooke Davis had caught onto motherhood…

"Here Brooke, I picked you up another coffee on the way over here considering the other one was kind of… lost." I searched for the right word to use as I handed her the new cup, reminding the both of us of the old one, still sitting on her table growing colder and colder with each passing second it remained untouched.

"I got you one too Sam." I pulled a second styrofoam cup out of the holder, feeling the weight of a diabetic-coma-inducing amount of sugar at the bottom of it.

"No thanks," Sam told me, waving off my offer…

Now, here's something that you should know about Sam; she never, ever, bypassed an opportunity for coffee; especially free coffee.

I suddenly found myself studying Sam's face a little bit closer. Now that I was looking for something there, I couldn't help but notice that she did seem to have an extra tinge of white in her features… I tried to put the pieces together; was it possible for the chemotherapy's negative side effects to hit her this quickly, or had I been too fast to assume that Sam had come out of last night completely unscathed…

"Alright…" I didn't push it; I just nodded, mainly because her response had caught me kind of off guard.

"So, Sam, you were with Jack last night?" I sipped at my own coffee as Sam gave me a look, trying to judge whether that was a serious question or if I was just trying to bust her balls a little bit more.

"Yeah…" Sam confirmed suspiciously as Brooke peered over the top of her magazine at me, her confused features identical to Sam's.

"So what, did we scare him away or something?" I asked as Sam let out a small snort of laughter, probably more relieved than anything that I wasn't judging her for what she'd done.

"I think he's afraid that Brooke is going to rip his face off if he comes around."

"As he should be," Brooke threw the wise-ass remark towards Sam in response as Sam rolled her eyes at the comment.

"Yeah well, maybe he would actually come around to visit his sick girlfriend if he was sure that he'd remain fully intact when he leaves." Sam emphasized, trying to play the guilty card on Brooke at her driving Jack away with the unspoken threat of violence… Of course, Brooke wasn't having any of it.

"Well, you can tell Jack…" Brooke went into the sentence with a fierce undertone, finally dropping her magazine down to her side as she looked up at Sam with arched eyebrows and a glare, but suddenly, she stopped… I don't know, maybe she saw something in Sam's eyes that I'd missed, something that only a mother could truly see, but whatever it was, it gave Brooke a sudden change of heart.

"You can tell Jack that he can come around… and if he's lucky, I'll only rip his arms off instead of his entire face."

Sam glanced up to her slowly, offering a thankful smile towards Brooke's generosity… But then, in a quick flash that I almost missed, something changed; a hitch even deeper within the realms of Sam's facial muscles, and before I knew it, that small grin turned into a frenzied frown as her cheeks puffed outward and her skin fell into that familiar shade of grey that I recognized instantly.

"Hey," Brooke stood up, her features changing to that of motherly concern as she sprung up so that I knew that she too had caught Sam's rapid change in appearance. "Need a bucket?"

Sam let out a very forced laugh at Brooke's comment, gathering up all of the energy she could muster to give a very brief shake of her head.

"Not quite yet." She assured Brooke who instantly let out the breath she'd been holding so that her shoulders sunk so dramatically that she sunk a couple solid inches.

"Don't get too comfortable though, Brooke…" Sam scolded Brooke for even thinking she could get away easy with this one. "Soon…"

Brooke nodded her head in understanding as a look of sympathy flowered across her face and she extended her peace offering in the form of a pink emesis basin towards Sam.

"Well than you better have this ready." Sam nodded, accepting the gift gratefully between her trembling hands, tucking it under her arms as her own personal security blanket.

I stood stiffly in the corner, drumming my fingers nervously against the cabinet I was currently leaning on, my muscles tensed and legs poised, ready to spring into action should Sam and Brooke need any assistance in the impending episode that was about to go down.

"Make yourself comfortable, Haley," Sam advised me casually as if this was just another day at the office. "We're gonna be here a while."

I subconsciously sunk myself down into a seat, maintaining a confident stature, attempting a couple of different positions in an attempt to get comfortable before finally settling on the standard cross-leg, hands in the lap method that worked fine until my legs began to fall asleep…

"So Sam, what is this… round three for you now, huh?" In an attempt to continue my illusion of confidence, I started conversation, calculating quickly on my fingers how many times Sam had been in and out of this hospital in my attempt to count how many full cycles of treatment Sam had completed. She confirmed my math was correct with a quick nod.

It was amazing really; some days, it felt like she'd just been diagnosed yesterday, others, I felt as if we'd been here our entire lives… it was hard to keep track anymore.

"First day of round three," Sam informed me, "If all goes well I'll only have two or three more after this, so keep your fingers crossed." She waved her hands in the air, displaying her ring and middle fingers, each crossed over each other in profession of the luck she thought she needed to get her through these harrowing final weeks.

Of course, I didn't think Sam needed luck. The way I saw it, the girl was tough as nails, and I knew she would remain that way straight through to the bitter end. I had every ounce of faith in her, I mean, I had every reason to, I'd already seen her beat her low expectations time and time again… what's one more, right?

I watched as she opened her mouth again, and for a second, I thought that I was about to get an additional comment to our previous conversation, but it didn't take me very long to learn that I'd thought wrong.

Brooke noticed that something was up before I did, and in one fluid motion, she'd thrown her magazine aside and darted up from her chair so that I blinked and she'd gone from sitting to standing at Sam's side without me even recognizing a transition…

I followed her with slow uncertainty, hanging back as Brooke wiped the beads of sweat off of Sam's forehead, watching her carefully as her face lightened into an unnatural shade of green.

"Hey, are you okay?" Brooke asked as Sam pulled the emesis basin out from underneath the safety of her arm.

"I think I'm gonna be needing that bucket now Brooke."

* * *

About an hour into Sam's treatment, right after the poor kid had finally stopped vomiting rivers long enough to relax into the safety of her bed, allowing her exhausted body to get the much needed rest that it deserved, Sam finally managed to sink into a fitful sleep as Brooke and I continued to sit poised and upright in our chairs, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice should Sam be in need of our assistance.

I sat up nervously, periodically sneaking glances over towards Brooke just to make sure she was alright, but Brooke was hard to read, even after years of knowing her… Of course, that's not to say that she had completely retained her sense of cool… I couldn't help but notice that she's been on the same page of her magazine for the past twenty minutes.

"So…" My voice came out with a sing-song airiness to it as I tried to figure out what I was going to say next. The thing was, I had no idea what to follow up with, I've just never really been one for silence… "Jamie asked me if Nathan could bring him over here after school to visit Sam while she'd in the hospital today…" I finally settled on a topic of conversation, speaking about the first thing that popped into my head… my son.

Brooke looked up from her magazine for a second, studying me as if she was trying to pin-point whether I'd actually made a noise, or if she'd made it up on account of the mind-fuck that accompanies a lengthy period of silence. It didn't take her very long to distinguish it as the real deal, and I watched as she lowered her reading material, looked up at me, and flashed me a smile that held a tone of exhausted pain behind her eyes.

"That would be nice. I know how happy Sam gets when he's with her… He's such a good kid Haley." Her voice was low and distant with worry indicating to me her mind wasn't fully on the conversation, but she had her own child to worry about, so I understood.

I suddenly felt kind of bad… I thought of that fresh wave of pain I probably sent through Brooke's veins every time I remaindered her that I had a healthy kid that I could decide when to take in and out of the hospital as I pleased as a mere visitor while meanwhile Brooke didn't have much of a choice in the matter…

"He is…" I sighed; I've had reservations about bringing Jamie here ever since I watched the poor girl throw up everything inside of her just under an hour ago… It wasn't exactly something that I wanted my five year old son to see… It wasn't exactly something that I wanted to Sam to see either, but here we all were.

"I just didn't want to overwhelm Sam today, you know… with her feeling as crappy as she is today." I came up with the excuse on the fly, instantly feeling like a terrible person for it. It's not that I'd never brought Jamie to see Sam during her chemotherapy rounds before, no, nothing like that. The thing was, I was afraid of what would happen if he saw her this sick…

He's never seen her this sick before, hell he's never seen anybody this sick before, and I wasn't sure that his first experience with this should be with somebody he loves as much as Sam.

Brooke didn't say anything right away, and for a second, I was afraid I'd offended her with my comment, but finally, she spoke.

"The first day is usually the toughest." Her voice held nothing to indicate any kind of criticism, but honestly, that just made me feel worse. "She usually doesn't get so sick as the week progresses though, and she really does love it when people come sit with her during this crap… you know, if you'd wanna bring Jamie over a little later in the week."

It was her way of indirectly thanking me for sitting here with her and Sam, it was her way of letting me know that she appreciated the constant company and the help in keeping Sam's spirits high, even on her darkest of days, but most importantly, it was her way of telling me that despite everything I'd just thought, she didn't think that I was a terrible person just because I was lucky enough to have a healthy family.

"Yeah… yeah, maybe I'll bring him over sometime during the week I mean he's on winter break so he doesn't have school. She's here all week, right?"

Brooke nodded her head in confirmation, "She's got six more days after this one, same time every day… I think." She considered the schedule in her head but it was too overwhelming, and that factor flowed heavily through her voice.

"I'll talk to him; he'll probably be excited to come down."

"Yeah, I think that they'll both like that…" Brooke sighed as we fell into a comfortable silence once again so that Brooke turned back to that same page in her magazine she'd been reading for so long now.

"What are you reading over there that's so interesting, Brooke?" I asked out of curiosity, watching intrigued as Brooke sighed and folded the magazine over itself in half so that she could flash me the page she'd been looking at with distaste for nearly a half hour.

My eyes focused, and as the image of Victoria Davis standing confidently poised with blank brown eyes and hands on her hips, I finally understood.

Brooke looked down upon it scornfully, but the longer I studied the image, the more interesting it became to me. I hadn't really thought about it before, but now that I did, I found it to be rather odd that I had seen or heard absolutely nothing of Victoria Davis in these past few months… I mean, I'd listened to Brooke complain endlessly about how close Victoria and Sam had gotten, and now, the more I thought about it, the more bizarre it seemed that Victoria wasn't here.

Of course, it wouldn't really surprise me if Victoria didn't even know what was really going on…

Curiosity filtered through me veins… no, it wasn't possible; there was no way that Brooke simply wouldn't tell Victoria something of this magnitude… But still, curiosity and wonderment were starting to take control, and before I could stop myself, I'd turned my lapse of curiosity into an audible thought.

"Have you talked to Victoria recently?" I worded my question stealthily, but Brooke just shook her head and gave me a laugh that indicated that she saw right past my attempts at being clever.

"No," Brooke stated simply, choosing not to elaborate in a firm attempt to let me know that she did not want to talk about Victoria…

"So you haven't told her about…" I faded the question away, trying not to be too harsh in my defiance towards pushing the subject.

"About Sam?" Brooke finished my sentence for me, "Nope, and I don't plan on it either." I scrunched up my face, accidentally displaying my uncertainty to Brooke as I continued to wonder how it was even possible that Brooke had managed to keep something so big away from Victoria for so long.

"Jesus, how can Victoria be so clueless?" I laughed, wording my question carefully as not to put any blame on Brooke and make her get all defensive on me, "This has been everywhere, literally, in like, every single magazine I'd ever read, the newspaper, on TV… How is it possible that Victoria could be such a bitch that she would just blow something like this off?"

"She steers clear of tabloids." Brooke explained, "She thinks that just because there's bad blood between her and a few paparazzi, that they all intentionally Photoshop her pictures to add ten pounds. I mean, even her assistants know not to go to her with the crap they see on the news unless they want to get hot coffee thrown in their faces while they lose their jobs… She wouldn't find out that way."

I nodded, but there was still something in Brooke's explanation that seemed unsettling to me…

"You know Brooke, I know that it's not really any of my business or anything like that, but I happen to know that Victoria cares a lot about Sam, and that Sam cares a lot about her too… Who knows, I mean, maybe she can help you out with all of this. Maybe she can make it a little bit easier for the both of you."

Brooke sat up straight and glared at me so I could see her defense mechanisms shining through her otherwise neutral features.

"Victoria tried to lie and cheat her way into Sam's life once before; and that almost got her taken away from me. Victoria doesn't deserve to know what's going on in Sam's life. Not now and not ever."

Her tone was final, indicating to me that I better end this conversation and end it fast.

"Okay," I settled, but I wasn't satisfied. I was suddenly left stuck; my mind raced with ideas of what else I could possible say to Brooke, a conversation that I could start in which the topic of conversation wasn't her mother, but I came up empty…

"Oh, is she asleep?"

We'd fallen into such a steep silence, that the sudden presence of noise in the room caused me to jump slightly in shock. I swiveled around in my chair to investigate, watching as a nurse slunk through the space between the curtains.

"Yeah, Emily, she's been wiped out for a few hours now." Brooke responded without so much as a second glance… In fact, she spoke to her as if she was speaking to an old friend of hers and not to the woman that was contributing to the efforts to save her daughter's life.

"Well, Sam is all done for today. She can go home as soon as she wakes up." Emily told Brooke as she unhooked Sam's catheter with swift movements that were so gentle that Sam didn't even flinch throughout the whole process. "You can hang around here for a little while if you want to wait."

"Thank you Emily." Brooke nodded her appreciation as the nurse exited the same way she came in through the thin curtain.

"She seems nice enough." I expressed what I was thinking out loud, watching as Brooke stood up and stretched her muscles, stiff from sitting in the same position in her chair for so long.

"Yeah, they're all pretty nice over here. I mean, we've basically gotten to know everyone so… I don't know." She gave the slightest of shrugs before she walked over towards Sam, her attention shifting downward upon her daughter as she placed a firm hand on the girl's shoulder and shook.

"Come on Sam, wake up. You're all done; it's time to go home." I watched with a sad smile on my face as Brooke leaned in gently closer to Sam as the younger girl shrugged out of Brooke's grasp and turned over in sleep, barely even stirring at the attempted disruption.

"Come on Sam," Brooke repeated, shaking Sam's shoulder a little bit harder the second time around until Sam was finally forced awake, yawning deeply as she rubbed her eyes softly back into reality.

"What?" Sam asked, looking up groggily, her voice dazed and full of sleep as her eyes, glossy with drugs, attempted to focus on her mother.

"You're all done, Sam. Come on, let's get you home." I watched as Brooke extended a hand over towards Sam to offer her some leverage up off of the bed.

The girl accepted her hand, leaning her body weight against Brooke who gave a tiny lurch, pulling the thin girl up to her feet where she took tiny, uncoordinated steps forward so that she looked almost drunk as she stumbled across the tile.

"Hey, are you alright there?" I asked as she tripped over her own feet and landed safely into my arms which were luckily already poised to catch her.

I clutched onto her shoulders in an effort to steady her, crouching slightly so that I met her height and got a good look into her face. Per usual, chemotherapy had left her groggy and weak, but there was something in her features that looked different to me, something that maybe had more to do with just a bad round of chemotherapy…

"Yeah I'm fine… it's just the chemo, I'm fine." Sam tried to wave me off as Brooke approached the two of us in an attempt to analyze the situation herself.

Brooke eyed the girl carefully, waiting to make her final decision as she watched the girl attempt to right herself up and walk out of the room on her own accord. She struggled to keep herself from intervening as Sam struggled to steady herself, only to fail.

"Sam, stay sitting, alright; I'm going to go get a wheelchair to take you down to the car." Brooke demanded, trying to push the girl back down into her bed, but Sam shook her head fervently against the idea.

"No really, it's fine." Sam waved Brooke off but the glare in Brooke's eyes told all three of us that Brooke wasn't buying a single word of it.

But in her defiance, Sam merely rolled her eyes and pushed forward. Determined in her independent flight towards freedom, she took three steps forward, and before Brooke even had the opportunity to open her mouth and stop her, Sam stopped where she stood, wobbling slightly underneath the pressure of her own body weight for a couple of seconds before her eyes rolled back into her head, her body fell forwards, and she landed face down on the tile in a deep unconsciousness.

"Sam!" Brooke shouted, springing into action right away before I even had time to process exactly what had just happened in front of my own eyes; but a couple steps into Brooke's flight towards Sam, the severity of the situation suddenly clicked in my mind, and I followed; but still, both Brooke and a handful of floor nurses had arrived at Sam's side way before I did.

In fact, by the time I got there, Sam was already stirring.

I silently thanked God that she had merely experienced a brief lapse of unconsciousness, one that I hoped had been brought on nothing too serious like the stress and exhaustion that undoubtedly came hand in hand with the treatments that Sam was undergoing, but no matter what it had been, she had definitely just scared the crap out of me…

And if there was one thing I knew for certain, she had definitely just scared the crap out of Brooke too.

"What happened?" Sam asked groggily as she attempted to lift herself back up to her feet, but Brooke reached out, grabbed her shoulder, and instantly pushed her back down onto her back.

"Hey Sam, don't move okay?" It was Emily, the nurse I'd met only a few minutes earlier speaking as she kneeled down at Sam's side and helped to assist Sam into a seated position, supporting her with a strong arm across her back and another on her shoulder.

Several pairs of hands darted out, each working hard to keep Sam upright as she leaned forward and rubbed her eyes in confusion, trying to piece together what she'd missed out on in unconsciousness.

"I think I'm gonna be sick…" The girl finally managed to mumble, and before I knew it, she had a clean bucket tucked underneath her chin that had barely been thrust in her face before she was emptying the contents of her stomach into it without a second glance.

It was several moments before Sam had a large enough lapse between vomiting that the nurse's had an opportunity to get their arms underneath Sam's body to lift her back into the bed that she'd just come from, trying to make her comfortable through her sickness as they were forced to rely on suction just to clear her air passages of vomit well enough so that she could actually breathe…

"Hey Brooke, we're just going to bring her upstairs, okay? Dr. Miller is probably going to want to run some blood work as a precaution just to be careful, but she probably just took today's chemo hard is all…" Emily placed a gentle hand on Brooke's shoulder as the woman simply nodded at the instruction, barely taking her eyes off of her daughter as the nurses struggled to give Sam an opportunity to breathe between puking.

"I just got dizzy, I'm fine… Can I just go home?" Sam raised her head from the bucket, pale faced and sunken, her eyes desperate for release, but her body not playing much towards her plea as she leaned forward and added even more to the already overflowing bucket.

"Absolutely not, Samantha," Brooke responded sternly, leaving Sam to just sigh deeply and close her eyes as she sank into the bed without putting up so much as a fight…

The poor girl was exhausted, it was obvious and exemplified by the fact that not long after the nurses disappeared in order to get Sam ready for transport upstairs, she fell asleep, leaving Brooke to hover over her bed with watchful attentiveness as she moved her arm in perfect figure eights, taking on the responsibility of clearing out Sam's air passages with the suction tube.

"You know Hales, you don't have to stick around and watch all of this… Sam will probably be here for a while, I know you've got a lot to do today…"

"Hey, it's fine, Brooke really; I don't think that you should be alone through all of this anyway."

"I won't be alone, don't worry, I've got Sam." I gave Brooke a sad smile, watching intently as my best friend continued to stare down at her sleeping daughter, breathing for her with every motion of her hand…

I contemplated taking Brooke's advice, leaving her here with her dying daughter while I carried on with the seemingly trivial necessities I needed to do throughout the day and for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes away from the devastating sight of Brooke's gentle movements in making Sam as comfortable as possible…

I could see it in Brooke's eyes, I knew just how badly she wanted to save that girl. I'd seen that look before, the determination she had when she took Sam in the first time, willing to do everything and anything to transform her from homeless, troubled child into a loving, successful young woman…

Yeah, Brooke wanted to save Sam all right, but it wasn't until now, as I watched Brooke cling to the suction tube so tightly that her knuckles turned white, facilitating every breath that Sam made that I noticed something else in Brooke's eyes; I saw the fear, the threat of the reality of possibilities, and suddenly, I realized just how much Brooke needed not only to save Sam, but to have Sam save her too.


	36. Handle Me With Care

**Okay, okay, sorry for the delay, but I kind of got carried away with this chapter so its hella long and then Halloween festivities overtook my life for several days, so I hope nobody wants to kill me too much! I'll try my hardest to update sooner with the next chapter, unless of course, I end up going crazy like I did here, but we'll see! One more quick note, people have been asking me a lot about both Julian and Victoria and I promise, promise, promise that they will both show up soon, like next couple of chapters soon. So for all of you impatient folk out there, your day is soon to come.**

**I hope everybody has a happy and safe Halloween, enjoy the chapter!**

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**Chapter 36: Handle Me With Care

**Sunday, December 18****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

When I woke up the next morning, the first thing that I realized was that something was different. It was obvious, really; I mean, of course something was different; the fact was, I had gotten so used to falling asleep and waking up every morning in my own bed, in my own house, that when I woke up on this particular morning only to find myself in a hospital bed, at first, I didn't even know where I was…

Call me spoiled, I guess.

Brooke was already awake when I'd finally managed to pry my eyes open, sitting in her favorite armchair and staring with a hint of residual exhaustion on her face that suggested to me that she hadn't done a single activity throughout the night that even so much as resembled sleep. Instead, judging by the worry lines etched permanently in her skin, I was guessing she'd chosen to substitute with other things, most likely simply staring at me while I slept just to make sure I didn't stop breathing at some time during the night…

But I couldn't blame her too much… The truth was I secretly knew that yesterday was the worst that I had scared Brooke in a long time… Probably since those initial harrowing days that followed my diagnosis… Yeah, it was that serious.

And I couldn't pretend like I didn't feel solely responsible for the entire thing.

"Sam?" The door opened slowly as Dr. Miller assessed whether or not now would be a good time for her to tell us the results from the twenty gallons of blood they'd taken out of me to test yesterday…

Brooke shot up from her seat instantly in a silent affirmative towards the doctor's question, her eyes laced with a desperate gleam as she prayed for good news.

"Dr. Miller," The emotion behind Brooke's voice reminded me of those bad actors you see in all the soap operas; you know, in all those episodes where the main character is being told that despite devastating injuries as a result of a motor cycle crash, or a shark bite, or a freak drowning, the man with the perfectly coiffed hair and the olive-tinted skin will indeed survive… Yeah, right. "Did Sam's blood work come back okay?"

Brooke held her breath in anticipation. Of course, I was holding my breath too, but to be completely honest with you, it was for an entirely different reason than Brooke; I mean, I was just afraid that had Dr. Miller come to my room today only to deliver more bad news, poor Brooke's sensitive heart would finally just give out all together… I swear to God yesterday, right after Dr. Miller announced just how low my leukocyte count had actually managed to drop, for a second there, I actually thought that Brooke was going to have a stroke right on the spot…

I guess this is just the way it works sometimes; Brooke was worried about me, and I was worried about Brooke… Circle of life, right?

"The blood transfusion that we gave Sam last night seemed to have worked as well as we'd hoped. There was definitely a decent rise in her counts today which is a very good sign."

I watched Brooke as her face reddened and her expression became dazed with an image of apparent dizziness as a result of the overwhelming feeling of all of the blood rushing back up to her head all at once from the news she'd been praying to hear… I managed a small smile myself; of course I was glad the results came back the way we wanted them to, it was just that there was this steady pounding slowly creeping into my temples that was preventing me from doing too much celebrating.

"So… can I go home after today?" I asked, adding a persuasive smirk to my question in an attempt to sway the answer in my benefit. Dr. Miller however, refused to match my expression, and the smile on my face slowly sunk downwards into a disappointed frown with the realization that I had been stupid for having such high expectations.

"Sam, your blood counts are going up but that doesn't mean that you're out of the woods quite yet. Your numbers are still very low which is why I want to keep you here under strict precautions until at the very least… tomorrow night, maybe even Tuesday."

I gave a dramatic sigh, not shy about voicing my displeasure, and after that, things simply just didn't interest me as much anymore… I toned out, and it was a little while after that, after the doctor had left me to wallow in the silence of my disappointment, after I laid in my bed and counted 1,304 drips of the chemotherapy drugs dripping from their supply line straight into my veins, and after I had finally worn myself into a state of exhaustion that I was finally forced to tune back in once again because suddenly, it hit me.

It was a wave of nausea that was even more powerful than what I'd experienced yesterday, and it flooded into my stomach with a force that made me believe that the tiny organ had chosen to simply jump right out of my abdominal cavity… My muscles tensed and my back hunched forward in a natural effort to ease the clenching feeling in my stomach.

It had all happened so quickly; the transition between me feeling okay to me feeling like total shit hit me so hard and so fast that it sucked all of the air straight from my lungs until I literally began choking on it.

Through the stinging tears of suppressed oxygen clouding my eyes, I saw Brooke jump at the un-human sound currently escaping my throat. She was at my side in the blink of an eye, one hand pulling me forward by the shoulder in an effort to get me in a more upright position to expand my chest and allow some air to actually enter it, and the other hand patting my back repetitively, slowly easing the spit and saliva that was currently blocking my windpipe up the small tube and out of my mouth before I suffocated on it.

"Come on Sam, it's okay, it's okay, just let it all out, come on." I put in my best effort and then, finally, with an almighty lurch, I felt the bollus enter the less-constricting chamber of my mouth and pressed a towel close to my lips so that I could spit the nasty ball of saliva and phlegm right into my awaiting hand.

"Are you okay?" Brooke asked carefully as my muscles relaxed and I sank into the mattress, embracing the brief moment of peace I knew from experience wouldn't last as long as I may have liked… I liked to call it the eye of the storm; a neutral handful of minutes in which my body attempted to recharge; retain some lost energy that it knows it will need very, very soon.

"I think I'm gonna puke." I muttered as a series of familiar warning contractions began to infiltrate my stomach muscles so that I estimated that I'd have about… oh, probably ten or so seconds to prepare before I made a mess all over myself… And just as I'd convinced myself that I wasn't gonna make it, my senses were suddenly overwhelmed; all I smelled was plastic, all I saw was the color pink as Brooke shoved my face into a clean bucket just in time.

My stomach muscles contracted against each other once again, squeezing my stomach inward and propelling everything inside of it back up and out of my mouth with such force, it completely crippled me causing my muscles to collapse flaccid against the bed.

This sucked…

I took as deep a breath as I could muster as another dry heave practically lifted me off of my bed as the familiarly dull taste of regurgitated stomach contents dampened uncomfortably at my taste buds, creating a thin layer of fog over my brain that left me strangely tunnel-visioned. I couldn't see anything other than the inside of this ridiculous pink bucket. I couldn't hear anything other than the dramatic gags clawing at the back of my throat. I couldn't feel anything other than the crippling pain that was currently slithering through every muscle in my body.

"Brooke, can we go to the bathroom?" I lifted my head feebly, finally feeling comfortable enough with the brief gap between puking sessions to actually trust myself to make the journey.

Brooke scrunched her face instantly, her expression telling me that after my last walking escapade, you know, the one I took yesterday that landed me unconscious on the floor, she was reluctant to allow me to take on any sort of physical activity, even the seemingly insignificant ones, but I had been stuck in a bed for almost 24 hours now, and I was reaching the point where I was willing to do anything just to stretch my legs out a little bit… even if that meant walking to a bathroom to go puke.

"Sure…" Brooke pushed her skeptic thoughts out of her head, eager to prove to me that she trusted me to make decisions for myself, "Can you walk or should I go get a wheelchair?"

"No," I shook my head, mainly because I knew that there was no way in hell I would be able to contain my stomach long enough to wait for Brooke to go fetch a wheelchair, "I can walk."

I started shifting upward before I'd even finished my sentence, surprising Brooke with the suddenness of my movements so that it took her an extra second or two to regain her bearings and grab me under the arms to assist me into a standing position.

I didn't resist; instead, I embraced the help, fully aware of the fact that my muscles were trembling and if Brooke let go of me, I probably would have just fallen down.

We moved slowly, the grips on the bottoms of my hospital-provided socks sticking to the floor like suction cups with every step that I took as Brooke struggled to stabilize each of my shaky steps, supporting my full body weight against her shoulder as the bathroom door continued to get closer and closer, but at the same time, still looked so far away…

"Sam… Are you okay?" It was only after Brooke had actually said something that I realized I had stopped moving.

I opened my mouth, fully intending to address her question, but my trembling lower jaw and my chattering teeth suddenly weren't allowing my mouth to properly produce words… I felt weightless. My body was positively floating until all at once, I felt a freezing chill come through me, and then, just as suddenly, I felt absolutely nothing at all.

My knees shook for a second or two before they finally just bottomed out completely. Brooke fumbled for a moment with the unexpected dead weight in her arms, but she somehow managed to catch me before I actually hit the ground.

"Sam?" It sounded as if Brooke was speaking to me from underwater. The room was spinning in a vicious blur of unfocussed color so that my dazed eyes couldn't pinpoint one distinct thing. My chest burned as my lungs failed to take in any air… For a solid ten seconds, I felt like I was dying.

"Sam?" Her voice was much clearer the second time she spoke. Light flooded through my eyes, constricting my pupils so that Brooke's panicked features focused clear behind my retinas. I gulped for oxygen, feeding my lungs with the air they so desperately craved.

"Sam? Sam, come on, talk to me here." She was shaking me by the shoulders, snapping her fingers in front of my face, desperate to do anything she could think of to attract my attention back to her.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I shook my head and waved her off but my actions completely contradicted my words as a deep, shuddering cough that originated painfully at the base of my lungs sent me into fitful spasms that created a dull throb that spread across my ribs and up the lining of my throat so that it felt as if I'd just swallowed a lit match.

"No Sam, you're not fine." Tears watered across the bottoms of Brooke's eyes as she tried to be firm in expressing her disapproval of my insistence of health but faltering as her emotions got the best of her, letting me know just how terrified she really was.

My eyes blurred with tears as the same aching tightness creeped back into my chest and I tried desperately to suppress my coughs in an effort to support my argument of health, but it didn't help. In fact, if anything, I was quite certain that it just made everything worse until finally, I couldn't hold back anymore.

My stomach shuddered and lurched with every deep aching cough, juggling the sensitive organ uncomfortably to the point that I knew it would be stupid of me to think that I wasn't going to puke again… And just as suddenly as that thought entered my mind, I found myself sitting in a puddle of my very own vomit.

I sighed dramatically, leaning backwards until my sweaty back made contact with Brooke's cool front as she continued to kneel behind me, holding my body tightly in the same position she'd caught me in when I'd fallen. I could feel her heart pounding in double time from beneath the barrier of skin and muscle as her heavy breaths panted out of her mouth and dissipated in their humid finality against the back of my bare head.

"Sam, are you okay?" I looked up at the sound of my name as a nurse, a nurse that wasn't even my nurse rushed into the room. I could have laughed at her question if I didn't feel like such shit; the truth was, I knew she'd asked simply out of formalities. I mean, anybody with at least one functional eye could see that I was not alright; in fact, I was far from it.

"She fell on the way to the bathroom, Stacy." Brooke spelled the scenario out for her on account of the fact that I seemed to have lost my voice.

"Okay… It's okay, Sam, do you think you can get to that chair over there so that we can get you cleaned up?"

I nodded my head and waited for assistance, eager to get up from sitting in my own puke as the nurse grabbed me underneath one arm, Brooke grabbed me underneath the other, and together, they hoisted me into the air, practically carrying me across the room towards the armchair in the far corner of the room.

Together the three of us moved with slow, steady steps. I was being carried so effectively in fact, that I was practically hovering through the air… Of course, considering the fact that my leg muscles currently felt as if they were made from Play-Dough, I couldn't complain too much about the free ride.

They deposited me down onto the chair and I wasted no time shrugging my soiled clothing off of my body, but it was okay; I didn't even know what the word modesty meant anymore, so the fact that I was currently sitting in front of Brooke and this nurse in nothing but my underwear barely even came to me as a conscious thought.

Brooke helped guide my movements gently as I struggled to pull a fresh pair of scrub pants and a clean t-shirt over my aching body, leaving the poor nurse to begin to tackle the dubious task of cleaning up the mess that I had left behind on the floor.

"Are you feeling any better?" Brooke asked, pulling a thick blanket up over my shoulder before extending a glass of water in my direction, guiding the straw into my mouth so that I could sip generously and make an actual attempt to flush the taste of vomit off of my tongue while simultaneously replenishing some of the much-needed sustenance that my horribly dehydrated body so desperately craved.

I shrugged, but I knew it wasn't as detailed an answer as Brooke really wanted. The truth was, I couldn't really feel much of anything at the moment; my body had suddenly gone kind of… numb… So I guess yeah, now that I thought about it, this was an upgrade from how I'd been feeling before.

"Sam, I'm gonna be right back, I'm just going to get you a little bit of Zofran, try and get rid of some of that nausea, how does that sound?"

I nodded at the nurse. The truth was that whatever it was that I was actually feeling might have been beyond the simplicity of an extra dose or two of anti-nausea medication but I wasn't about to be the one to concern Brooke any more than she already was by opening my fat mouth and saying something...

I leaned back heavily against the chair and closed my eyes tightly, but even when the only thing I could see was the backs of my eyelids, I could still feel Brooke studying me with careful accuracy, waiting, watching for something to happen… No, afraid that something would happen would be more like it.

"Do you want to move back to your bed?" Brooke asked me after a moment or two, desperate to do something meaningful, something to break the silence, something that would magically make me healthy again.

I could only manage to shake my head in a slight no, mainly because I knew that if I did ultimately take her advice and shift the ten or so feet back to my own warm, comfortable bed, I probably wouldn't have survived the trip unscathed.

"Sam, what's going on with you?" The desperation laced in the back of Brooke's voice forced me to actually open my eyes and look at her. She was scared. I could hear it in her voice; see it in her eyes… Brooke Davis was scared, no, she was beyond scared, she was absolutely, utterly terrified… And out of all this, I think that's what scared me the most.

My mind raced with a search for a proper response to Brooke's question. I didn't even realize that I'd been holding my breath until my head started to spin and I managed to wordlessly respond to Brooke's question with a coughing fit that burned at my lungs and left me gasping for air.

"Okay Sam, okay, breathe honey, just breathe… you're gonna be fine." She reached a hand out instinctively, and I shuddered as her cool palm brushed across the top of my warm forehead and lingered there for a moment as her face contorted into a look of sheer alarm.

"Sam, you're burning up." Her revelation sparked a slight fear in me; my stomach flip-flopped and a cool sweat beaded across my forehead but I was determined to keep a neutral face, determined to ignore Brooke's concern, determined to convince both her and me that I was just fine.

I never got a chance to open my mouth and respond to her; before I could, a new noise caught my attention as several people barged into my room all at once; Stacy the head RN on the floor, Naomi, my charge nurse, and Dr. Miller, all fluttering in with professional rapidness to their steps, eager to evaluate whether or not I really was dying…

"Hey Sam, I heard you were having a tough treatment this morning." Dr. Miller stated the obvious as she stepped into the space between me and Brooke, blocking me from sufficiently flashing Brooke my silent plea for her not to mention the fact that she'd noticed I was feverish…

"I think she might have a slight fever, Dr. Miller." As if she'd just read my mind, Brooke spoke up, and I cursed her hypocrisy when in reality, I knew I was really just cursing my own body for betraying me in such a manner…

"Okay…" The doctor responded with a nod and I watched as for a very brief second, the woman's normally flawless confidence faltered, her smile wavered, and for a solid half of a second, Dr. Lauren Miller looked very, very nervous… But as suddenly as I'd saw it, it was gone again, and she'd retained her professional mannerism, leaning towards me with the intentions of tackling this problem with a level head. "Let's see what's going on here."

I suddenly felt like a lab rat, like I always did in times like this one, but I knew that I had no other option other to embrace my God-given role as Dr. Miller and her nurse cronies flourished over me with wires and machines that filed the room with weird beeps and flashes of fluorescent-colored lights as they shot out numbers and symbols that two months ago, I wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails out of, but now I found myself accurately identifying and reading expertly as if I myself were a trained M.D.

"It looks like your fevers gone up a bit, Sam… I wasn't too worried about it this morning, but you've broken into the hundreds, and frankly, that concerns me."

I've never heard her talk to me like this before… From the very beginning of all of this, she was always the person that would be there to inject some confidence into me when I was faltering, she was always the person who would assure me how well I was doing, how quickly I was recovering… Now I regretted all of that, because it just meant that the fact that she was now expressing her concern to me somehow the most terrifying part of all of this.

"So what does that mean?" I looked up at Brooke the second she opened her mouth, watching as her tired brown eyes sparkled with a new kind of worry, one that I couldn't accurately identify, one that I definitely didn't like…

"I'm not sure yet." She answered the question honestly as her face wrinkled into a look of vigorous thought. "Have you been feeling anything unusual lately; I mean, other than the normal chemotherapy side-effects that you're used to?"

I shrugged my shoulders, trying to buy some time in order to think of my answer. Sure, I felt like shit, but the fact of the matter was, I always felt like shit, so it was difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what it was that I was actually feeling these days.

"She's had a cough, I noticed." Brooke spoke up, ensuring that I would be left with no opportunity to allow my somewhat selectively forgetful mind to leave any information out.

"And when did that start?" I'd never seen Dr. Miller quite so… doctor-like before. She had always been very level-headed with me, very apt to combine my physical health with my emotional stability, but today was different… Today there was an extra gleam in her eyes, and the worst part was, I couldn't quite identify exactly what it actually was.

"I don't know… I noticed it at first… um, last night, I guess." I avoided Brooke's eyes purposefully because I couldn't bear to see the disappointment that I knew would be prominent in her features over the fact that I hadn't mentioned this obviously concerning symptom to her when I'd first noticed it.

"Okay… Let's have a look." The room silenced as she plugged either ear with the end of the stethoscope permanently wrapped around her neck. I embraced the feeling of the cool metal against my hot skin as I took carefully controlled deep breaths, listening intensely through the silence in an attempt to hear exactly what Dr. Miller was hearing but ultimately coming up empty.

"Well there's definitely some fluid in her lungs." The doctor told us, wrapping the stethoscope safely back around her neck, leaving Brooke and I desperate for an explanation.

"So… So what does that mean?" Brooke's voice shook as she struggled to fully formulate the question that she wasn't so sure she wanted the answer to.

"It could be anything really… a chest infection, a simple cold… It's that time of year again, Brooke. These things are bound to happen, but I still want to make sure that this isn't anything more serious so here's what I'm going to do; I just want to run a few tests and some blood work… We'll start her on a course of antibiotics, and then, just to be safe, I want to move her upstairs into one of our isolation units until her fever breaks."

I glanced over towards Brooke, looking for a confirmation that this idea would be a good one considering I myself was a little bit skeptical. There was something about the word 'isolation' that wasn't quite settling well with me…

Through the tears in her eyes she gave me a smile and a small nod, trying desperately to push past her own trepidations towards the situation.

'It's okay,' I watched her mouth to me. I tried to match the expression on Brooke's face, tried to give her an equal amount of confidence that she was trying to give me, but I was having a hard time.

"So when would you do all that?" I had to give some credit to Brooke; she was always the one who asked the questions that I was too afraid to find the answer to ask myself.

"As soon as we can; I'm gonna go make a call upstairs, hopefully we'll be able to get her settled in within the next couple of minutes."

I sat defiantly as Dr. Miller wasted no time scuttling out of the room, determined not to show just how nervous I really was, determined to prove my strength as Brooke sat on my armrest, holding onto my shoulder supportively as the two nurses were left behind, ready to prepare me for the move.

"Can you come upstairs with me, Brooke?" I felt like a little kid asking the question but I couldn't help but cling to Brooke's unwavering maternal presence, especially in situations as uncertain as this one.

"I'm sure I can, Sam," Her palm was rubbing soft, assuring circles across my back, but she could have done that all night, it still didn't hide the tension in the back of her voice.

"Don't worry honey, they'll just take you upstairs and get you settled and then Brooke can come up with you." Naomi always managed to act as my secondary voice of reason when I needed a second opinion beyond Brooke's…

"Do you think you can move to your bed yet?" I nodded; at least I didn't feel as if I was going to positively die if I moved so much as an inch anymore… the couple of feet towards my coveted bed was something I thought I could handle again.

I pushed off of the arm rest with every intention of carrying myself, but I guess everybody else must have had different plans or something because the second I so much as shifted my body, three pairs of hands darted out and grabbed me wherever they could get a grip on, so in the long run, I guess it didn't really matter whether or not I was feeling up to moving because they ended up just carrying me anyway…

I was barely settled in before Dr. Miller walked back into the room with a small nod of her head towards Brooke, indicating to me that I probably shouldn't get too comfortable in here because I was just gonna get moved away again anyway…

"Okay Sam, they're all set to take you upstairs, are you ready?" The nod that I forced my neck to perform didn't exactly match my actual thoughts on the subject.

The pandemonium of the move filled my ears the instant I'd made the confirmation. Through the chaos, I strained my neck in an effort not to lose sight of Brooke, the problem was, she'd been pulled away from me, lead by the elbow to the far corner of the room by Dr. Miller who was talking to her about something that looked serious... something that was inevitably about me.

I leaned as far to my right as I could, opened my ears wide in an effort to actually hear what the doctor was saying until finally, I'd managed to catch the tail end of her message...

"It shouldn't be more than an hour. I'm going to take her for a chest x-ray, and then we're just going to run some blood and start her on a few antibiotics, and then you'll be able to go up and sit with her."

My face sunk with worry, the prospect of being forced to leave Brooke's side for a whole hour… I didn't like it; I didn't like it one bit.

The bed gave a sudden lurch, snapping me back to focus with the indication that we were now on the move, and I watched as Brooke began strolling forwards, meeting me at the doorway.

"Hey, I'll see you soon, okay? Dr. Miller says that it shouldn't be any more than an hour or so. I can run home real quick, do you want me to bring you anything?"

I shook my head and broke my eye contact with Brooke… my voice just didn't seem to want to work right now… I didn't want anything from home; in fact, the only thing I really wanted was for Brooke to not leave me.

"Hey, listen, you're gonna be fine, okay?" She reached a gentle hand forward until her fingers grazed underneath my chin, forcing my head up to match her eyes, "And you know, I'm not gonna be as far away as you may think, okay? I'm gonna be right down the hall the whole time in case you need me."

"How will you know if I need you?" I hadn't exactly meant to speak out loud, it's just that I had been thinking it and it sort of… slipped.

"I'll know," She promised, gently smoothing her palm out across the top of my head, "Trust me."

I nodded and tilted my head back up to meet her eyes. I trusted her; really, I did.

"I'll be upstairs as soon as I can, but until then, Dr. Miller is gonna keep an eye on you for me. She'll take good care of you, don't worry."

I nodded, moving quickly to wipe a stray tear from underneath my right eye as Brooke leaned forward and wrapped herself gently around my body, pulling my head into the deep crook of her neck with a perfected gentleness. The only problem I had was that she let go of me much sooner than I would have preferred.

"Okay… you gotta go, okay? I'll see you soon."

"See you soon," I repeated, shivering involuntarily as Brooke's body detached from mine, flushing me with a brush of cold air at the sudden loss of human contact.

The bed lurched again, and all of a sudden, I was in the hallway, swiveling my head around in a desperate effort to retain eye contact with Brooke for as long as could as she stood firmly in the doorway, refusing to follow me even though I knew that everything in her body was screaming at her to do so.

She gave me a small wave, the briefest of hand gestures that I returned until we rounded a corner and I lost sight of Brooke all together.

I turned back around, leaning against my bed in an unsuccessful attempt to get comfortable… It just wasn't working… I had after all found myself in a pretty strange place. I couldn't really explain it too well, all I knew for certain was that it was cold, it was dark, and it seemed damn near impossible to crawl out of, especially considering I'd lost the one person who's hand I could grab onto to give me a boost…

In fact, I'd just become suddenly aware of the fact that I didn't have anybody at all… Suddenly there was nobody to hold onto, nowhere to go… My chest heaved and my brain shouted for somebody to come help me, but there was no response, none at all, and all at once, it became very clear to me… there was no one here at all…

It was only me.

* * *

**BROOKE**

In the back corner of every floor in every hospital, there sits a small 16x24 foot box that roughly resembles the smallest corner bedroom of a tenement apartment in the boondocks… The walls are almost always painted navy blue, there's usually an ugly gray carpet on the floor, and there will, without a doubt be a cluster of horrendous, modern art paintings that don't mean anything to anybody hanging on the wall.

This room is only large enough to hold about five chairs, six if you squeezed hard enough, because you still have to make room for the small table in the center scattered with magazines that were dated back three or four years, and the LCD plasma TV hanging from the ceiling in the far corner that always has one of two things playing on it; soap operas or Oprah.

It was the room where they put all the worried parents, all the confused friends, and all the anxiously awaiting loved ones after they'd been unceremoniously forced to leave t heir child's side…

Two hours ago they'd told me that I could be with Sam in an hour… Of course, I should have known better; I should have remembered that an hour in hospital time isn't the same as an hour in real-life time. No, compared to real-life time, hospital time moved at an absolute crawl, a near standstill... I had a theory that doctors took a course on freezing time in medical school.

I had been sitting in the same chair for two hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty four seconds. To occupy the time, I'd tried twiddling my fingers, tapping my feet against the floor, and finally, performing a rousing drum solo against my thighs… In fact, I'd just gotten to the good part of my solo when I heard it;

"Brooke?"

I stood up so quickly that my head spun.

"Dr. Miller, how is she? Is she all set up?" The doctor nodded in response to my question, but I'd noticed that look on her face again; the same one I'd seen two hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty four seconds ago when I'd last spoken to her downstairs…

She was worried, she was nervous… and I'm not gonna lie, she was starting to make me worried and nervous too.

"And how about all of the tests you ran? How did those go?" The expression on Dr. Miller's face was similar to the one I'd heard the first time I'd asked her how all of Sam's tests went… you know, right before they diagnosed her…

"The x-ray confirmed that there's definitely fluid in her lungs… Right now I'm thinking that we're looking at a simple chest infection, so what we're doing is we're pumping her with antibiotics with the hopes that we'll be able to stop the infection before it has the opportunity to progress into anything more serious."

The way she was talking, it sounded like they were taking a lot of chances… There was way too many 'hopefully's' and 'potentially's' in her sentence for my liking, and to me, chance wasn't something I played too kindly with, especially when it involved Sam.

"Something more serious… Like… like what do you mean something more serious?" I spoke with the grammar of a two year old, stammering and stuttering across the possibilities of what something more serious meant… The ideas were flourishing through my mind like wild fire… I felt as if there was nothing I could do except pray for the best and fear the worst.

"Well, the worst case scenario, the one that I'm most worried about is the possibility of pneumonia. With Sam's immune system as depleted as it is, a progression of this infection beyond where it is right now might have… devastating results." She chose her words carefully, but the impact of them was all the same.

The reality was suddenly abundant in my mind; the reminder of just how sick Sam was, how sick she'd been all along felt like a five fingered slap right across my face.

"But please Brooke, know that that is just a worst-case scenario at its most extreme. We have the infection contained, and Sam on the most stringent of precautions. I have every faith that she will get past this infection. Things like this, they just kind of… happen. It's so difficult to keep chemotherapy patients out of the line of infection, especially when every germ has the potential to give them such a severe reaction. It's common Brooke, and she's in good hands, don't worry."

I believed what she was saying, really I did; I mean, I hadn't stuck around with Dr. Miller for this long because I didn't think she was taking good care of Sam… No, I knew that Sam was being taken good care of, but the truth was, to tell me not to worry was just like telling the Earth not to orbit… Not gonna happen.

"Can I see her now?" It was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that truly concerned me.

"Of course," She nodded, motioning with her hands for me to get up and follow her. "But just to let you know, Sam is on a very strict set of isolation precautions. Nobody's allowed to see her without wearing a gown, gloves, mask… standard things like that. Everything that you take into the room must be approved and disinfected, and she's limited to only one visitor at a time… maybe two."

I nodded, listening carefully to Dr. Miller's instructions while simultaneously trying to repeat her assurances over and over again in my head… The thing was it was hard to keep believing them when she kept scaring me with all of this…

"I know all of this sounds scary Brooke, but just remember, most of these factors are strictly precautionary…" She must have read my mind, must have heard my heart pounding harder with every new piece of information… She must have known that the more I repeated the words 'Sam will be fine, Sam will be fine' over and over in my head, the less I actually believed it.

We'd reached Sam's room in a matter of seconds, but it took me an entire five extra minutes to slip on the whole of the outfit I was now required to wear every time I wanted to go in to see her.

By the time I was ready to see her, there wasn't a single piece of skin showing with the exception of a thin break around my eyes so that I could see; the material was uncomfortable and constricting, and rubbed against my skin painfully with every step that I took, but the second I stepped into Sam's room, the second I saw her, I forgot all about it.

The room reeked of sterility; the acidic stench of antibacterial sanitizers that I always hated, no matter how conditioned practically living in a hospital had made me towards it. There wasn't a single object across the entire perimeter that hadn't been wrapped twice over in plastic, the windows were sealed shut in an effort to prevent any dirt from the outside air escaping in, and in the middle of it all.. Sam.

She looked up at me in an instant; her eyes laced with pain, letting me know silently that she was terrified…

I took a deep breath and stepped in closer, trying desperately to arrange my eyes into an expression of neutrality. Suddenly, I was very grateful towards the fact that most of my face was covered with the mask I was wearing; it made it much easier to hide my emotions.

"Hey," I greeted cautiously, getting as close to Sam's bed as I could comfortably muster… I wanted to reach down and pull her into my arms, squeeze her tightly with the assurance that she was going to be fine, but I didn't even know if I was allowed to touch her… Regrettably, that thought hadn't come to mind at the point where Dr. Miller asked me if I had any questions.

"Hey," Sam's voice was distant and weak, and even that slightest bit of noise stimulated a fit of coughs that sounded harsh and ragged and shook her body with every heave. I watched mesmerized as the multiple IV lines along her arms trembled in time with her body, sending shudders all the way up the ports so the multiple bags hanging above her head shook and caught the fluorescents in such a way that created a light show across the room.

She clutched at her chest in an effort to ease the pain and sucked greedily at the oxygen they had steadily streaming into her body and suddenly, I didn't care about whether or not I was allowed to touch her. The second Sam's tired body relaxed and sunk back against the mattress, I squatted down and pulled her into my arms, clutching at her restrictively tight, terrified that if I let go now, I would lose her forever.

"Hey, it's okay, you're okay Sam. I'm here now." I delivered her a comfort that I couldn't be so sure of myself, but that hardly mattered. I just wanted Sam to be better, I wanted to be the one to make her better, I wanted to transfer some of my own strength into her ravaged body, as impossible as that may seem.

"Are you feeling any better?" It seemed like a stupid question, especially after the scene I just witnessed, but I needed something to say, and that was the only thing that I could think of.

"Not really…" She choked out her words, instantly shattering my heart with the acknowledgment of her pain. The only thing I could think to do was hold her closer. I knew that if it was up to me, I would have gotten rid of all of her pain, all of her sickness a long time ago… Unfortunately, I'd learned the hard way that it wasn't in fact up to me; it wasn't up to me at all.

"I know honey, I know… I'm so sorry that you have to go through all of this." I felt the sudden need to apologize. I mean, I knew that this wasn't my fault… It had taken me a long time to convince myself that, but eventually, I had. But I still believed that somebody should be held responsible for all of this, somebody should be apologizing, and considering I'd yet to pinpoint exactly who that person should be, well that left me to take the blame.

"But you know what, Sam, I just talked to Dr. Miller and she says you're gonna be fine, you just got a little infection. In fact, they're clearing it out of your system as we speak." I subconsciously found my head tilting upward at the array of medication that I hoped was doing just what I'd just spoken of.

I chose to leave out the finer details of the situation, but Sam needed to focus on getting better, I couldn't have her mind getting clogged and trapped down with the possibilities of what might happen if she didn't… That was my job.

"I know…" She mumbled, her eyes closing and her muscles relaxing underneath my arms in a manner that told me she was currently fighting off sleep.

"Hey, sleep honey." I instructed, cocooning her into her blankets in an effort to make her as comfortable as possible.

"Will you stay with me?"

"Of course I will, Sam… Trust me, they're gonna have to drag me out of this room to get me to leave you." I had a fleeting vision, a mental image of two giant goons in their own hazmat suits rushing into the room and pulling me out of the by my ankles as I fought and kicked and screamed to stay with Sam, but I shook it out of my head… It was definitely too close to being a possibility to act as a humorous picture for me.

"You're too good to me, mom." Sam spoke through a yawn but I still heard every word she said. I felt my heart freeze and skip a beat for a second before coming back to life double-time, pumping so quickly in my chest that I was afraid that it would burst right through it.

"You're too good to me too, Sam." A tear slipped down my cheek as I mumbled my response and rubbed a smooth palm across Sam's warm forehead, but I don't think that she'd even heard me… She was fast asleep before the words had even managed to escape my mouth.

* * *

Staying true to my word, I spent the next hour standing unmoving at Sam's side, watching her sleep, occupying myself by counting every shuddering breath that she took, wincing at the pain I knew she felt with every inhale.

I did everything that I could think to do in order to pass the time, trying to actively not think about just how sick Sam currently was... The problem was that every time I'd walk a lap around the room to stretch my legs, a nurse would come in to tell me that Sam's temperature wasn't lowering, every time I'd open a magazine, a machine would beep awkwardly, every time I'd nod off in my chair, Sam would take an extra second or two to inhale causing me to lurch towards her, only to find that she was fine…

I've never felt so jumpy in my entire life.

I guess that would explain why I leapt about a foot into the air when a sudden vibrating sensation buzzed up against my thigh from the depths of my jeans pocket… I regained my bearings quickly, telling myself to relax, it was just the cell phone I'd had safely tucked away in my pocket.

It took me a long time to dig through all of my extra clothing in order to properly get my hands on it, but when I finally did, I glared down at the banner of Sam's phone until my eyes focused on the name written across it.

Jack.

I considered ignoring it, considered the fact that this was probably a situation that was just too deep for a boy of his age to properly understand, but then I looked back at Sam, and then back to the phone, and then back at Sam one more time, weighing the pros and cons out in my head the whole time.

In fact, I'd taken so long that by the time I finally decided that it was for the best for Jack to come and be with Sam, I'd already missed the call.

I mean, I could call him back, but I was nervous to leave Sam's side, afraid that after I'd promised her that I wouldn't go under any circumstances, she'd wake up while I was gone and think I totally abandoned her… But then again, maybe she'd accept my departure if it meant me bringing Jack back in with me…

Sam needed Jack, that much was obvious given the fact that she'd risked her life just to sneak out and be with him in the middle of the night… So yes, Sam needed Jack as a means to get herself better, and considering I needed Sam to get better, I guess that meant that in a way, I kind of needed Jack too.

With that thought in mind, I snuck carefully from the room, sneaking glances back at Sam through the small observation window next to the door once every ten seconds or so just to make sure that she was still sufficiently asleep, ready to run back to her with arms outstretched just in case she should need me.

I stripped out of the constricting isolation gown; taking a deep breath the second I felt that space of freedom surround me…

In an effort to get back to Sam as quickly as possible, I called Jack immediately, my hand moving of its own accord as I hit the call back button and raised the phone to my ear in waiting… just like I always seemed to do these days.

"Sam?" The phone barely rang once before Jack was answering with a worried frenzy in the back of his voice that I'd never really heard come from his usually dull, comedic demeanor before.

"Jack, this is Brooke."

"Oh," His voice sunk with the revelation; he was probably afraid that I was going to take this opportunity to tear him apart, yell at him for the little adventure he'd taken Sam out on two days ago considering I hadn't had a chance to do so yet, "Is… is Sam there?"

"She's asleep Jack, she had a pretty hard day of chemotherapy today."

"Is she okay?" Jack sounded worried, which I thought was unusual given the simplicity of my explanation… It was a characteristic trait of somebody who was still new to the whole cancer game… I knew; I'd been in his shoes once before.

"She has a little bit of a cold Jack, but she'll be okay." I downplayed the actuality of the situation, not just to make Jack feel better, but because the more I actually said it that way, the more I believed it myself. "You know, I think that she'd really like to see you."

"N… now?" Jack stammered, obviously overwhelmed by his unexpectedness of my offer. "Um…where are you guys?"

"We're at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital."

"Uh… I guess… I guess I'll start walking." I silently cursed to myself, I hadn't thought of that one; Tree Hill Memorial was a fifteen, maybe twenty minute drive, but it was still a two or three hour walk easily, and the fact of the matter was, by the time Jack actually got here, he wouldn't even be able to see Sam on account of the isolation unit's very strict visiting hours policy.

"Where are you right now Jack?" I asked as I tried to come up with a plan on the fly that would get Jack where he needed to be faster.

"I'm in the park."

"Okay, don't move, okay?"

"Okay…" He sounded unsure, worried even, but I hung up the phone before he could ask any questions, before I even said goodbye… A bad habit I know, but a habit of mine none the less.

Besides, I was in a hurry; formality was just something I didn't have time for anymore these days.

I'd barely hung up from my previous phone call before the phone was in my hand again, my fingers dialing a familiar number before waiting, praying for an answer.

I had a plan in mind, and even though I knew that I personally was totally unwilling to leave Sam's side for the period of time I knew would be required for me to leave, pick up Jack, and drive all the way back here again, I knew that there was somebody out there who might be willing to help out an old student…

"Hello?"

"Haley, hey... Question, what are you doing right now?" Like I said, I had a habit of skipping past the socially acceptable forms of greeting somebody on the phone, choosing instead to get straight down to business… I blamed the fashion industry.

"Uh… cleaning…" Haley answered me uncertainly; nervous already about what exactly it was that she'd gotten herself into just by simply answering her phone.

"Listen, can I ask you a favor?"

"Sure?" She said it with the inclination of a question, hesitant in her willingness to fully commit to any favor I could possibly need of her, which, in all fairness, knowing me, could have resulted in absolutely anything.

"It's Jack… He just called Sam and I told him to come over to the hospital to see her, it's just… I can't leave Sam right now, Hales, I was just wondering if you could drive him over? He's over in Memorial Park right now."

"Of course Brooke, that's fine. Are you guys still up on the 6th floor?"

"Uh… no actually, they moved Sam out this morning. She's upstairs on the 8th floor now, room 8003, it's the uh… it's in the isolation units."

There was a moment of silence in which I was afraid that Haley had just dropped dead or something upon hearing the news I had to deliver her… Perhaps I should have eased into this one.

"Brooke, what happened?" She finally spoke but this time when she did her voice was lower, more distant. I'd scared her, and because Haley was scared, her fear was starting to seep back into my veins, reinstating that feeling that had been lingering in my gut all morning at full swing… I needed to push past it, I needed to retain my false façade of confidence that I knew I needed in order to keep me from totally losing it.

"It's fine, she's fine, it's all precautionary…" I really was starting to believe the words coming out of my mouth now that I was saying them so much more often. "She uh… she had a fever this morning, the doctors said that she caught some kind of chest infection so they just decided to move her up to one of the isolation rooms to make sure it doesn't get any worse… They've got her on a million antibiotics right now… She's fine… Well, she's gonna be fine."

"Okay Brooke, listen, don't move okay? I'm gonna go get Jack, and then I'll be right over." I could tell by the tone in her voice that she didn't quite believe my whole shpeel about Sam being just fine, and I appreciated that because it really had been a total lie after all… But it wasn't like a lie that I told because I didn't want anybody to know just how sick Sam really was, no, it was more of a lie that I told because I really just didn't want to confront just how sick Sam really was… I needed somebody to see through my lie; I needed somebody to come over here and tell me for a change that everything was going to be okay because I was having a hard time playing that role for Sam when I didn't it believe it myself… Thank God for Haley.

"I'll be right there, Brooke." She assured me, and suddenly, I found myself having the tables turned on me as Haley slammed her own phone down, hanging up before I had the opportunity to say a single word.

"I'll be here," I mumbled my response to the imaginary person on the other line before I hung up the phone, dropping it to my side before turning my attention back through the window towards Sam, who hadn't so much as moved an inch since my departure.

I caught a quick glimpse of my own reflection through the transparent glass… Two months ago, I would have considered myself young, beautiful, thriving, successful… But now… now I looked as if I'd aged thirty years in a matter of eight weeks. My hair with frizzled and dirty, my eyes were sunken and submissive, lost of their usual glow, the usual sheen of my skin was hidden behind a permanent veil of worry lines and creased brows…

But the more I thought about it, the more noticeable it became that the weight currently pressing down in crippling amounts against my back had suddenly grown somewhat lighter with the knowledge that Haley was on her way…

I looked down at the cell phone I was still clinging to firmly between my hands… I found myself with a sudden desire to call up some of my oldest friends, apologize to them endlessly, begging them to forgive me for this mess I'd seem to have gotten myself in, but I could really use their help right about now…

And before I even realized that it was happening, Sam's phone was magically back against my ear and a second familiar voice was greeting me.

"Hello?"

"Peyton…" I sighed out sadly, "I need a favor…"

* * *

I was only sitting outside in the hallway for a few minutes, but it might as well been a few hours… Ultimately, it was the sound of Haley's shoes clicking in a brisk run down the tile floor that caused me to turn around and look back up.

Haley was practically sprinting down the length of the hallway while meanwhile, Jack was sauntering nervously behind her, trying to keep up, but having a tough time finding it in him to add that extra spring to his step.

I studied the boy carefully, watching as he stuck his hands in his pocket and tilted his head downward, staring determined at the floor as so nobody would see the look of saddened guilt displayed prominently across his face.

In fact, I had been so busy paying attention to Jack that when Haley rushed up to me and threw her arms around my neck, it had been so unexpected that she almost knocked me flat on my ass.

"Brooke, how is she?"

"She's doing okay," I nodded to her, "She's asleep right now and they've got her on a bunch of medication and stuff so she's pretty zonked out, but yeah… she's doing okay." My direct line of vision naturally lingered back through the window and Haley's eyes followed mine, her face sinking into a look of saddened horror at the mere sight of Sam in her most fragile of states.

"Really Haley, it looks worse than it is."

She nodded to me, but I knew she didn't believe it; and instead of confronting that saddened look of disbelief in her eyes, I merely turned away from it, allowing Haley's hand to fall away from my shoulder as I faced Jack, focusing in on his uncharacteristic silence in an effort to come up with something to say, something to make him feel better…

"Jack, do you want to go in and see her?" He looked up at the sound of his name and stared at me with a blank expression on his face for a hot second before he fought through it and gave me a brief nod.

"Yeah,"

"Come on," I beckoned him forward and he took a few steps, still hesitant and unsure about his motions. "She's kind of under lock and key right now so I know all of this looks kind of nuts, but it's all okay… She's okay." I'd lost count of how many times I'd said that today… I was willing to bet a lot though.

"Is it like… okay for me to go in there?"

I gave him a soft smile and the briefest of nods, "Off course," I assured him, extending to him one of the light yellow sterile gowns from the large pile in front of Sam's door that I'd become so familiar with today, "You just have to wear all of this crap, her immune system is kind of shot right now, she can't really catch anything…"

He looked up at me as he accepted the gift out of my hand, and for a second, his eyes remained starkly unsure of himself, but then, he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and gave me an exaggerated nod to tell me that he was ready; that he would be okay.

The two of us moved slowly in synchronized movements; gloves, then gown, then cap, then mask, everything, until finally, we were standing there looking like two clowns ready to perform a circus act.

"Ready?" I asked, trying to be gentle, as comforting as possible as he nodded and I lead him into the cold room where Sam remained to lay peacefully asleep.

"Are you sure that... Are you sure she's gonna be okay?" Jack gulped as he turned to express his skepticism, unsure if he really believed the simple explanation I had given to him only moments ago now that he actually saw Sam.

The only thing I could really do was give him a sad smile and a silent nod as I pushed forward and Jack hung back, leaving me to approach Sam's bedside on my own as I leaned over her sleeping form, grabbed a firm handful of her shoulder, and shook gently.

She let out an immediate groan, not in the slightest bit hesitant in voicing her disapproval of being pulled from the comforts of a painless sleep.

"Hey, come on Sam, wake up for me." I gave her a second shake, slightly more vigorous this time, watching as her eyes, sticky with sleep opened to look up at me with an expression of half-lidded anger.

"What?" She grumbled, straining her neck in an effort to identify who it was exactly currently hovering over her, giving a characteristic eye roll when she saw that it was in fact me.

"You have a visitor." I whispered to her and she perked up, suddenly much more interested with her surroundings now that she'd been informed of the presence of another person other than me.

"Who?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?" I shifted to my left slightly, beckoning Jack to come further into the light with my hand which he did, dragging his feet across the floor closer towards the two of us until Sam could actually see him.

"Jack," Her voice sounded relieved, and to me, it was a nice change, especially considering I got to see a smile manage to sneak across her pale, cracked lips.

"Hey Sam," He pulled his composure together like a champ so that my confidence in him increased exponentially. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm alright," Sam shrugged casually as she attempted to set her face and straighten her posture in an effort to look as healthy as possible.

I found myself hovering over the two of them, smiling down at the pair as I couldn't help but watch mesmerized at the interaction between my daughter and the one kid that had always been able to make her feel better in ways that I could never really understand.

I was quickly brought back to attention with the knowledge that Sam was currently sneaking a strange glance over Jack's shoulder in order to let me know that she was currently considering me to be more of a nuisance between all that her and Jack had to catch up on than anything.

I caught on quickly, giving Sam a tiny nod that told her that I understood.

"Hey, listen, I'm gonna leave you two alone, okay?" I spoke casually as not to make Jack suspicious that Sam had actually made a silent request towards this solitude.

"Yeah," Sam nodded to me, shooting me an appreciative smile with her single word.

"I'll be right outside if you need me."

A chorus of 'okay's' chimed from both Jack and Sam's mouths as I turned cautiously back around, walking towards the door with my head permanently swiveled around my shoulder just to make sure there were no shenanigans going on behind me now that I voluntarily chose to leave them alone…

I turned back around only when I'd finally turned back out of the room, and I barely had time to pull the mask on my face down below my chin before a flash of blonde appeared before my eyes and a scrawny pair of arms were around my neck …

"Hey Brooke… How are you holding up?"

I pulled away from Peyton's surprisingly tight grasp, offering her my best of fake smiles that I knew lacked authenticity, but I was just too tired to care anymore.

"I'm hanging in there, Peyton." I sighed and began the tedious task of stripping everything I'd just moments ago been forced to put on before I was allowed to step into Sam's room… It was very exhausting; ten minutes to get ready to go in, ten minutes to settle from coming back out… All in all, way too much work than I trusted myself doing at the moment.

"And how about Sam, how's she doing?"

"She's hanging in there too." I sighed, turning my attention back towards the depths of Sam's room, watching as Jack developed a pattern in which he would lean forward in an effort to get close to Sam, and then, at the very last second, jump back in fear that he was getting too close.

"You could have sounded more convincing, you know." Peyton's words, not so much an accusation, more of an observation, forced me to look down at my feet with the acknowledgment… Convincing was something that I just didn't quite have in me right now.

Through the corner of my eye, I watched as Haley and Peyton exchanged a look amongst each other, silently communicating, silently trying to put together the pieces.

"Brooke, listen, we don't really know what's going on here and… well, frankly you're starting to scare us… should we be nervous yet, Brooke?"

I felt bad instantly; I knew exactly where Haley was trying to go with this; she was skirting around the question of whether or not she should be concerned if Sam was dying without physically asking me whether or not Sam was actually dying.

"No," I shook my head firmly, finally able to add some authenticity to my answer, because this time, I really did believe that we shouldn't be that worried… yet, anyway, "Not yet,"

"What do you mean not yet?" Apparently, my answer wasn't satisfactory enough for them, they wanted details and they wanted them now… It was in all fairness really, they'd come all the way over here upon my request, they deserved that much.

"The doctor says if they can't control this infection, it can escalate, get worse… basically she tried to soften up the fact that if Sam doesn't get better soon… well, she'll probably… she could… she might…" I struggled to find the right phrasing for the end of my sentence, but it didn't seem to matter that I couldn't; the looks on their faces told me that they'd understood.

Finding myself no longer able to watch their expressions of horror, I turned my full attention back towards Sam, watching carefully as within a second, the girl's soft smile vanished, her eyes sunk, her face paled, and then slowly greened into a look that I knew all too well…

"Shit," I mumbled to myself, jumping into action so quickly that I'd frightened Haley and Peyton who inevitably had absolutely no idea what was going on.

"Brooke, what is it? What's wrong?" Peyton asked, keeping a safe distance as I scrambled to once again, get dressed in my sterile suit as quickly as I possibly could, moving like lightning, determined to set a new world record for the fastest person to ever dress in a full-precaution outfit.

"It's Sam, she's been getting nauseous all day," I struggled to speak and hop around on one foot at the same time in an effort to put on my shoe covers, "She's sick again," Neither asked how I had known that Sam wasn't feeling well, they were both mothers, they just knew what it was like to be able to judge the most miniscule changes in your child's features, to know at every instant exactly what it was they were thinking…

"Shit, shit!" I continued to curse to myself, frustration rising as I realized I'd put my gown on upside down and was currently trying to stuff my head into the tiny arm hole… so much for that world record, I guess. "Shit, shit, shit, shi-"

"Hey Brooke," Peyton cut me off, her voice coming out in a calming tone that told me it was safe to stop acting like such a crazy person… For a second, I thought she was going to lecture me on over-straining myself, on how freaking out was going to do nothing for either me, or for Sam, but she ended up doing neither…

Instead, she grabbed onto my shoulders and steered me gently towards the observation window, forcing my head upward so that I could see what she had been calling my attention about…

Jack was sitting at the edge of Sam's bed, one arm draped gently across her hunched back while the other was busy holding a bucket in front of Sam's mouth, comforting her supportively as she threw up generously inside of it.

My eyes slanted down sorrowfully but my mouth tilted up into a hopeful smile, confused about what emotion I was feeling, confused over the fact that although Sam was currently sicker than I had ever seen her in my entire life, there was somebody there to look out for her… The feeling in my heart was equivalent to the one I always got every time I watched a good chick flick or something… This was beautiful.

"I think this one might be covered, Brooke." Haley spoke through the tears in her eyes, neither of the three of us finding it in ourselves to rip our eyes away from the scene.

Haley did have a point, Jack did seem to have this one under his control, and suddenly, as if a giant weight had been lifted from my arms, I didn't feel quite so rushed anymore… In fact, I positively relaxed against the window pane, still half-dressed in the ridiculous outfit I was wearing, watching with an unusual silence as my daughter got sick, and the one kid whose hands I now trusted to replace my own, took care of her…

"Yeah… me too," I responded to Haley's comment, with a small smirk as Sam raised her head from the bucket and offered Jack an apologetic look that he returned with a smile and a shake of his head as if to tell her that she had absolutely nothing to be sorry for…

Yeah sure, Sam was sick, that much was obvious… I mean, I'd watched her as she endured week after week of treatments already; medication that had been horribly designed to save her life by killing little pieces of her in the process… And then all of a sudden, there was Jack… A medication of an entirely different kind, a medication that I don't think any of us could ever truly understand, beautifully designed to save her life by bringing it back to her piece by piece…

And for that, I could offer him all the thanks in the world and I knew it still wouldn't have been enough.


	37. This Is No Victory

**Okay everyone, so please excuse these next two filler chapters they're designed for build up purposes to keep you guys guessing because I'm mean like that hahaha. But don't fret, I promise it'll be worth it because it will all come together with a big bang very, very soon.**

**So to all of you who have been waiting so patiently for a little bit of Jack and Sam action, this chapter is dedicated to you! Hope you enjoy it!**

Chapter 37: This is No Victory

**Monday, December 19****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

I don't think that it's exactly a secret that I've spent the majority of my life embracing the art of losing.

From the very moment that I was born I'd pretty much lost everything, the thing was, as time progressed, things never really got much better.

Maybe that's the reason I was so shocked with the fact that I'd spent the majority of my day so far winning in everything that I did.

It all started this morning. Despite the previously hellish conditions that had somehow managed to befall upon me yesterday, I'd woken up feeling surprisingly much better… I mean of course, by feeling surprisingly much better, I mean to say that so far today, I didn't feel like absolutely dying, and sure, my chest still felt like somebody had laid an anvil on top of it, and yeah, I was still heaving thick wads of phlegm up my throat every couple of minutes, but experience has taught me to take my victories where I can grab them, so I decided to keep my complaints to a minimum and do just that.

And now, here I was, propped upright against my mattress, pleased with myself for even having enough strength inside of me to do that much, as I listened to Dr. Miller address Brooke and I without so much as a glimmer of that serious tone in her voice that had so terrified us yesterday.

She'd come at the ass crack of dawn. The only reason I was actually awake was because a 3 a.m. coughing fit managed to simultaneously pull me out of my drug-induced sleep and ensure that I wasn't going to be doing any sleeping in today at the same time…

I spent four hours watching infomercials on mute while Brooke slept crumpled like a pretzel out on her cot, the ridiculous suit she was wearing in an effort to protect me from germs crinkling with every move she made; and just when my eyes were about to positively shrivel up and fall out from all of the glaring images of slap-chops, and sham-wows, and worthless little keychain flashlights, Dr. Miller paid us a visit.

And the news was good.

From what I understood of everything, which, granted, was very little, the original infection that had ravaged through my body yesterday had wound up being much less severe than everybody had previously anticipated, and thanks to the extra antibiotics they'd been pumping vigorously into my system for the past couple of hours now, combined with the strict precautions that prevented me from exposing myself to any of the harms of the outside world, it had ended up clearing itself at a rate that sufficiently satisfied both myself and my doctors too.

"Her fever dropped significantly during the night; in fact, it's almost back down to normal which is all we could have asked to accomplish at this point and beyond."

She smiled at me with assurance written across her face as I slipped into a state of mere semi-attentiveness, suddenly much less keen towards paying complete attention to her now that I knew that I everything was back to being okay… Of course Brooke meanwhile, retained her expression of intense acknowledgment towards each and every one of my doctor's words, bobbing her head up and down mechanically as she spoke, processing the information firmly in the back of her mind…

"And her blood counts? How do those look?" I think that it's pretty safe to say that Brooke was much more hesitant to accept the mere explanation that I'd simply made a sudden, miraculous recovery than I was… I mean, I guess in retrospect that made sense; I mean, I don't really remember how bad yesterday had actually gotten for me considering I was incoherent the majority of the time, but from everything that I'd heard, it had been pretty bad for a while there, and unlike me, poor Brooke didn't have the fever or the drugs to block out large portions of that experience. Yes, unfortunately for Brooke, she was stuck with the memories of yesterday permanently embedded in the back of her mind probably for the rest of eternity, and for that, I must say, I pitied her.

"Well, her leukocyte counts are still pretty elevated which means that her body is still actively working on clearing the infection from her system. So that cough of yours Sam, it's probably gonna be there for a couple more days, but it will clear on its own, and with the help of the cough suppressants and antibiotics we gave you within a couple of days or so."

I looked up at the sound of my name, but to be completely honest, I had completely missed the first half of that sentence so that I had no idea where she was going with this. I chose to simply nod my head and comply agree with my doctor, a tactic that I always used when I had absolutely no idea what was going on, a tactic that appeared to work, because every time I used it, Dr. Miller just kept on nodding and carrying on her merry way as if nothing had gone wrong; and let me tell you, today was absolutely no different.

"So yes, her counts are looking a lot better than they were before, but at the same time, they're still not perfect, so what we're gonna do is we're going to start weaning you slowly off of all of these isolation precautions, get you back into a normal rotation, and then, we'll start you on a course of oral antibiotics to ensure the infection doesn't return, and hopefully, after a couple of weeks, the infection will be completely cleared from your system."

"So when can I get out of this room?" It seemed like a logical question to me; ever since this whole thing started, I'd lost a lot of freedoms in my life, but being in here, well it made me lose everything, and I didn't particularly like this feeling.

I watched as the doctor turned to me with sympathetic eyes; listened as Brooke gave the slightest sigh, both of them indicating to me with their most minute of gestures that if it was up to the two of them, I'd be staying in this room for the rest of my life if it meant me getting better.

"Well, we don't like keeping people up in these rooms for too long. I know how rough it can be being stuck in isolation… Let me tell you this much; I'll give you a ball-park figure, I might be able to get you out of here by tomorrow, maybe the next day, but listen, remember, that's just an estimate, I don't want you getting your hopes up too high."

I nodded my head eagerly but to be completely honest with you, the only way you'd be able to prevent my hopes from getting too high would be to physically beat me into submission with a blunt object, because my expectation hadn't been high; I'd anticipated being stuck in this room for as long as a week… maybe even two, but to here that it was a possibility that I'd get out within the day, well now I was positively ecstatic.

A knock on the window caused all three of our heads to snap upwards and towards the window facing the hall, my eyes, along with the eyes of Brooke and Dr. Miller focusing on the image of Jack knocking awkwardly against the glass, waving like a goon into the room with a small smirk on his face that told me he had absolutely no idea what the hell he was doing.

I gave him a smirk and a tiny wave back as Dr. Miller turned back towards me with a bemused grin on her face.

"Who's your friend, Sam? You know, I noticed he was here yesterday too… new boyfriend?" I rolled my eyes in a humorous fashion as my doctor interrogated me as if she were my mother… I mean, Brooke was bad enough; I didn't need two of them hanging around…

"Nah…" I responded, my mind scrambling to come up with an appropriate adjective to describe what exactly it was that Jack was to me… "He's just… he's just a friend; a really old friend." I settled with the simplest of descriptions, but my body still shuddered with the acknowledgment of Jack being identified as my potential boyfriend.

"Okay… well just so you know; that old friend of yours has been waiting outside since 6:30 this morning for visiting hours to start, so you just take that into consideration when he comes in here to see you."

I smiled despite myself, catching my bodily reactions as my cheeks flushed red and my eyes practically forced themselves to look downwards and away from my doctor before she had the opportunity to catch just how embarrassedly flushed her statement had made me…

"Anyway, I'll be back up here to check on you in a couple of hours." She changed the subject generously for my own well being and I followed her with my eyes as her back turned to face me and she sauntered out of the bedroom until she'd disappeared completely behind the thick wooden door.

She left us alone; just me, and Brooke, submitted to the isolation of this stupid room I was stuck in for at least another 24 hours… I had a sudden desire to be all alone, a sudden desire for Brooke to leave me in here with Jack… We do after all; have a lot to catch up on.

I pleaded with her silently using my eyes and nothing more, trying to put my best 'please leave me alone to hang out with Jack' expression on my face, hoping strongly that she would recognize it.

"You want to be alone here with Jack, don't you?" Brooke smirked at me slyly to I suddenly felt as if I was talking to my big sister rather than my mother… It was kind of awkward, honestly.

I gave Brooke the smallest of nods; I wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that question.

"We, uh… We kind of have a lot of crap to catch up on." I shrugged, hoping that would be a good enough explanation for her.

"He took good care of you yesterday, you know." A doozy grin spread across Brooke's face as she reminisced over the memory of somebody other than her caring for me in my weakest of states… I couldn't tell if she was happy about it or jealous.

"I don't really remember much of yesterday…" I figured that was a safe enough response; play the in-the-dark card.

"You know Sam; I don't trust a lot of people other than me to take care of you… But Jack… there's something about him; something about him that I will trust when it comes to you."

I tilted my head upwards cautiously, looking deeply into Brooke's eyes with a slight expression of shocked denial written across my face at what Brooke had actually just said… It was after all, difficult to believe.

"So you're sure that you'll be okay here all by yourself?" Brooke followed up after I never said anything in response to her previous comment.

I leaned backwards, making myself comfortably against the mattress as I placed a small smirk on my face and gave Brooke a slight nod of my head. I felt kind of bad; I knew that Brooke's winter line, delayed from its release that was supposed to be in the middle of November, was being presented to the public's disposal today… I knew that she was up way over her head in work that she should have been doing all week long… I also knew that she hadn't done so much as thought about Clothes Over Bro's all day yesterday, putting her way behind in her work schedule, a schedule that she would have to spend a lot of time catching up on today… My bad, I guess.

"I'll be fine, Brooke." I gave her a second, more confident nod of assurance. "Besides, I won't be by myself… I'll have Jack."

It appeared to be a very prominent selling point in convincing Brooke her departure wouldn't leave me with any lasting damage… Imagine that; never in my wildest dreams would I have envisioned Brooke willingly leaving my side; especially at a moment like this one.

"Will you call me if you start feeling really sick again?" She asked, looking deep into my eyes just to make sure that there was no room for me to lie to her.

"I will,"

"And if Dr. Miller comes back to see you, and she has any new information?"

"I'll call you, Brooke," I nodded; at this point, I was more concerned about simply humoring Brooke with my submission to her demands than anything… The fact of the matter was, I was pretty sure that Brooke wouldn't be getting a phone call unless I was flat-out dying… She deserved a day away from all of this stress, even if that did mean establishing a brand new line across the entire country of her personally-designed clothing items… But compared to this, well that wasn't stress; that was pure cake.

"Okay…" She finally nodded, pushing herself up out of her chair and into a standing position. "I shouldn't be gone for more than an hour or two." She rested a gentle hand on my shoulder, afraid to move the physical contact anywhere beyond that for fear of violating my strict isolation restrictions. "If you need anything, you can call my cell phone, and if I don't answer, you can always call the store, or Millicent, I'm sure you'll be able to reach me there. But if you can't, call Peyton or Haley and they'll be here right away to check up on you, okay?"

"Okay, I will," I nodded to her one more time.

"I'll see you soon," She whispered to me, leaning forward to wrap me in a strong hug. I followed her movements; leaning my body inward to meet her in the middle as the tiniest of laughs towards her concern emitted from the very base of my throat… But I regretted those motions almost instantly… I wasn't ready for that much movement, that much excitement yet, and before I knew it, that familiar scratchy constriction overpowered my windpipe, begging me for a release that I refused it until Brooke was safe out of sight… I didn't want to concern her; I didn't want to keep her from doing her job on my account, especially when it was probably over nothing… I mean, I was getting better, the doctor said so… right?

I sealed my lips tightly, holding my breath in a determined fashion in an effort to plug my cough at mid-point in order to prevent Brooke from feeling any more hesitant towards leaving my side… After all, I knew that any physical acknowledgment of me being much lower than my acceptable threshold of health towards Brooke would mean that she would stubbornly sit at my side and worry herself to death all day long… And I couldn't be responsible for doing something like that.

Brooke turned her back away from me and out towards the door just as I began to feel my face redden with heat. The plug of mucous currently blocking my air passages was contracting involuntarily up my trachea, begging for the release that I wouldn't give it; I couldn't have been more grateful that Brooke's back was currently turned away from me.

My eyes watered, my lips began to turn blue; Brooke appeared to be moving at half-pace out the door, unknowing how much harm she was actually doing in her hesitancy to leave…

To breathe or not to breathe; that was the question now, I guess.

With ears intensely poised, I listened as the door slowly swung shut, concentrating as the savoring hymn of the doorknob clicking back safely into its lock filled my ears; the alarm that told me I was in the clear, the confirmation that it was finally safe to let loose.

I chocked and spluttered; the dramatic build-up of my upheaval much more pronounced due to the fact that I had been waiting for so long to accomplish it. For a solid five minute time period I gasped for air like a fish out of water in an effort to breathe, but slowly… very slowly, the blockage in my throat eased upward, and eventually, my air passages were cleared, and I could finally breathe again…

It felt like heaven… Well, I mean, everything I'd imagined heaven to feel like anyway…

It was only after I took a couple steady, deep breaths; only after my lungs relaxed and thanked me for the oxygen they so desperately craved that I finally allowed myself to lean backwards, eyes closed, concentrating solely on regulating my breathing patterns; in and out, in and out; deep, controlled breathing, just what I needed…

Ultimately, it was another person's voice that physically pulled me back into a state of conscious thought.

"I thought you were supposed to be getting better." I didn't even have to open my eyes to see who it was; my heart released a glow throughout my body, prominent through the smile on my face as my body physically warmed and my muscles felt at ease; just like what always happens whenever Jack walks into the same room I'm in.

I eased my eyes open carefully as he took a couple of small, hesitant steps forward, stopping only when he felt like he was at a safe distance from me… I guess yesterday had left him traumatized or something… But I couldn't blame him too much, if I'd seen me in the state that I'd been in yesterday, I'd probably be traumatized too. In fact, I was surprised that he'd even come back at all after everything I'd put him through in the past few days.

"I am," I responded to his question with an assuring tone, but the laugh I'd formed in an effort to properly convince him got lost behind a cough, which probably just made things worse than they already are. "There's no miracle cure, Jack, things like this take a while." I figured I'd be honest with him… I needed to regain his trust, and there was no way in hell I was gonna do that by lying and pretending that I was miraculously better.

"Oh…" His voice faded out and eventually dissipated, leaving me to believe that he did in fact believe that when my doctor told him I was better today, by better she'd meant infection free, cancer free, and all-in-all back to the normal Sam he'd known before he'd left for Charlotte… If only, right?

"It's fine, Jack; I don't want you worrying about me too much; I'm gonna be fine." I promised him, consciously shifting over in my bed in a silent indication that it was safe for him to move closer.

He picked up on my attempts almost instantly, and without another word, he shuffled his feet awkwardly closer towards my bed, his feet dragging with every step, his face showing prominent hesitation towards whether or not he was doing the right thing; but no matter how unsure he was, the only thing that truly mattered was that after a while, he finally ended up directly at my side, which is honestly where I really wanted him to be to begin with.

"I bought you a present." He recognized the swift dead end our previous conversation had fallen into and re-routed the subject almost instantly, speaking with a distinct pride behind his voice towards his accomplishment of gift-giving as he began to dig through his jeans pocket for said present.

"They had to like… disinfect it and crap before I bought it in here, but it probably needed to be disinfected anyway, so…" I watched as his hand submerged from the depths of his pants, dragging a shiny black iPod out along with it… "The nurses said that it would be fine for me to bring it."

My face instantly glowed with the revelation; the prospect of my favorite past-time of sitting in my bed criticizing music with Jack prominent in my mind, the pure nostalgia of it all making me feel instantly better on the spot.

"I put this weird band on here the other day, it's kind of like a combination of Insane Clown Posse and Kid Rock… It sucks pretty bad, should be pretty fun to listen to and make fun of." He nodded alongside his explanation, and I matched his expression, ready to take Jack and fall back into the habits of the simpler times in my life…

"Well then let's make our ears bleed…" I patted the open space on my mattress next to me, silently beckoning Jack to join me, watching as he jumped into action instantly, seemingly just as ready as I was to get this rolling… And then, just as suddenly, he paused; his legs half way over the protective bedrails before he stopped moving.

"Am I like… allowed to be next to you?" The fact that he even had to ask me that question made me roll my eyes with the ridiculousness of it all, the pure unfairness… But amidst all of these stupid rules and crazy isolation procedures, there was one thing that I'd become desperate for, and that was pure, unadulterated human contact; human contact that I've been deprived of for the past day or so… I practically pulled Jack forwards onto the bed next to me.

"Of course you are." I told him, watching as he got settled into the mattress, simultaneously inching my body closer to him until finally, we were laying shoulder-to-shoulder, squeezed onto the uncomfortably small bed like sardines; but alas, sardines that didn't exactly mind being so close to each other.

He looked at me hesitantly, but I ignored it, instead choosing to grab the small ear bud from besides my hip, plugging it into my ear in an effort to change the subject away from how I was feeling and instate that sense of normalcy into my life that I so desired.

In an instant, the sound of heavy drumming and distorted guitar solos filled my ears to a point of intense discomfort. Despite the fact that before all of this, Jack and I had developed a routine of listening to our music so loudly that our ears rang inside of our heads and our hearing suffered for a solid twenty-four hours, this wasn't before… this was… this was after. Today, the music didn't make me feel better; in fact, it simply made me feel if possible, even worse, as the noise went straight to my head, trapping itself between the bones of my skull in such a way that made my head spin to a point that I got physically dizzy. My eyes began to water instantly as my chest heaved uncomfortably and my stomach performed impressive flip-flops that made me feel like I was getting sea-sick or something… I guess that up until now, I'd positively forgotten just how sick I really was, everything had been going so well… Up until now, that is.

I closed my eyes and attempted to concentrate on absolutely anything other than this noise currently conducting itself like an orchestra of nails on a chalkboard across my head. I tried to go to my happy place, tried to physically meditate the pain straight out of my body, but nothing worked.

"Hey, are you okay?" Even after Jack shut the power of the iPod off, the pounding pain continued to overtake my entire body until it was impossible for me to even so much as see straight.

"Yeah," I slowly massaged my temples as I began a miniscule grin that actually came out as more of a grimace as I nodded my head using the most limited amount of movement that my body could physically tolerate as was possible.

"You just got really pale, that's all…" Concern laced across his face as he began to channel Brooke in his relentless interrogation of my health…

"I've just got a little bit of a headache, that's all." Jack shifted uncomfortably the instant I'd made this revelation. He sat up swiftly and suddenly, positioning his body so that he could fully look over me as if he was making a physical effort to literally pinpoint the exact microbes that were currently floating around inside of my bloodstream making me as sick as I was.

"Is this normal?" He asked my uncertainly, and I suddenly noticed that he had become very fidgety underneath all of the pressure of the possibilities of me getting sick again. "or is this… you know, from all of that stuff that happened yesterday?"

I grinned in an attempt to offer Jack the slightest bit of comfort in an otherwise very uncomfortable situation. The truth was, I wasn't exactly sure whether or not this was normal or if this was indeed part of that so-called 'stuff that happened yesterday', but even if I didn't actually know, that didn't mean I couldn't lie about it…

"It happens sometimes… The chemo, you know?" I shrugged my shoulders, watching as Jack lay back down flat on his back next to me, flexing his arm so that the back of his head was resting against his outstretched palms, staring up intently at the ceiling, becoming suddenly and silently very focused, very transfixed on the various bags of medications dangling on the pole over my head so that they strongly resembled some kind of fucked up little mobile like the ones you hung over baby's cribs when they slept…

He stared determinedly up at the ceiling while meanwhile, I stared determinedly over at him, watching as his face contorted into a look of confusion as he attempted to make sense out of the names and the colors and the necessity of all of the fluids currently being pumped into my veins.

There was a couple moments of silence in which the entire time, I just watched Jack's head as it twisted and turned in an effort to get a better look at everything as his eyes squinted and his neck subconsciously tilted upward in an attempt to read the fine print labeled across the small plastic bags… It served as a stark and sudden reminder; a reminder about how new Jack was to all of this, a reminder about how intimidating it all must have been to him, to come into the middle of this mess completely uninformed, unaware, and unexposed to the situation around him…

Jack had told me once before that he was sick of always being the kid left in the dark… that was about the same time that I told him that I was gonna make sure that he never had to be the kid left in the dark ever again. And I wasn't about to chose this moment to go back on my word… Not now, not ever.

"The whitish one is called Ceftazidimide." I spoke the only words that I could really think of saying right now, the only words that I really thought would simultaneously act to comfort both myself and Jack… There was a safety in knowledge, I knew that, and I was about to take advantage of it. "It's an antibiotic, they're using it just to make sure that I don't develop pneumonia from this infection I have… And that clear one over there, that's called Cipro… it's another antibiotic, I think it's just to treat whatever it is I actually have…"

"That's the stuff that's making you better?" He listened carefully, asking his questions as their moment came, and even though I didn't truly know the answer to that question, I answered it positively anyway.

"That's the stuff that's making me better."

"And what's that stuff over there… the one in the black bag?"

"Chemo," I replied to him with a small sigh and a simple explanation, but my single word was so powerful that he barely needed anything much beyond that, "They've gotta put it in that bag… Something about protecting it from UV rays or something like that… I don't' really know, I never really understood all that crap."

"Can you feel it at all?"

I turned my full attention over to him and shrugged my shoulders a little bit; I never really thought about that before. I guess now that I was actually concentrating on it, I guess that swooping feeling of a steady stream of cold overtaking my veins was prominent in my body… Or maybe in my heightened sensory state, I'd just imagined it; but whatever it was, it felt kind of weird.

"I guess… just it coming in a little bit." My eyes travelled downward unconsciously until they landed on the port catheter in my chest that was currently acting as the reservoir for all of the medication I'd just described. I found myself becoming slightly subconscious when I noticed Jack's eyes following my own, meeting mine at the same place in the center of my bony chest.

"Does it feel weird?"

"At first it did, I guess… I don't know, I don't even really notice it anymore. It's kind of become… a part of me, as weird as that might sound." I felt as my hand suddenly bent upward on its own accord, the muscles moving despite themselves, inching the appendage forwards slightly until my fingertips grazed gently across the circular lump precariously positioned underneath the skin of my chest.

My vision had become so tunnel-visioned and focused on the task in front of me, that I literally jumped a little bit the second I felt Jack's smooth hand brush across the back of my own. His palm brushed smoothly across the sensitive skin on the back of my hand; before I knew it, my hairs were standing on end as goose bumps began formulating in the pattern of a steady grin along the length of my body.

"Will it ever come out?"

"Yeah," I laughed confidently, "As soon as I get better." I nodded my head firmly along with my sentence, providing a sense of finality to my response, leaving Jack with a sense of definiteness towards the fact that I was indeed going to get better at all.

"When's that?"

I turned my head purposefully to look into his eyes; the expression I saw told me that he knew the answer to that, that he knew I had absolutely no idea when that would be, but if it was up to me, or if it was up to him, I would have been better before I was even sick…

"Soon,"

Our eyes met in such a fashion that directly linked our pupils, seemingly physically locking them into each other, forced to watch as our expressions fell into looks of faltering belief, that single notion, those unwavering what-if's powering through the both of our heads, despite my best assurances….

I was suddenly very, very appreciative towards the fact that I wasn't here alone. My heart was fluttering; I felt like a little ten year old girl on the elementary school playground, talking to her friends about her first crush again… Everything that I loved about Jack just seemed to overpower my brain with a sudden swoop that would have knocked me on my ass had I actually been standing… I'd never felt this way before, but I must say; I liked it.

I didn't even notice my body unconsciously leaning in closer and closer towards him until our lips were practically touching. But finally, with a mere millimeter of space left between us, I snapped back into reality; my brain focused, and my muscles regained their voluntary function, pulling me backwards and into focus before I could get myself into more trouble than I could ever possibly get in with Brooke being left in charge of it all.

I hadn't even noticed that I was unconsciously leaning in closer and closer towards Jack until our lips were practically touching; and with a millimeter left between us, I snapped back to focus and pulled back at the last second.

"What's wrong?" Jack asked as concern filled his eyes and he instantly became fearful that he'd done something wrong.

I shook my head gently in embarrassment and leaned back against the pillows. Despite the fact that I had previously found myself unable to tear my eyes away from Jack's, I was suddenly very determined to look anywhere but directly at him.

"I don't think that I'm allowed to kiss you." I mumbled under my breath so that the words were barely audible as my cheeks flushed dark red with their treacherous inability to hide just how embarrassed I actually was.

"Well… am I allowed to kiss you?" He asked, flashing me his typical lop-sided grin; the one that tugged painfully at my heartstrings every time, making it that much more difficult for me to flash him a sad smile as I shook my head slowly.

"I don't think so." I said, finally turning my face back up towards his. "It's part of my precautions… Besides, I've got the chemo in me."

The sly expression that had been previously stark across his features vanished instantly at the realization that all of this was beyond his typical playful teasing… He let out a brief sigh and for a hot second, I was afraid that he was going to positively declare his insistence that this was all just too much for him; that he couldn't deal with having a girlfriend, or even just a friend who was as sick as I was… It was all just too much; too much pressure, too much responsibility, and you know what, I understood that, really, I did… Or at least, I tried to convince myself that I did anyway.

That's probably why I was so shocked when instead of pushing me away; he actually pulled me in even closer, tilting my head towards him until his lips came in contact with my temple, lingering there for a moment until he shifted his shoulder and pulled my head into the crook of his neck where it fit with perfect contortion.

"We'll figure this out, Sam." He whispered into my ear, his voice so quiet that I'd almost missed it.

I made myself remarkably comfortable against Jack's bony shoulder, relaxing my body into his own as his hand made steady up and down motions along the length of my thin upper arm.

We fell into silence comfortably, leaving the air full with an unspoken bond lingering between us, so strong that we didn't even need any words to fill it in.

We found ourselves lost in such perfection that I should have known it was destined to get ruined eventually. A word to the wise; nothing as good as this is will ever last forever, no matter how much you want it to.

My phone rang shrilly, the extended pang of my text message ring tone cutting through our silence like a knife to the heart. I groaned with an exaggerated sigh, automatically shifting my body away from Jack so that I found myself shivering involuntarily at the sudden loss of body contact.

"Ignore it," Jack begged me, and I laughed at him, rolling my eyes as I reached towards the bedside table where I knew my phone to be somewhere within the depths of Brooke's bag.

"I can't," I explained to him, "It's probably Brooke, it I don't answer it she'll think I'm dead or something; and then she'll rush back here all hot and bothered and then you'll have to leave because Brooke is here and I'm only allowed one visitor at a time in this stupid room, and then the whole day will just be ruined anyway."

I pivoted my body uncomfortably, thrusting my hand into the bag so that the sudden movement rattled my chest painfully so that a harsh cough escaped from my throat before I even saw it coming, sending my entire body into fitful spasms that shuddered all the way up my arm so that the bag I was holding over.

I watched in slow motion as it toppled sideways, obviously landing in the most inconvenient position possible, face down on the tile, so that all of its contents scattered in every which direction, littering the floor with various knick-knacks, a few papers, and obviously, my cell phone, which slid across the floor, coming to rest just out of reach underneath my bed.

"I've got it." Jack spoke up so quickly that I'd barely had time to comprehend how much of a mess I'd just made before he pulled himself off of the bed and fell down to the floor on his hands and knees in an effort to collect the various accessories that Brooke had been storing in her over-sized purse.

He plucked things off of the floor effortlessly, tossing them half-hazard onto the bed just to have somewhere to collect them before he lunched underneath it in an attempt to reach the cell phone that still stored Brooke's unanswered text message somewhere inside of it.

My eyes drifted away from Jack just as he extended his arm as far as his muscles would possibly allow him, trailing over the scattered mess across my bed top in a vaguely interested attempt to identify just what it was until finally, I scanned across a specific piece of paper, doubled back, and focused and what I'd accurately believed was my own name staring back at me.

"I can't reach it," I barely heard Jack announce as I focused on the paper in front of me, picking it up in between my hands, glancing over the official-looking print in an attempt to identify just what it was.

The familiar logo of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital blazoned boldly back at me from the upper left corner of the page, below of which held a full-bodied, professionally constructed letter that I dove into with careful interest.

_Dear Ms. Davis, _

_ The THMH Department of Financial Services has found that you currently have an outstanding bill related to the treatment of Samantha Davis that occurred between December 15__th__ and December 19__th__, 2011 for $15,274._

My eyes widened at the impossibly large sum of money staring back at me, bolded and underlined to ensure that I hadn't in fact read it wrong…

But fifteen grand? No way, this couldn't be right; there was absolutely no way in hell.

I scanned across the provided list of charges; all of the treatments and medication I had received between the short time frame of last Thursday and today, each equipped with their own impossibly large price tag stamped conveniently right next to it, followed by a second paragraph right below it.

I read onward, feeling my eyes bug out further and further with every line that I read.

'_Further, our records have shown that your daughter Samantha Davis is currently not covered under any health insurance plan. Please note that should you require any financial assistance in regards to your medical bills, you may be qualified to apply for government aid. If you have any further questions, please contact our billing department at (710)-384-9803._

"What's that?"

I'd been so wrapped up reading this ridiculous letter that when Jack popped back up next to me, extending my newly fetched cell phone in his hand, I jumped a little bit from the shock of his sudden presence.

"I'm not sure." I sighed, finally forcing my eyes away from the note so that I could grab the phone, finally flipping it open to reveal that I had been accurate in my prediction of an awaiting text message from Brooke.

I stared down at her name staring back at me through the florescent glow of the screen and my mind began to race… Yup, I definitely wasn't sure what the hell was going on here, I wasn't sure at all, but apparently, there was somebody who did…

It looks like I might have a bone or two to pick with a certain Brooke Davis before this day was up.

* * *

**BROOKE**

Some days I honestly just wish that while I'm driving, somebody will just pull me over, take away my license, and lock me up for the rest of my life…

Why do you ask? Well I'll tell you exactly why…

I'd made the decision to head over to Clothes over Bro's early this morning with the God's honest intention of only staying there for an hour, maybe two, simply out of the kindness of my heart in an effort to help Millicent as she performed the tedious task of making sure that today's scheduled delivery of new clothing to stores all across the country had not only made it on time, but had also made it to the right place.

I'd arrived at the store around nine after a quick pit-stop for breakfast and coffee with Peyton with a firm plan in mind. My initial intentions were plain and simply; I would go to the store, do my thing, and then, if all went well, I'd be out the door just as quickly as I'd come in… After that, I would run home, grab some stuff for Sam and I, and then, finally, I'd grab some lunch at the drive thru of McDonalds or something, drive back to the hospital, and there you had it; a full day's worth of accomplishments completed by noon… 1:00 at the latest and that would be that…

I shouldn't have to tell you that things didn't actually work out that way… I should have known they wouldn't, my life never works out the way that should… You would think that I'd have learned my lesson by now…

I guess not.

The most important thing that you needed to know was this; despite my original intentions of being out of Clothes over Bro's by ten or eleven, by the time I actually did fix the mess that was delayed clothing shipments and a shit-ton of misplaced orders, and by the time everything finally had settled down long enough for me to actually feel comfortable with my ability to leave the store, it was already dark outside.

So I skipped my other plans; the trip home, well that wasn't gonna happen, meaning that I was gonna be stuck in the same clothes I'd been wearing since Saturday for at least one extra day, and lunch… well, considering it wasn't even lunch time anymore, I wouldn't be going to a McDonald's drive thru any time soon… Instead, the plan had shifted to me racing my ass back to the hospital thirty miles per hour over the actual speed limit which my friends, is why I needed somebody to pull my ass over, take away my license, and, subsequently, lock me up for the rest of my life.

Despite previous prediction of Sam cold and lonely, weeping for her displeasure towards my extended absence, when I returned, it turned out that she looked no worse for the wear… At least, she was no worse than how I'd left her, which was all I could really hope for, I guess…

She was sitting up in her bed, watching the TV on mute with a blank look on her face as she performed her prescribed breathing exercises with the tiny portable volumetric exerciser they'd given her yesterday in an effort to help increase her lung capacity or something like that so that she could ease the infection out of them quicker… I don't know, I didn't really understand it myself, but the doctors here had gotten us this far, I trusted them.

I paused at the doorway, feeling myself fall into a zoned-out daze as I watched her silently until finally, she noticed that I was standing there, pausing mid-breath with her cheeks puffed around her like a chipmunk.

"Sorry I'm late." I finally spoke, stepping further into the room as Sam released the tubing from her mouth and stared up at me open-mouthed and silent as if I'd just spoken to her in Japanese or something, "I just got caught up at the store, that's all."

I dropped my bag on the floor, slinking down into a chair where I twiddled my thumbs, feeling surprisingly awkward when Sam didn't say anything, just passively continued down her merry way with whatever it was that she was doing.

Her refusal to speak to me was starting to make me very suspicious. I couldn't help but wonder if she was mad at me or something, but now I was just trying to figure out exactly what she was mad at me about…

"Where's Jack?" I made small talk, easing into confrontation slowly.

"He had to leave," Sam spoke between breaths, "Visiting hours…"

She used as few words as she could and I could have sworn that I caught the slightest tone of accusation behind her voice.

"How are you feeling?" I asked for the sole purpose of getting her to speak again, trying to pin-point whether or not I'd made all of that up or if she really was mad at me.

"Pretty much the same,"

This time there was no missing it. There was definitely something different about the tone in her voice, but I had absolutely no idea what it was all about… But I sure as hell was going to find out.

I opened my mouth with the intentions of confronting Sam, of asking her what the hell was the matter with her, but before I even had the opportunity to, Sam spoke up once again, intercepting my words before they even had the opportunity to roll off of my tongue.

"You know, it's pretty crazy that I go through all of this crap and still feel exactly the same as I did before I had to do it… I mean, sometimes I even feel worse, you know? You'd think they'd do a better job with all of this considering all of the money these hospitals make. I mean, I probably wouldn't pay for this crap, especially not if it cost me $15,000."

She put an emphasis on her final word, and for a split second, I was even more confused than I had even been before.

I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, looking like a fish out of water as I searched for something to say in response to that… And then my eyes wandered away from Sam, drifting down to the papers sprawled out across her lap… Papers that looked awfully familiar.

Shit.

"You found the letter from the billing department." I sighed, making my words into a statement as opposed to a question.

"I found it," She nodded, "But I don't really know what it means." She lost her sense of accusation, her voice now falling into the sound of confusion. "What's going on, Brooke?"

I pulled my chair closer towards Sam, resting my elbows down on top of her bed in an effort to buy myself some more time in thinking up an excuse that could possibly make it seem like there was actually a reason for me to keep this relatively major detail away from her for so long.

"Sam, listen…" I started slowly, just to play it on the safe side. My mind scrambled and I stuttered out a couple incoherent babbles as I searched for the right words to say, but luckily, I didn't have to search for long…

"Sam?" A second voice interrupted my own; one that originated from neither mine, nor Sam's mouth but from the equally familiar mouth of Dr. Miller…

Consider me saved, I guess… for now.

"How's it going with the breathing exercises we gave you, are they working?" Sam gave me a quick look as to let me know that we weren't done talking about this yet, and I physically reeled backwards as if I had accepted my role reversal of her acting as the parent and me the child before she looked passed my shoulder to address the doctor still lingering in the doorway.

"Fine, there fine,"

"Listen, before I leave for the night, I just wanted to let you know that your blood work from this afternoon came back normal and your fever is fully broken… Make sure you get some rest tonight, we'll be able to move you out of here in the morning so you can get back to a normal room, okay?"

Sam nodded her head slowly, a small smirk emerging on the corners of her lips at the news, but I saw the hidden expression beyond the smile, the lingering sickness, the half a shade of extended paleness underneath her cheeks, the bordering threshold teetering back and forth between what was normal and what was a little bit too sickly for my liking…

I knew that Dr. Miller was in fact the doctor in this situation. I knew that she knew better than I did exactly what was going on inside of her body and exactly what her health had made her capable of, but not for nothing here, I was still her mother; I was still the one that saw beyond Sam's health, I was still the one that carried that instinct around at the base of my gut so that despite Dr. Miller standing here telling us Sam was fine, I still didn't like it… I didn't like it one bit.

"I'll see you in the morning, okay?" I gave a brief nod because that's all my brain could really force my body to do at the moment. Sam ended up being the one to actually speak up.

"Thanks," She said it was a perky confidence that I knew didn't match her current attitude; an idea that was confirmed the second the doctor doubled back out of the room, leaving Sam's body posture to waver and sink the second she disappeared.

"That's good news, huh?" I faked confidence as Sam managed to direct a smirk in my general direction.

"Hey, don't try to change the subject here," She scolded me as if I was a little kid who just got caught with their hand in a cookie jar.

"Sam, give me a minute here, okay? I'm still worried about you, you know; how about you let me know what's going on with you first?" She sighed and rolled her eyes at my over-bearing concerned mother card I was currently playing here before leaning back against her pillow.

"I feel fine, Brooke, I feel better… You heard what Dr. Miller said, I'm getting better, really." I stared deeply into her eyes for an extra couple of seconds, my eyes boring into hers in an effort to try and see what it was her brain was truly thinking…

I'm not sure why I was so determined to believe that Sam was so sick when everything around me was screaming at me that she wasn't. But the feeling wouldn't go away, that haze around my brain telling me that I knew better than Sam what was good for her or how she was truly feeling stuck around like a an annoying little sibling.

I didn't have an argument, I didn't have anything to say, anything to back my feeling because there was no physical proof around that wouldn't make me sound like a crazy, over-worried mom that nobody other than me could possibly understand… In fact, the only thing that I could do was sit back and wait for something to actually happen… And if there was one thing that I hated, it was waiting.

"Brooke, what's going on here? Please can you let me know, because there's a letter over there telling me that you owe this hospital $15,000 for my treatments because I don't have health insurance anymore… Is that true?"

She looked upset, she looked worried, and if there were two things that I definitely did not want Sam to be right now, it was upset and worried. So I attempted to give her a comforting smile, placing my hand gently down on her shoulder and taking a deep breath before deciding to tell her the truth, speaking as gently as I possibly could.

"I didn't want to tell you, Sam… I didn't want to stress you out any more than you already had to be."

"Tell me what?" The sound of confused disappointment in her voice was probably the worst part of being caught in this trap I was in.

"After I adopted you, Sam, the government sent me a letter that said that because you're not part of the state anymore, the government isn't funding your insurance plan anymore and that I would have to add you onto my own plan in order to get you insured." I explained carefully and slowly, speaking with the least descriptive words that I could manage.

"Okay… so, what… this is like… a mistake, or something? You're just waiting to get me onto your plan and then they'll take care of all of this?" The way she'd asked her question told me that she didn't believe her own words that came out of her mouth, she was just hoping that I would tell her just that.

"They told me that they won't cover you because you're already sick." I chose not to beat around the bush anymore; instead, I was very blunt with her, letting her know the situation for what it was.

"But… But how can they do that?" The pain in Sam's eyes at the injustice of it all killed me; I mean, what kind of fucked up world do we live in where not only do they give my daughter cancer, but they also take all of the treatment away from her.

"I'm trying to work it out Sam, really, but it might… It might take a little while longer than I originally thought it would."

"And until then?"

"Until then, I've got it covered and I don't want you to worry about it." The way she looked at me told me that she understood that by 'I've got it covered' I really meant that I'd be paying $15,000 every five days for God only knew how much longer out of my own pocket and I could tell that she wasn't very happy about it… she wasn't happy one bit.

"You can't do that, Brooke." She sighed, looking down at her folded legs, refusing to stare at me at all. "I can't ask you to spend that much money on me."

"You're not asking me Sam, it's not a question… It's just something that has to be done."

"But it's too much, Brooke."

"Hey, you listen to me," I stood up from my seat and lowered my body down on the end of Sam's bed, grabbing her gently by the shoulders and steering her eyes up to mine so that she knew that whatever it was I was about to say, I meant it. "I don't want you to worry about this anymore, Sam. You are my daughter now, and I will do absolutely anything that I have to in order to make sure that you get better. That is all I want you to focus on right now, okay? I just want you to concentrate on getting healthy again and you let me deal with all of those corporate bastards over there trying to get me give all of the money their wives spent on my clothes back to them."

She let out a small smile towards my comment that I matched until her miniature laugh dissipated into a harsh coughing fit that wiped the smile off instantaneously, concern etched into my expression as Sam's coughs faded away until a couple wheezing breaths and then, nothing.

"Are you okay?" I pushed myself off of the bed and hovered over Sam so that I could fully survey her body and see just what it was that was going on with her.

"Yeah, yeah… It just happens every once in a while… I am recovering from a chest infection you know, Brooke." She tried to laugh it off but that residual glimpse of pain on her face ruined it for me.

"Sam…" I started, but Sam cut me off before I could finish the sentence.

"Listen Brooke, I'm fine, I promise. You heard what Dr. Miller just said, I'm getting better, I'm feeling better, but I am still getting there…" She must have seen the ways my eyes narrowed untrustingly, or the look on my face that showed just how worried I still truly was… She knew me way to well for my own good.

"I'm just worried about you Sam…" I admitted to her, being truly honest with her for the first time all night. "After what I saw yesterday… Listen, I just never want to be that scared ever again. So if you're not feeling well, or something seems to be going wrong, you have to let me know, okay? Please Sam; I just want you to be honest with me."

"Like you were honest with me, keeping all of that stuff about the insurance from me?" She opened her defense mechanisms up instantly, trying to turn the subject away from herself and onto me as I sighed and took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to regain my bearings.

"That's different, Sam," My voice came out about an octave lower than it normally would, but it gradually raised in volume the more I spoke, more out of worry than anything. "I did that to protect you; this isn't about a stupid bill or some ridiculous insurance policy, this is your life we are talking about here Sam, and I am not willing to gamble anything as important as that is."

We had the briefest of stare downs and I watched as Sam's eyes filled with threatening tears that never actually fell. For a second, I thought I might have gotten to her, I thought I might have made her realize just how it made me feel to see her like this… I thought that maybe, she would actually open up to me and tell me just what it was I wanted to hear, but just w hen I'd gotten really confident that she was about to do just that, she said the exact opposite instead.

"Is that it?"

"Sam…" I tried, but I didn't know what else to say, I didn't know what else I could say, what else I could do to break through that tightly sealed barricade that always prevented her from ever truly opening up to me in the way that I wished she would.

"I'm just tired Brooke, I kind of want to go to bed, okay?"

"Yeah…" I sighed, backing down because I wasn't about to deny a sick girl her right to get the sleep I knew she needed, no matter whether or not she was actually lying to me. Besides, it probably was for the best that I left this one be… for now.

"I'll feel better in the morning, don't worry yourself so much, Brooke." She told me quickly before flipping over onto her other side so that her back was facing me, falling silent instantaneously.

I lingered briefly against Sam's mattress before standing up, lifting the blankets slightly higher above her shoulders, tucking them tightly underneath her body before hovering for an extra moment or two…

"You know that's what I'm here for, Sam." I whispered in response to her comment, knowing full well that she'd heard every word I said as I took a step backwards and sunk into my awaiting chair, strategically positioned and stocked with all of the tools that I needed in order to keep my eyes on Sam throughout the entirety of the night.

With my eyes wide, I refused to stray from my post, staring unwaveringly as the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes eventually to hours… I knew that I shouldn't be thinking like this, I shouldn't be so negative, but I couldn't help it, I couldn't help the fear that flooded through my veins, the worry that made me physically shudder under the pressure about what the hell it was that we could ever possibly do to get ourselves out of this mess…

These relentless thoughts circulated through my mind, dissipated across every vein, capillary, and organ so that it filtered and flushed inside of me like a relentless dose of caffeine, ensuring that sleep wasn't going to be so much as an option tonight, ensuring that I was going to remain right here where I belonged well into day break; spending close watch at Sam's sleeping bedside for yet another restless night…

…I mean, what's one out of a million anyway, right?


	38. Fight Off Your Demons

**Okay, just one thing real quick that I've gotta tell you before I let you all go on your merry ways. Just a heads up this chapter is strictly here for "setting the stage purposes only" as my creative writing professor would say, so I'm just using it to lay down the next couple of chapters ahead. With that being said, read on and I hope you enjoy!  
**

Chapter 38: Fight Off Your Demons

**Tuesday, December 20****th****, 2011**

**HALEY**

People always assume the opposite of me, but the truth is I haven't exactly led an easy life; in fact, on the contrary, I've lived far from it.

Most people have these visions, these false characterizations of me being a strong, sane, stable person; the peace keeper here, the arbitrator there, but the truth is, none of these people were ever observant enough to see through me for who I really was… the person busting at the seams, slowly cracking under the pressure, rapidly making me feel more and more like a crazy person with each passing day.

The fact of the matter is, what most people don't realize about me, is that as Sam gets sicker, I get sicker too; but of course, it's a different kind of sick… the kind of sick that people don't normally consider sick, the kind of sick that society judges you for succumbing to, the kind of sick that eats you up from the inside out… the kind of sick that that makes you feel just as crazy as you know you are.

I'd seen Sam sick before. I'd seen Sam tired and drained from her illness, I'd seen her throw her very guts up until she was barely able to sit up from the chemo running rampant inside of her body, and then, on Saturday, I saw something that I'd never seen before… I saw Sam pale, stumble, and then, finally, collapse underneath the pressure of her life catching up to her all at once in a manner that she just finally couldn't handle anymore.

And when I saw Sam was struggling to get a grasp on life, well then that made me lose all hope for the rest of us too.

I guess that's the briefest of summaries as to everything that was racing through my mind on the drive to Jamie's school in order to pick him up… 3 ½ deep, philosophical minutes to occupy my mind as I parked my car amongst the other fake, almost robotic mothers picking their kids up from school too…

I displayed my best happy expression prominently across my face, playing on my usual disguise of everything being fine as usual as I waved briefly to the same parents I saw every day, thanked Rosie, the crossing guard, who placed oncoming traffic to a dead halt to allow me to cross the street carefully even though part of me wished she'd just let the cars hit me, and finally, stood with my feet apart to balance my weight and my arms crossed firmly against my chest as I stood up on my tip-toes and scanned across the heads amongst the sea of little kids in search of my own.

"Hi Mamma," I heard my son's familiar voice call to me in greeting as his little arms instinctively wrapped themselves around my waist.

"Hey there Jimmy-Jam," I spoke without falter, keeping up with my façade of cool composure as I returned the hug… I guess maybe, if he was just a little bit older, he would have noticed that my arms didn't quite clasp around him as tightly as they normally would or that the enthusiasm in my voice just wasn't quite there… but not today; today I was safe; today I knew that my disguise would be okay for at least one more day.

"Mamma, Chuck wants to know if he can come over to play at our house today."

I let out an audible sigh of exhaustion at Jamie's request and pulled the boy a little bit tighter into my body so that he couldn't see the matching look of defeat prominent across my face. I wasn't in the mood… No, I didn't have the energy to deal with somebody in my house today… especially if that somebody was Chuck.

"Maybe another time Jamie," I told him, without including my secret thought that by another time, I meant that if he was lucky, maybe it could be sometime next year.

"But momma…" The boy whined and his voice instantly rang straight through my head, triggering an involuntary aggressive response that slipped from my mouth before I had time to control it.

"Jamie!" I snapped, watching as the boy stood to attention instantly, stiff with fear at the acknowledgment of me raising my voice to him. He stepped back away from me, maintaining a careful distance just in case I started to get violent, eyes wide, face blanch, and features slackened as he looked up at me waiting to be delivered his punishment, afraid that he was about to get in trouble just because he wanted to be a normal kid for once.

I sighed in recognition of my mistake, massaging my forehead gently with my fingers in an effort to will away the pounding currently slamming through my skull like a deep, aching metronome, relentless in counting out every beat that passed through.

"I'm sorry Jamie," I sighed, pulling him back towards me, holding him tightly so that I was almost afraid of hurting him. "It's just that… I told Aunt Brooke that we could go visit her and Sam today. I was thinking that maybe after you eat something and do a little bit of homework, we could head over to the hospital and see them."

"Yeah!" His face brightened again, all previous discrepancies between the two of us instantly forgotten. I wished that I could share his enthusiasm, really I did, but I couldn't… How could I when I was taking him to the hospital to expose him to the realities of Sam's sudden turn for the worse…

The thing was, when I used to look at Sam, it used to fill me with so much hope; hope that I used to fuel my sanity, hope that I used to push me forward, inspire me to keep going… The idea was, that if Sam could keep going, then there was no reason that I couldn't too.

I guess that I'd been so convinced that there was no plausible reason that Sam wouldn't get better that when something came around to remind me of the possibility that she wouldn't, I got scared. I was scared of what would happen to us, scared of what would happen to me, scared of what would happen to Brooke if Sam went...

And here's where all of that left me; stuck in this impossible cycle of depression; a cycle that I hadn't found myself stuck in for a very, very long time… a solid five years to be exact.

The last time it happened, I was a freshman in college.

When I was 18, my father died a week after my first semester of school started. I called him because I'd forgotten to buy notebooks. Imagine that, me, Haley James Scott; tutor girl, valedictorian, bonafide geek, getting so worked up about going to college that I forgot to buy freaking notebooks.

I was brand new to the school; I didn't know anybody, I didn't know where to go, what to do, who to ask; and then I called my dad and he told me not to panic, everything would be fine, he would go to the store, pick me up some notebooks, and overnight them straight to my dorm, they'd be there for me when I woke up for class in the morning.

He went to Target and had a massive heart attack right in the middle of the 5th aisle. There were three doctors within a two-aisle radius of him, but it didn't matter, he just dropped; dead before he'd even hit the ground.

I had to take an entire month off of school before I could actually drag myself out of my bed long enough to put together a functional thought. For a while, I'd considered not even going back… I mean, what the hell is the point of going back anyway, none of it mattered; who cares if you went to the best university, graduated top of your class and got a high paying job as a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO, it's not gonna last; in fact, it would barely begin before you had time to make any kind of lasting accomplishment because you were just gonna die soon anyway…

But I was lucky; I had my family; my mom, my brothers and sisters, and most importantly, I had Nathan and my son who acted as my crutches until finally, I could walk on my own two feet again.

After two weeks of my extended absence, they'd given away my dorm room with the idea in mind that I was never coming back after the blow I'd just been dealt with… But I had come back, and after a few days fighting with resident life, a junior girl who lived up the hall from me was finally nice enough to turn her single room into a forced double, just to do me a favor.

Her name was Darcie Golden. A pre-law student who took a line drive to the back of the head at one of her T-ball games when she was five years, blinding her permanently…

While I was busy hoarding myself into my room day in and day out; barely going to class, barely eating, barely even sleeping, just sort of… existing, she was busy struggling with all of the people telling her that she could never do anything that she wanted simply because she wasn't like everybody else.

She was the only one who ever managed to get anywhere with me, the only one who would actually care enough to sit me down, talk to me, and actually make me feel better at the same time; and then, suddenly one day, I just kind of… woke up; and the world just seemed a little bit better, the weight on my shoulders felt a little bit lighter.

And that was the day that I learned to see from somebody who couldn't… I guess now I just have to find somebody else who could do that for me again.

"Jamie come on, we've gotta go." I beckoned to my son, eager to get him home just so I could get him right back out the door just as fast. I was at the point where I would positively drag him, all the way to the hospital if I had to just so that I could physically make sure that Sam and Brooke were still fine, just so I could ease my frantic mind for at least a little while until this torturous cycle of frenzied panic repeated all over again.

"But mom can we stay for a little while just so that I can play on the playground with Dave and Mike?" He asked, literally jogging as I dragged him by the hand behind me just so he could keep up with my fast pace and giant steps.

"No Jamie, come on, we have to go quick because they only let us visit Sam and Aunt Brooke until 5 and then we get kicked out so come on." I jerked at his arm harder, easily pulling the child, who was easily a mere quarter of my weight, but I quickly learned that he wasn't going down without a fight.

"But mom!" He dug his heels firmly into the ground, desperate to resist my probably painful tugging and pulling on his sensitive shoulder joint. "What if I stay here and play and you can pick me up on the way to see Sam and Aunt Brooke."

I stopped walking so suddenly that Jamie physically walked right into my back, unable to process my sudden stand-still quick enough stop himself.

I turned around slowly and threateningly, hovering over Jamie so that my shadow overcame his blanched, shuddering form; nervous underneath my uncharacteristically stern tone, knowing in a flat instant that he better stop trying to put up a fight with me now because I was no longer messing around here.

"No Jamie, you can't just stay here. Do you have any idea what could happen to you if I left you out here all by yourself?" I could hear my voice growing steadily louder and louder as my grip around Jamie's forearm strengthened so tight that I wouldn't be surprised if some concerned parent around me was placing a call to Child Protective Services as we speak.

"What if you get lost, Jamie? What if you get stolen?" I screamed and ranted and raved, trying to embed concepts into his mind that were way too young for him to understand, concepts that I knew he would never be able to connect with why he couldn't just stay and play with his friends, but I didn't care. "For God's sake Jamie, what if I leave you alone and you get sick like Sam?"

I froze suddenly, my eyes widening at the shock of what had just come out my mouth as I released the grip I had on Jamie's arm and backed away slowly, watching my son as he cringed and tried to shrink himself into as small a ball as he could make for fear that I was just going to keep yelling at him.

"I'm sorry Jamie," I sighed in defeat, my shoulders sinking as my face scrunched and fell with the realization that I had just allowed myself to completely lose control in such a destructive manner. "I'm just worried about Sam honey. I didn't mean to take it out on you."

"Is Sam okay, momma?" He silently accepted my apology in the form of showing his concern towards me by inching a bit closer rather than maintaining his distance.

"Yeah Jamie," I sighed, upset with myself that I had upset Jamie to a point that he was worried more than he ever should be at this point in his life. "You know me, I just worry too much, that's all."

I placed a much gentler hand on his shoulder and guided him forwards towards my car, pleased when he chose to follow me compliantly this time.

I relaxed my hand around the ball of Jamie's shoulder. I always liked picking him up from school because the constant was something I really needed to hang onto. Same time everyday; same kids, same place, same everything really…

And when my life is changing faster than I could ever keep up with, it's important to have a constant like that in your life, because when everything else starts going to complete hell, and there's something to go back on, it's easier for me to convince myself that I'm just fine…

Really… I'm just fine.

* * *

**SAM**

Today I had woken up with the expectation of it being a good day… which is probably why I should have known from the start that it was all gonna blow up in my face and go straight to hell.

Physically speaking, I was feeling better… I was better. And on top of all of that, Dr. Miller's last night promise to me yesterday, the one about moving me out of isolation and back into my old room was ultimately lived up to, Jack had sent me a text with the assurance of paying me another visit, and most importantly, today was my last day of chemotherapy for the next week or two.

Sounds perfect, right? I mean, with this sudden streak of well-being that I've got going for me, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, I'll tell you exactly what could go wrong.

It all started about an hour into my chemo. I'd looked up strictly by chance and noticed the familiar tangle of Jack's oversized curly hair bobbing up and down in time with his steps as he opened my bedroom door and strode inside casually.

For a split second, I felt my heart positively lighten, my face glow bright, and my breath positively hitched in my throat, just like it always did when I was around Jack… but like I said, it was only for a second…

He didn't even have to open his mouth and explain himself before I felt the smile fading from my face.

His backpack, stuffed to such capacity that the seams were busting under the pressure, was draped across his shoulders so that the black material contrasted horribly against the frown so prominent across his face that I knew in an instant what his true intentions of this particular visit were all along.

"You're leaving…" I intercepted the opportunity for an explanation before Jack could even open his mouth, because I didn't need him to; every word that I knew he had to say was written prominently across his face anyway.

He paused for a moment, his brief lapse of silence telling me everything I needed to know so that I knew he couldn't have explained it better with actual words even though ultimately, he chose to anyway… I guess he thought he owed me that or something, a proper reasoning; and even though secretly I agreed, I didn't say anything because I knew how selfish it sounded; and the lesson of humility was one of my most important ones of these past few months.

"My foster mom called me yesterday…" He didn't even bother to point out how quickly I'd assumed the worst in him leaving; instead, he fully acknowledged how correct I'd been the whole time, "Her parents are coming up tomorrow for this weird little Christmas dinner thing and it's just that I've never met them before so she kind of wants me to be there… She got me a 3:00 train ticket back to Charlotte for today."

He dropped his head and became suddenly very interested in the patterns stamped across his shoes in an effort to keep from having to look up at me and identify the reaction written prominently across my face.

I watched as his feet shuffled awkwardly from his position in between the doorway; his mind was currently racing so fast that I could see his eyes twitching under the pressure; he was afraid to come any further into my room; afraid that if he grew too close and got too attached, it would just make it harder for him to leave when that time finally came, but at the same time, I knew there was nothing he wanted more than to take me up in his arms and tell me everything was going to be okay… I mean, I knew that because that's exactly how I was currently feeling myself.

I guess this is just why me and Jack were made for each other.

"When will I see you again?" I tried not to sound like I was accusing him of leaving to begin with through my question, because the reality was, I knew that this day was coming, and I knew that it was coming sooner than I ever would have liked… for example, today. Jack had a life to life; I knew that, and he knew that too, and just because my life had suddenly come to a grinding stand-still, it doesn't mean that everybody else's had too, so I asked him about his return before he even actually left, because in the long run, it was when I was going to see him again that really mattered anyway.

"Soon," He spoke with a sharp snapping of attention, trying to back his words with a confident posture to boot. "I mean, my foster parents will probably make me go back to school for a couple of weeks after winter break ends, but I have a feeling that I'll be able to sneak away and visit you after a while, you know?"

"Yeah… you can come up a weekend…" I smiled slowly up at him as I finished his sentence, but there was an air of displeasure towards how long it would be until that happened; and how short a time period it would be when I actually saw him again… This sucked.

I guess this is just kind of what we did; I mean, we'd done it the last time Jack had left; made these elaborate plans to meet up, to see each other again, and look where that one got us; it was months before we were actually able to make anything happen… The problem was that this time, time wasn't exactly on my side here, and Jack meant way too much for me than to let mileage fizzle between the connection we shared until he was nothing more than another face in the crowd…

"Forget that, I could come for the whole week… I mean, I don't really like school all that much anyway." Jack shrugged with a smirk, pleased by the slyness of the potential rebelliousness prominent in his statement threatening to ditch school… yeah right Jack, skipping school for an entire week to visit your cancer-stricken girlfriend… yeah, real rebellious.

But still, I offered him a smile of appreciation in response to his statement just so that he knew how much it meant to me. And besides, I could never be truly upset when Jack was around me; in fact, the only reason there was that feeling of deep disappointment slowly creeping up my spine right now was because of the potential of him soon being gone.

"Don't get too excited there stud," I cracked a joke in the form of a defense mechanism attempting to hide the true sadness actually taking over my brain right now, "I don't want you to worry about me too much, I'll be fine right here. You need to worry about yourself too, okay? Go to school, do your thing in Charlotte, and I'll be right here whenever you have time to come back. Trust me; I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."

"I'll miss you." He didn't' hesitate to profess the same thought that had been going through my brain ever since the start of his visit, but I did notice that his voice dropped a few octaves as he spoke and his cheeks flushed red under his downturned gaze to the point that his face almost looked like it was glowing.

"I'll miss you too, Jack."

He stepped a couple of paces closer to me, leaned forward, and wrapped me into a hug from underneath my arms so tightly that I was physically lifted upward, my ass lifting slightly off of the mattress underneath me.

I relaxed into his body and immediately returned the gesture; positioning my muscles in such a way that they contorted perfectly into his every joint, leaving me with the idea that I would have totally been okay staying in this position for the rest of my life.

But I knew it couldn't last forever. I knew that nothing this good could ever last forever, and I also knew that Jack knew that too.

We were both painfully reminded of that fact when he finally was forced to let go of my body, stepping away from me so that his motions created a miniscule wind that blew towards my general direction and filtered uncomfortably through my body, resulting in a voluntary shudder that overtook me with every step backwards that Jack took.

"I'll call you when I get back to Charlotte." He promised as he began playing with his hands, suddenly much more fidgety now that his inevitable departure was looming closer and closer and he started to run out of means to stall it any longer.

"Okay," I nodded feebly, watching as he swayed hesitantly on his feet for a couple more seconds before finally permitting them to move backwards with tiny, forced steps.

"I guess I'll see you later than."

"Yeah… See you later." I sighed, refusing to tear my eyes away from the sight of his feet as they continued to shuffle backwards; roll stepping closer and closer to the door with every step that he took.

"Bye Brooke," He dismissed himself politely from the surprisingly quiet Brooke, waving to her from behind the door frame.

"I'll see you soon Jack," She responded with a polite wave that followed Jack out of the door, where he finally disappeared behind it.

I stared at the wooden door panel for several seconds as it slowly inched closed on its own accord and the image of Jack walking slowly down the hallway finally faded away before disappearing completely out of sight.

"Are you okay?" Brooke asked after a couple of minutes of pure silence passed… I guess she was probably worried about me or something; probably afraid that Jack's departure would leave me fallen into an endless trap of despair; a deep, dark depression that would have ultimately lead to some kind of nervous breakdown or something if I didn't up and talk about it soon…

"I'm fine." Unfortunately for Brooke, I just wasn't quite in the mood to talk about it right now. In fact, I wasn't quite in the mood to talk about much of anything right now.

"Listen Sam, I know it sucks when somebody you really like has to leave," I knew the second she opened her mouth that she was talking about Julian; I could still hear the lingering pain trapped deep behind her voice, still prominent from Julian's recent departure, "But you know, his next visit will come before you know it."

"I know," I sighed, still determined to speak with as little words as I could manage, hoping that Brooke would eventually get the hint that I just didn't really feel like talking right now.

In all fairness to her, I knew that she knew exactly how I was feeling right now. I knew that if one person in this entire world knew exactly how I was feeling right now, it was her. I mean, I'd lost Jack in the time I needed him the most, and Brooke had lost Julian in the time that I knew she needed him the most… In fact, I think I'd go as far to say that I was almost better off than Brooke, because at least Jack and I had left in mutual agreement and under good terms. Brooke and Julian… well, I didn't exactly know what Brooke and Julian were right now, mainly because I knew that Brooke didn't like to talk about it. I could see it in her eyes, the pain that it caused every time his name was mentioned…

I snuck quick, tiny glances over at Brooke, trying to read her expression and see what she was thinking while at the same time, hoping she wouldn't pick up on it and falsely assume I wanted to talk about what had just happened.

Her eyes looked empty; I was having a hard time distinguishing her exact thought processes, but I was willing to bet a large sum of money that it had something to do with Julian…

Another shudder involuntarily spread across my body; a sudden reminder of how apt Brooke and I were to abandonment. It's just the type of people we are, I guess; we were born to find somebody, fall in love, get attached, and then lose them; all in one, giant boom.

Take Jack for instance; I was willing to bet a million dollars that if Jack hadn't been around these past few days, sitting with me, holding my hand and making sure that I knew that he believed that I was going to get better, there was no way in hell I would have recovered as fast as I did. In fact, I probably would have been freaking dead by now for all I knew.

There I was; sick, dying, stuck in isolation and downright miserable… and then Jack shows up and now I'm better, healthy again… well, as healthy as I could be… I mean, I'd even got my doctors talking to me about letting me go home by the end of the day…

Jack did all of that.

Sure, you could argue it was me; me who fought off the infection, me that convinced my doctors I was well enough to be sent home, but no, I knew for a fact that it wasn't… it was him.

And then there was Brooke; the single mother of a random teenager she'd simply taken in from off the streets out of the mere kindness of her heart until that random teenager unexpectedly gets a cancer diagnosis and throws her life into a tailspin… I knew that it was Julian who'd gotten her through those initial days of the harrowing unknown. It was Julian that motivated her to keep going until I got better… It was all Julian…

And now look at us; Jack's gone, Julian's gone, and who knows when… or if either of them is ever coming back.

I've learned to accept the fact that it's simply in our genes; wrapped up into every single tissue, every cell in our body's so that it's not a question, it's an absolutely certainty that eventually, I'm just gonna end up alone.

I don't know why I even bother anymore; why I keep on fighting, I mean what's it all for… to live? Yeah, great, to live and then go right back to everybody abandoning me. First Julian, who's been gone an entire week and who I haven't received so much as a phone call from since Friday, and then Jack, who just got dragged four hours away by the parents who weren't even really his parents…

So far in my life, I have lost absolutely everybody who has ever mattered to me, so who's to say that Brooke isn't next, right? Which just brings me right back to my initial question; what the hell is the point?

Besides, it's true what they say anyway; when we die, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you're just gonna die alone. So here's some advice; you better just go ahead and accept this fact for what it actually is, and then, just be ready for when it actually happens.

* * *

**BROOKE**

This day started off as being pretty weird, and you know what, it's pretty much continued that pattern ever since.

I guess it all started after Jack left; at least, that's when I noticed that Sam had begun her rapid, downward plunge… mainly because Sam, in her typical fashion, has refused to speak a single word to me since then.

I couldn't really blame her too much, I guess; we were one in the same, Sam and I, as badly as I felt for poor Sam about that one… That's probably why we've been able to keep up with each other for so long now.

Did I mention that we were also both some of the two biggest pessimists that the world has ever seen?

There were a few surprises up all of our sleeves today; some unexpected, others not so much, but I can tell you this; if there was one surprise I definitely was not expecting, it came in the form of a not-so-expected visit from Dr. Miller that came in just as the sun began setting behind our new room on the 6th floor oncology unit of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital.

"We're going to send Sam home tonight."

I think it's safe to say that both Sam's eyes, and my own, probably bugged straight out of our own heads. Of course, I'm willing to bet that it was for two totally different reasons.

I don't think it was humanly possible for Sam to hear better news. The fact was, despite a periodic back and forth trip to the hospital for a round of chemotherapy a day, Sam was supposed to get home on Saturday… which just means that she's probably been itching to get out of here even sine before she was admitted.

"Really?" Sam and I spoke the exact same word at the exact same moment, but the starkly different tone in our voices were prominent enough to express our vastly different views towards the matter at hand here.

Sam snuck me a quick glance, telling me that she too, noticed the same thing that I had and was silently begging me not to ruin this opportunity for freedom that she'd finally found… But I wasn't dealing with any of her attitude right now. Sam being healthy was much more important to me than Sam being pissed at me, so excuse me, but I didn't just sit in a panic for more than half a week, freaking out that my daughter was dying only to have her be sent home way before I knew she was ready for it… And absolutely nothing that her doctors, who clearly didn't know nearly as much about what was best for Sam's health as I did, told me was going to change my mind.

"Dr. Miller… uh… are you sure that Sam's ready to go home already?" I asked, watching through the corner of my eye as Sam straightened herself up in bed and put her best healthy face forward in an effort to contradict absolutely everything I'd just said, simultaneously initiating a silent battle of will between the two of us.

"Well, her fever has been broken for more than 24 hours now, and her leukocyte counts have been normal since Sunday night so we are feeling a lot more comfortable continuing her remaining chemotherapy treatments on the outpatient basis we planned on before we took that little… detour. Of course, you should still take extra precautions while she's at home because her immune system is still recovering from the infection, but nothing indicates to us that there is any reason for Sam to be unable to continue her treatments outside of the hospital."

Her argument came with a list of very persuasive premises, but still, I wasn't so sure… and I was willing to express that uncertainty until either Dr. Miller had convinced me that this indeed would be the right decision to make, or, the more likely scenario, of me fighting hand and foot in overturning the ruling in Sam's bid for freedom.

"I… uh… I'm not so sure." I think the skepticism in my voice was pretty prominent in expressing my true belief of the scenario, but Sam had other plans in her mind; plans that she was going to make sure were heard to their full potential before I had the opportunity to override them.

"I'm fine, really, I'll be fine. I don't even feel sick anymore, I swear." She begged and pleaded, directing her words towards me rather than towards the doctor, knowing full-well that it wasn't Dr. Miller that she had to convince… it was me.

"Brooke, I know we had a pretty big scare the other day with Sam's health, and I know that I gave you a lot of very overwhelming information about the possibilities of that infection…" She started carefully, trying to pretend as if she actually understood exactly how I felt the moment she told me that Sam was dying; but I knew there was no way she did… there was no way she could. "But that information proved to be a stark overstatement; the infection was much less severe than we originally thought, and now that it has cleared out of her system entirely, there would be no reason to keep her here other than to monitor her, which we could do just as easily with her from home."

I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times so that I roughly resembled a fish stuck out of water, but I couldn't find anything else I could say; I couldn't come up with any valid argument as to why Sam shouldn't be released other than the fact that I was her mother, and the gut instinct inside me told me so…

But I stayed quiet too long, and the doctor eventually took my silence as a form of submission towards the knowledge that she knew better than I did about what was best for Sam, and instead of continuing the argument, she turned her face down towards the stack of papers in her hands, scribbling rapidly across them.

"I'm going to prescribe you a basic cocktail of antibiotics, Sam." She spoke as she wrote, casually tearing page after page off of her prescription pad, piling the loose papers into a substantial tower on Sam's bedside table. I eyed it as it continued growing larger and larger… If Dr. Miller was trying to convince me that Sam would be just fine, it probably would have been better for her not to prescribe an entire pharmacy's worth of pills to her, I'm just sayin'…

"Here you go, Brooke." She handed me the mass pile of prescriptions followed immediately by an equally as large stack of papers that I recognized instantly as the familiar discharge forms by which my signature was the only thing left to determine Sam's freedom.

I flipped all the way to the back of the papers where I knew all of the thick lines and bolded X's were, beckoning for my signature.

I don't know why this was all so difficult for me; why my hand was shaking or why sweat had just started teeming out of the pores across my forehead… No, never mind, I understood completely; I knew exactly why this was so difficult for me; it was because I'd just spent the last four days sitting up at Sam's bedside, just wondering whether or not she would die… So sure, I guess that when I thought about it that way, I did understand why I was so hesitant. What I couldn't understand was why Sam and Dr. Miller weren't as skeptical about all of this as I was…

Maybe it was because Dr. Miller had the opportunity to filter in and out of Sam's room only periodically, never having to linger for more than a few minutes at a time on just how sick Sam really was; or maybe it was because Sam had lost all of her memories of these past couple of days through her haze of drugs and sickness, but whatever it was, it had obviously not had the same impact on them as it had on me… they obviously hadn't been as effected by all of this as I had.

I was starting to think that maybe I was the only one going crazy over here.

My pen hovered with a shuddering force over the papers for much longer than was actually necessary. I could feel Sam staring intensely, boring a hole through the back of my head as her breaths came out heavily, struggling to control them as she waited to see what it was I was going to do.

The time went in slow motion as I finally sighed, lowered the pen into the paper, and stuck the tip into the sheet for a couple more lingering seconds before I finally scribbled a slow, sloppy _Brooke P. Davis_ across the line at the bottom of the page.

"Great," Dr. Miller spoke as if she hadn't just noticed that I'd spent about five times the normal amount of time it took to sign a damn piece of paper. "I'll get you set up; hopefully we'll be able to get you out of here in the next couple of hours."

I sighed and handed the papers back over, wondering exactly what it was that I just did, wondering, as I watched Dr. Miller turn out the door, carrying the release form with my John Hancock shimmering with fresh ink straight into the hallway, what the hell it was that I'd just gotten myself into…

And that's exactly how I ended up here; about an hour later, held up inside of my car, stiff as a board in pure fear at what the trek that I was about to make might lead to for not only me, but for Sam too.

I watched as Sam nodded off slowly from her position in the passenger seat, leaving me to barely pay any attention to anything else but her as I pulled out of the parking garage of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, drove 20 minutes out of the way only to pick up nearly $500 worth of prescriptions for Sam, and finally, travelled back the same way I'd just came towards home.

And about half way into the journey, at about the same time that Sam fell asleep, leaving me nervously sneaking glances towards her every couple of seconds or so just to make sure that she was still breathing, something very strange happened; it started to snow.

I hate the snow.

No, literally, every single time a rare snow shower managed to hover over the North Carolina landscape, blanketing the grass, the trees, the streets, the buildings… everything with a thin layer of thick, white dust, I couldn't help but think about how much I couldn't wait for the sun to come back out and melt it all away…

And trust me, this time was no different.

In fact, I'd have to say that if anything, this time was even more intense than the others, it was much more important, much more impactful, because this time, the sun had much more to melt than the obnoxious snow on the ground; it also had to melt away this strange feeling that was currently burrowing deep inside of my body, it had to melt away this continued frenzy of panic constantly hovering over me; and then, only after all of that was said and done, maybe I would finally be able to regain a little bit of my sense of control in this world.

This thought took complete control over my mind for a long time until finally, I pulled into my driveway, threw the car in park, and sunk down deep into the cushions of my seat for an extra minute or two until I finally felt confident enough to turn the keys in the ignition and shut the car off.

I turned towards Sam, watching her for a few more moments as she remained fast asleep in her chair; mouth wide open and chest moving up and down with the ease of sleep-controlled breathing.

"Sam," I gave her a light little nudge with my hand, but she didn't so much as move an inch.

"Sam!" I questioned her louder, this time, full-on slapping her in the shoulder with a much more vigorous force so that she finally responded to me, grunting out her expression of anger towards my attempt of awakening her briefly before she simply rolled over onto her other side and fell right back into her deep cloud of sleep.

I sighed, accepting defeat as I threw my door open and scrambled out of the driver's seat, where I walked towards Sam's side of the car, threw open the passenger's side door, and fully prepared to physically lift Sam out of the car and into the house if I had to.

"Ugh… Brooke, what are you doing?" She questioned my intentions with a sleepy haze just as I managed to get a good grip underneath her knees and lift her easily from the car and onto her feet.

"I'm taking you inside; come on, we're home." I guided her with slow, precise movements up the path, refusing to remove the protective arm I had across her shoulder as she took miniscule steps forward. I tried to believe that it was just her exhaustion slowing our movements, and honestly, maybe that's exactly what it was, but who knew; there was still that continuing over-worried mom issue screaming at me that it was something else; something much more serious.

I practically carried her, tucking her body firmly underneath my arms as I unlocked the front door, pushed it open, and virtually dragged Sam inside.

"Wanna just go straight to bed?" I asked her, but I didn't wait for her response before I instantly started pulling her towards the direction of her bedroom.

"Mmmm…" She mumbled, and even though I wasn't exactly sure whether that was a positive response or a negative one, I took it as a confirmation and laid her down into her bed before pulling the covers high above her shoulders without even taking her shoes off first.

"Sleep Sam," I whispered to her, running my palm across the top of her head, "I'll be here when you wake up."

I stood upright from my hovered position over Sam's bed, lingering for only a moment or two longer before I backed up towards the door, my eyes focused on Sam the entire time as I paused only briefly to flip the light off before I closed the door, listening as it slowly creaked shut with a sharp finality.

I circled into the bathroom briefly, dropping the oversized paper bag full to the brim with antibiotics down onto the countertop before I made my way into the living room, barely thinking twice before I threw my body onto the couch-cushions, landing with a hard, over exaggerated plop.

I'd barely leaned against the cushions, and in fact, I'd just closed my eyes when the feeling of my phone vibrating from the inside of my pants pocket caused them to snap right back open… I should just stop trying to achieve comfort in my life now.

I arched my back uncomfortably, gaining access to my pocket so that I could dig around for a couple of seconds before I finally pulled out my phone, looking down and focusing my eyes on the name 'Haley' that flashed across the screen underneath the blinking symbol of a text message.

I flipped the phone open and studied the message carefully; "_Hey Brooke, sorry I didn't make it to the hospital today, ran into some problems with Jamie. I owe you a wine date._"

I took a steep exhale and re-read the message one more time, just because my mind was so out of the loop today, I didn't quite process it the first time… In fact, today had wound up being so crazy, that I'd actually completely forgotten that Haley and Jamie were even supposed to stop by today.

I couldn't help but wonder what kind of problems with Jamie Haley was talking about… I guess I would find out when we had Haley's promised "wine date", but I had the strangest feeling that Haley's distance with me and Sam had a lot more to it than a simple problem or two with her son.

I mean, I wasn't gonna say anything here or anything, but on Saturday, I'd gotten the vibe that Haley was having a pretty hard time watching Sam get sicker. I could see it in her eyes, feel it in her distance, and of course, I didn't blame her in the slightest bit for any of that; the problem was, I didn't know what to do to make her feel better, because I felt the same exact way myself, and considering I'd yet to learn how to even deal with my own emotions, I couldn't even begin to pinpoint what was going on with Haley's…

Like I said, I wasn't gonna say anything, so instead of making sure that she was okay, instead of acting in a way that any friend should, I sent her the simplest of text messages back; "_No worries, Sam got out of the hospital today anyway. I'm holding you to that wine date._"

I sent the reply and threw my phone carelessly back onto the table in front of me before I sunk back into the couch. After a couple seconds, I heard the alert tone vibrate heavily against the thick glass, indicating Haley's return response, but I ignored it.

I found myself steadily slipping into a catatonic state; a catatonic state that I was willing to embrace openly.

I just sat like that for several minutes. I was quite sure that if, for some bizarre reason, somebody was to walk in on me right now, they would think I was having some kind of seizure or something. I lay limp on my couch; muscles relaxed flaccidly so that my limbs fanned out around me and my neck sunk under the dead weight of my head. My eyes just stared straight ahead; barely blinking, barely even moving as my mouth slowly drooped open and my very brain positively slowed.

I probably stayed like this for a solid five minutes, maybe even longer before suddenly, with an alert attentiveness and I vigorous shake of my head, I re-entered reality and focused on my surroundings. The blood rushed quickly back into my head, and as my higher brain functions slowly sparked back to life, one conscious thought entered my mind.

I needed some alcohol.

That was the motivation that ultimately allowed me to push myself upward and off of the couch where I rapidly made my way into the kitchen, barely stopping as I grabbed an always prepared bottle of Merlot by its neck and a fresh glass off of the counter top before stepping off onto the balcony without so much of a second thought. I had some stuff I had to think about, some life assessing I needed to straighten out, and as I'd failed in every other attempt I'd made to do just that, well this was the only thing left that I could actually think to do.

Equipped with nothing more than a bottle of wine, I lowered myself into the depths of the freezing December air with nothing more than a t-shirt, pair of jeans, and bottle of alcohol to keep me warm.

It stopped snowing hours ago, just as it usually does with North Carolina snow storms; always brief, never significant, but still, that didn't mean that the temperatures magically sparked up into tropical levels… Of course, I didn't really mind; in fact, I barely even noticed it at all.

I poured myself a generous glass of wine, and by generous, I mean generous. The liquid was dancing across the brim of the glass so that I had to coddle it between my hands and sip in periodic gulps until the levels were reduced to a point that allowed me to at least drink normally without spilling all over myself.

After that I was ready; I was prepared to reevaluate my life, prepared to figure out what to do, where to go…

I'd already tried everything I could ever possibly think of to accomplish this; every meditation attempt, every yoga move, every self help book… And now, now I decided that I would try the one thing that I'd never really tried before; I decided to shut my mind off completely.

I mean, if I didn't think about anything, it couldn't hurt me as badly, right?

I'd been bombarded in this very week alone with more distress and confusion than I could ever deal with.

Between Julian leaving, this whole situation with Jack, the damn health insurance debacle, and Sam getting so sick… I'd been so overloaded with so many emotions in such a short span of time that I didn't even know what to feel anymore… I think it's safe to say that I'd finally blown a complete fuse.

I just think that it's a damn miracle that it took me this long.

Within the first five minutes, I'd found complete success in this method of thinking… Is it bad to say that the only time I truly feel anything is when I'm feeling absolutely nothing at all?

Over the horizon, I began to see lightning flashing across the sky; sharp bolts of rage that lingered for a couple of seconds, lighting up the sky as if it were the middle of the day as opposed to 10:00 at night before it would all just fork, and fizzle out.

It was only moments later that the rain actually began to fall; sharp, freezing droplets that pierced my skin and diluted my wine until the alcohol content was reduced to practically nothing…

I'm not sure how long I stayed out there for, but as the time gradually progressed, I could physically feel the rain pelting down on me harder and harder until it began to literally hurt me, but for some reason, I still couldn't bring myself to move.

I guess I'd just gotten caught up in the perfection of it all, and ultimately, that's really what kept me firmly in my seat, firmly planted there long after my t-shirt and jeans were soaked straight through, long after I physically began shaking underneath the freezing December rain, and long after my very limbs had gone completely numb.

It was just the ironic symbolism of it all that captured my attention so fully. I couldn't have scripted it if I tried.

You see, there was a storm headed our way; and no, I'm not talking about the kind of storm that produces devastating flood waters, 200 mile per hour winds, and death tolls higher than you could imagine, I'm talking about a different kind of storm, and even though I wasn't exactly sure what it was or when it was going to actually come, I knew this much; that just like the storm I'd found myself caught in the middle of right now, when this storm came, I didn't think that I'd be ready for it when it did.


	39. Battered and Torn

**Okay, so here's the next chapter: fun fact, this is actually the first part of this story that I wrote so I've been waiting to post it for literally about a year now so I may have gotten a little over eager which is why it's really long and I mean really, really long, so I decided to split it up into two parts. So for this chapter, I wanted to get a reaction point of view from pretty much every main character (which is why it's so long) so it get's kind of lengthy. **

**I'm hoping to have the second part up by the end of the week because I'm not mean enough to keep you that suspenseful so enjoy, hope you don't get too annoyed with me bouncing between random P.. throughout the entire thing.**

Chapter 39: Battered and Torn

**Wednesday, December 21****st****, 2011**

**(Part I)**

**SAM**

"Sam, I'm back!" Brooke shouted her greeting of return as she stepped through the opening door even though I'd probably been sitting a mere five feet away from her. I turned my head and watched as she stepped into the open and shivered violently, clutching at the clothing that bundled her up from head to toe as she willed her body to absorb the warmth of the house quicker; eager to leave the frigid December air behind her.

"That was quick…" I'd meant what I said, however, I still couldn't help but add a slight tone of accusation behind my voice. I knew for a fact that ever since yesterday, after Brooke had literally waged war in an effort to keep me in the hospital longer, she'd been a tad more reluctant than usual to leave my side… Her haste in the late night errands she'd been forced to run tonight was nothing more than eagerness to return out of fear that she'd left me all alone, practically at my death bed by myself.

A vast overstatement, but whatever, I guess I couldn't blame her too much.

"Hey, can we get a little help over here?" The sound of Peyton's voice requesting assistance from her position outside the front door is ultimately what caused Brooke to turn back on her selfishly achieved bid for warmth.

She made the move to help, but of course, Brooke's version of help when it came to manual labor was basically no help at all as she watched, with her hands firmly set on her hips, as the tip of an giant fir tree protected by what looked like several layers of over-sized saran wrap emerged through the front door.

I couldn't help the smile that emerged on my face as the image of Peyton, protecting the large tree in a modified fireman's carry position at mid-level appeared through the door, followed by Lucas, balancing the trunk precariously between his gloved hands, who brought up the rear.

"Okay, so I know that you were all up in arms about this whole Christmas thing, being worried that you'd have to spend it in the hospital and all, so in order to celebrate your release, I decided to get you your very own Christmas tree." Brooke made her announcement, but behind the joy in her voice, I could see her biting her tongue about calling my release from the hospital a celebration… I knew that she was still concerned that it wasn't the right move, but really, that just made me appreciate the gesture even more. "It's completely sanitized, hypo-allergenic, bacteria free, fumigated… the works. I think that it's for people with really bad allergies, but you know, I figured cancer-kids counted too."

She shrugged in a façade of nonchalant tones as I smiled broadly in response to her speech.

"I've never had my own Christmas Tree before…" It was true; growing up in foster care at the height of the movement for political correctness, orphanages gave up putting up relics of religious holidays for fear of offending somebody, and then last year on Christmas… well let's just say that Brooke and I were still getting used to each other… or at least, Brooke and I were still getting used to the fact that we'd just nearly been murdered by Jack's psychotic brother…

Brooke didn't even bother with a tree after that; during that time, she could barely even manage to drag herself out of the house most nights.

"Hey Luke, are you okay by yourself over there?" Brooke finally offered her assistance now that it involved the comfort of behind closed doors and away from the vicious elements that the outdoor winter had to offer.

"Yeah, I've got this," He called off Brooke, dropping to his hands and knees underneath the Christmas tree, precariously propped into the stand, in an effort to adjust it upright as Peyton held it steady as best as she could; a difficult feat considering it probably weighted about just as much as she did.

I watched with only vague interest, but still attempted desperately to contort my face in a way that made it look as if I was paying attention in an effort to prevent Brooke from noticing the expression on my face that had the fact that I wasn't really feeling too hot at the moment written all over it.

I couldn't say that really surprised me too much; after all, my doctors had released me from the hospital knowing full-well that I wasn't yet at 100%. Lingering ailments still prominent from the infection that was still moving its natural course throughout my body had been making my chest uncomfortably tight and my lungs chronically paining me since Saturday… and then I woke up today, and something was different.

Today I'd barely been able to get myself out of bed on account of the heavy mucous filtering in across the base of my lungs, weighing me down impossibly. Today I'd found myself avoiding Brooke at all costs for fear that she would hear every painful, heaving cough I made… you know; the ones that originate from deep inside of your chest, the ones that you can just never seem to get fully rid of…

I'd managed to cover my tracks pretty well since then, refusing point blank to succumb to any sort of episode while Brooke was in sight, but to be completely honest, I haven't felt anything even close to being like this ever since Sunday when they'd deemed me so sick I'd had to be isolated from the very world around me.

I wasn't too worried about it… yet anyway; this infection thing I had going on had already proven to me once not to be that serious; I mean, it was manageable, and that's all that really mattered, right? I figured I'd just fake going about my merry way as usual; hide any signs of weakness, take my antibiotics as prescribed, and pray to God that all of this goes away on its own without having to get any doctors, or worse, get Brooke involved.

"Are you okay?"

As it turns out, I managed to fail in my plan of feigning Brooke before I'd even managed to start. She must have noticed the way my glossy eyes had been focused on a single spot on the wall for several minutes without so much as moving, because she'd started to get concerned, leading to pestering questions about the status of my health… And I'd learned from experience that it was much harder to deceive Brooke when she took to questioning you directly.

"Yeah," I shook my head quickly in a brief attempt to clear it, trying to hide the dazed look in my eyes even though I knew that Brooke had already caught it, "Yeah, I'm fine, it's just… This is great; really, thanks for all of it." I smiled to her and exercised my finest skill; changing the subject.

I knew my not-so-clever tactic would work, because I knew that Brooke would never push this issue with Peyton and Lucas right there and risk worrying them unnecessarily… And as it turns out, I was right, because Brooke put her best fake smile on her face and followed my lead.

"Do you like it?" The extra tone of forcefulness behind her voice made it quite clear to me that she wasn't quite finished discussing this with me yet, but I could accept that.

"I don't know… I mean, it is a little bit on the short side, and I think that there might be a few more extra branches that over-extenuate the left side of the tree but…"

"Hey, what did I tell you about being a smart ass?" Her sarcasm matched my own as she took a step closer towards me just so that she could outstretch her arm long enough to give me a nice, solid flick to the back of the head.

I released the smallest of laughs, but unfortunately, regretted that decision almost instantly when I felt the motion rattle at the lump that had been steadily growing within in the depths of my throat all day, triggering a cascade of vibrations straight down my trachea so that before I knew it, I'd found myself coughing and spluttering just for a decent breath of air.

Through my watering eyes, I managed to make out the expression change on Brooke's face as it faded from a warm smile to immediate concern.

"Hey, are you alright?" She hustled around the couch so that she was directly in front of me, pounding at my back, gentle yet firm with the ball of her hand in an effort to help me clear my lungs as I continued the attempt to physically heave the bollus currently lodged in my throat out.

I tried to nod my head in response to her question, but I couldn't quite gain control of my own muscles at the moment. My diaphragm contracted spontaneously and painfully until it finally entered a bought of fitful spasms in its last desperate effort to pull oxygen into my aching lungs.

"I'm… okay…" After what seemed like hours, I finally managed to release a handful of stray words as my coughs slowly faded into oblivion.

I took a couple of deep breaths; simultaneously wiping at the undersides of my eyes so that I could get a good look at Brooke's face, knowing the instant I did, she wasn't buying a single word of any of it.

"Hey," She spoke sternly, moving her head flawlessly so that her eyes matched with mine at all times so that no matter how hard I tried to break eye contact, I couldn't, "Don't lie to me."

Do you remember those times back in the good old days when I was really, really good at hiding things from Brooke? Well let me tell you something, those days were gone… long gone.

"Come on Sam; what's going on with you? Are you still feeling sick? Should I call your doctor? God, I knew we shouldn't have taken you home from the hospital this quickly." Brooke's mind warped and scrambled, packing so many thoughts into her mind all at once that they were physically forced out of her mouth in the form of an endless, incoherent babble.

"Nothing Brooke, I'm fine, I'm just still getting better from all of that stuff that happened these past few days, that's all… Really I'm fine, I'm just still a little bit sick from the infection, that's all. Maybe… maybe they just didn't put me on enough antibiotics or something."

"Sam, they've got you on enough antibiotics to wipe out every bacteria in the state of North Carolina, trust me, that's not it." She spoke with a slight laugh behind her voice, but there was still that extra tinge of worry overshadowing the humor. "But really, are you feeling alright?"

"I'm fine Brooke," I waved her off, trying to hide the residual cough threatening to expose me for who I really was, underneath the cover of my hand. "I've just had this… it still feels kind of weird, but it's going away, really, it is."

I probably should have kept that last comment to myself… I don't know, maybe there really was a part of me that really wanted Brooke to see just how sick I really was, you know, that part of me that knew that I wasn't as fine as I kept telling everybody I was…

"Sam, why didn't you tell me about any of this before?" She spoke with that characteristic tone of disappointment behind her voice that got me every time, the one I always noticed when she'd caught me lying to her about how I was feeling… "What, did you have so much fun spending four days up in isolation the last time that you just can't wait to go up there and do it all over again?"

Her comment was unfair; I knew that, and I could tell by the look on Brooke's face that she did to, but I let it slide because I knew how nervous Brooke was.

"I don't know…" I sighed, looking down at my feet because I couldn't stand looking at the expression on Brooke's face. "I thought it was just, you know… me still getting better from before. I was feeling better Brooke, really I was…"

"And now?" Brooke egged me on.

I sighed, the virulent expression change currently deforming my face acting as a tell-tale sign of the inner debate going on in the back of my head; to tell Brooke or not to tell Brooke…

"I think that it's just getting worse," I have never been this brutally honest with Brooke about my health before ever, and in the long run, I think that's what ended up scaring her the most.

For a brief second, there was nothing; and then, all at once, Brooke snapped into action-mode so quickly that it made me jump.

"Sam, you're burning up," Her voice lowered to a nearly impossible volume, indicative of just how nervous she really was as the back of her hand lingered across my forehead for several tense seconds.

"I'm fine, Brooke," I ducked away from her touch, relaxing against the couch cushions in an effort to positively fall right into them, away from everything, away from it all. "I'm telling you, it's just this cold I had, it'll be okay Brooke, I got rid of it once, I can do it again."

"Sam, you're not fine. I'm calling your doctor, come on, get ready to go, I'm taking you back to the hospital… Jesus, I knew you weren't ready to come home yet, I knew it." She mumbled that last bit to herself; a final attempt at providing her with some self assurance on the situation that didn't seem to work considering the fact that she looked equally as frantic as she did before she'd said it…

I just rolled my eyes, watching as Brooke began to dig through her bag in search of her cell phone so that she could make good on the threat she'd just laid upon me, because she knew as much as I did that the last thing I wanted was to go back to that hospital right now…

Fighting against the frustration currently pounding a rhythmic cadence within my skull, I stood to my feet, watching as Brooke snuck a glance upward at me with a look of warning prominent across her face.

"Where are you going?" She practically hissed her words out at me, determined for me to know that I better be intending on staying right where I was.

"I'm going to the bathroom, Brooke. I have pills to take." The reality of it was that I still had a solid hour before I was scheduled to take any of my five million or so prescriptions precariously lined up and waiting for me in the bathroom; I knew that, and Brooke sure as hell knew it too; the thing was, I could feel my heart racing nervously faster and faster with each passing minute as my breath hitched inside of my throat dangerously meaning that I didn't really care what Brooke thought at the moment; I needed to get the hell out of here.

"Yeah well, if you're not out in 10 minutes, I'm coming in there with a SWAT team no matter what you're doing, so you remember that." Brooke's voice followed me out of the living room as I straightened myself into the most erect position I could muster, took a couple steady steps, strolled passed the ever-oblivious Peyton and Lucas, still struggling to right my own personalized Christmas tree in the stand, and did nothing more to respond to Brooke's comment other than lock myself behind the safety of the bathroom door.

I refused to let my guard down until I heard the assuring click of the lock behind me. Turning in my spot, I pressed my back firmly against the door and closed my eyes, allowing my body to sink slowly downwards along the wooden frame until my ass met the cool ground below me.

I was granted the access to sit peacefully for a brief handful of bliss minutes until the reappearance of that ever-so familiar overpowering tickle in the back of my throat literally caused me to curse myself out loud.

Sighing, I gathered up a fistful of the extra fabric hanging off the sleeves of my sweatshirt and pressed the homemade muffling device firmly against my mouth in a desperate effort to make my cough as silent as possible so that Brooke wouldn't hear it. Unfortunately, I knew before I'd even started that this was going to be a bad one…

The fit grew progressively worse and worse until it left my entire body shaking violently; weary just from the constant contracting of my diaphragm… I'll even swear to it that for a little while there, I could positively feel my lungs shuffling around from inside of my rib cage.

I scrunched my face in distaste as I felt a nasty combination of mucous and saliva slide slowly up my esophagus. Disgusted, I gathered up all of the strength that I had left in my body to crawl over to the toilet, grasping firmly onto the edges with all of the power that the muscles in my fingers had, heaving myself upward over the opening of the bowl where I was able to spit the residue straight into the awaiting water below me.

I took a couple steady, deep breaths, steadily spitting up the excess phlegm for a couple minutes, focusing intensely on the solid white of the porcelain bowl around me in a desperate effort to keep from paying too much attention to the disgusting combination of bodily fluids that I'd just emitted from my own mouth… And for a while, this method worked… For a solid five minutes I sat there; mesmerized by the hypnotic power of the solid sheet of white reflecting back into my eyes, but before too long, even that was ruined…

A drop of red, falling slowly from above suddenly began creating the illusion that it was raining red water out of the bathroom ceiling or something as it took a rapid downward plunge, moving quickly until its momentum was ground to an abrupt halt against the platform of the toilet seat, splattering the tiny droplet; a paint splash of red ink against a solid white canvas…

And then it happened again… and again… and finally, just as I really started to get confused, I felt that familiar steady stream of something thick and liquid-y dripping from my nose, and all at once, things suddenly made much more sense.

"Shit," I grumbled to myself as I pressed the top of my right hand underneath my nose in an effort to stem the blood that had begun steadily streaming out of each nostril.

Gathering a giant wad of toilet paper, I removed my hand in an effort to inspect the damage, cursing to myself even louder when I noticed a much larger accumulation of blood on my skin than I had previously anticipated… Trying not to think about the possibilities of just what the hell was going on with my body right now, I stuffed the makeshift toilet paper plug underneath my nose before turning back to the toilet bowl so I could keep spitting up the crap that was still coming straight up from my lungs and out my mouth…

God, the situations I get myself into sometimes… Seriously though, how the fuck did I ever manage to find myself here?

Too many thing were happening at once; I quickly started losing track of the time… I couldn't' help but wonder how much longer it would take Brooke to barge in here where she would inevitably immediately freak out over a stupid little nose bleed… I couldn't help but think that that ten minute time limit she'd strictly enforced before I came in here must be coming to an end pretty soon…

"SAM!" Brooke knocked heavily against the door right on queue.

"Hang on!" I shouted over my shoulder, pressing the toilet paper even tighter against my nose, begging it to be quicker about ceasing bleeding.

"Come on, stop bleeding, stop bleeding," I whispered the order to myself as the sound of Brooke's continuous knocking fogged my brain over.

"Hang on!" I yelled again, this time, making sure that my voice included an undertone of rudeness in an effort to be more convincing in my crusade to convince her I was fine. Of course, I was punished instantly for this when another intense coughing fit burned my throat and wracked my body with a shuddering pain that resulted in a fit of dry heaves overtaking my body until I found myself once again, hunched over the toilet in an effort to fine a sanitary place to deposit the contents of my lungs.

I felt the metallic clang on my tongue before I fully had time to process what it meant, but the second I watched the steady stream of red drip into the toilet below me, where it spiraled and diluted bright pink against the water, I knew…

This was bad.

"Sam, what's going on in there?" I vaguely heard Brooke's voice as I released another gut-wrenching cough, feeling as the blood, thick and prominent, pooled heavier into my mouth faster than I could release it.

I wanted Brooke, I needed Brooke… Looking up, I tried desperately to focus on the door that Brooke was still pounding away on, so close, but at the same time, so far away… Her fists bashed against the wood relentlessly, ready to kick it right in if that's what she had to do as she became painfully aware of the fact that I'd stopped responding to her…

I knew that I should get up and open the door for her, the thing was, it was just so far away, and I was suddenly so tired…

My body slid down the toilet, oiled slick with my own sweat as I began to slowly lose feeling in my body. The numbness started at my legs; rising steadily up each one until it joined at the waist, up my torso, down each arm, and finally, topping off right at the top of my head until it got to the point where I couldn't even hold it up anymore…

I fell to the ground harshly, sprawled out sideways so that my limbs fanned precariously around my body. My eye lids were growing heavier and heavier so that the only thing I could actually focus on was the single image in front of me of my own blood running races along the cracks between the tiles, travelling upstream until it all pooled together in a small din the corner of the room.

"Sam, open this door now!" I could hear the panic creeping into Brooke's voice, but I guess at this point, there wasn't really anything I could do about it anymore.

Was this it? I mean, was I really about to die here all alone on a bathroom floor?

This was so typical of me; meeting my demise with something as ridiculous as this; a scenario so farfetched I could barely take it… This wasn't the way that this was supposed to happen, this wasn't it at all.

"SAM!"

I was noticing a strange indirect correlation going on between me and Brooke at the moment, because as I grew weaker and weaker, Brooke's voice seemed to grow louder and louder, her volume showing a distinct combination of both anger and fear as she struggled to decide whether I was simply ignoring her beckoning or if I was currently dying on the bathroom floor.

Brace yourself Brooke, because you're going for the latter today.

"Sam, are you alright?" A sterner knock echoed across the barrier of the door frame, one that originated from pure brute strength rather than frenzied banging… the male voice that accompanied it caused me to use my ingenious deducing skills to determine that it was Lucas… I was willing to bet a million dollars that Brooke had recruited him over to literally knock the entire damn door down.

The sudden overwhelming bang that filled my ears and caused the entire room to literally shudder around me told me that I had been correct to make such assumptions.

I tried to push myself up against the wall as best I could in an effort to escape the sound of the echoing bangs of Lucas's foot against the center of the door as it filtered louder and louder across my head, but just as suddenly as I'd heard it, it faded away into nothing more than a distant echo…

Through my closing eyelids, I managed to make out the fuzzy outline of the door bursting open; completely detaching from its frame as the blurred image of three bodies running towards me danced in front of my glossy eyes.

I tried to stay awake, but whatever it was that was waiting for me behind closed eyes was just so warm…

I struggled, tore, bit, and fought tooth and nail against the overwhelming pressure of my eyes to close, and just when I'd about given up all hope, just when I was ready to identify this struggle as worthless, one of those blurry figures squatted down in front of me…

"Sam, Sam come on, look at me!" Brooke's voice sounded heavy, slow motion almost as her warm hands encircled my head, pulling my face upwards to match hers so that the blurred features and fuzzy details finally came into focus, and I locked eyes with the one person I wanted to see, the one person that could remind me that this was all worth fighting for…

Brooke.

* * *

**BROOKE**

"Oh my God, Sam, Sam come on, look at me!"

Whatever it was that I'd been expecting to run into upon ordering Lucas to physically kick down the bathroom door that Sam had locked herself within about fifteen minutes ago now, this was definitely not it.

I sprinted with the speed of an Olympic track star, my surroundings appearing as a mere blur as I rushed from the door, straight to Sam's side, dropping harshly onto my knees beside her so that I could reach down and guide her face up to meet my own.

For a moment I couldn't think of anything else to do other than stare. Thick, dark blood dribbled from both her nose and out of the corners of her mouth so that I could feel it smearing across her skin through the crevices of my fingers, still firmly clamped to either side of her head.

"Brooke… I'm fine, I'm fine," She coughed out a slew of incoherent words I barely caught, but I somehow managed to make out the statement behind her thin voice. Of course, anybody with two eyes and any kind of functional cognitive abilities could see that Sam wasn't fine in fact she was far from it… I didn't even know what to say in response to that, didn't know what to do, so instead, I just sat there; eyes wide, and mind racing so quickly that for a second there, it was forced to completely shut down and reset just to be able to formulate a single, rational idea.

"Brooke, what's going on over there? Is Sam alright?" Peyton asked, shuffling between Lucas and the broken door frame as the couple stood at a timid distance, not really sure what to do or whether or not they should get any closer.

But her voice managed to spark something somewhere within the part of my brain responsible for responsible decision making, and with a quick shake of the head, I snapped back into focus, re-assessed my surroundings, and finally understood what it was I needed to do.

"Go get my phone now! I need to call her doctor." I demanded harshly as the severity of the situation organized a thin layer around my brain.

I vaguely saw Lucas dart away from the door through the corner of my eye as I continued to support Sam's body upright in an effort to prevent her from choking on the thick strands of blood still spewing from her mouth.

I stood my ground and rubbed Sam's back supportively, attempting desperately to formulate words to express to her that she was going to be okay; the problem was, because I couldn't quite believe in that assurance myself, I couldn't find a way to spit it out and tell it to Sam either…

I looked up, desperate for help as my eyes locked with Peyton's in a manner that had her racing to my side in an instant. She rushed forwards, dropping to her knees on the other side of Sam in an effort to help me support her body upwards. Together, we somehow managed to haul her into a seated position against the wall, sitting anxiously in our awkward little tri-force as we desperately awaited Lucas' return.

"Brooke!" His deep voice caught my attention instantly as the sound of rapid footsteps infiltrated my ears and Lucas ran through the bathroom door, cutting the corner so tightly, he nearly tripped over his own two feet… I didn't even bother to wait for him to right himself up again; instead, I harshly and rudely ripped the phone from his clutches, hitting the number one on my speed dial without a second's hesitation.

The dial tone echoed back through my ears three solid times before the voice of Dr. Miller's secretary… Kristin… or Sarah, or whatever her name was, greeted me from the other side of the line.

"Dr. Miller's office, how may I…"

"This is Brooke Davis. I need to speak with Dr. Miller right now!" I didn't even let her finish her sentence before I laid out my demands, not caring how rude it was, not even caring that I sounded like a crazy person as I ranted, raved, and carried on.

"Dr. Miller is in a meeting right now, if you would like me to take a message…"

"Please, this is an emergency! I need to speak with Dr. Miller right now." I emphasized my statement with a profound sense of urgency as the tears finally began springing out from behind my eyes at the pronounced fear that I had no idea what was happening with Sam, and the one person who could tell me wasn't even around to do so.

"Okay, hang on one moment please…" Her words faded into silence as I began tapping my feet nervously against the tile floor, holding the phone firmly against my ear with one hand and grasping Sam's body tightly into my own with the other.

I'm not exactly sure how long I'd been waiting for Dr. Miller to actually come to the phone; it could have been a couple minutes, hell, it could have been a couple hours for all I knew, because time seemed to be moving at a remarkably bizarre pace that I couldn't quite get a handle of at the moment, but however long it had been, the pronounced feeling of relief that overcame me the second I heard her voice was like nothing I'd ever felt before.

"Brooke, is everything alright?" She bypassed formal greeting and got straight to the point, a factor that I couldn't be more grateful for.

"It's Sam," I stammered out; my voice so furious and fast paced that I'd be surprised if the doctor understood a word I said, "She's really sick, I found her in the bathroom and she's throwing up blood and her nose is bleeding… she has a really high fever, I… I don't know what's going on with her."

"Okay Brooke, listen to me, you need to relax okay, take a deep breath," There was barely a second of space between my explanation and Dr. Miller's response, a feature in her demands that allowed me to follow through with them. I paused, gathering my thoughts for a brief moment until my rapid breathing fell into a slow, steady pattern, "I want you to call an ambulance and get Sam to emergency department right now. I'll meet you there."

"Okay… okay, I'll see you in a minute." With one final exhale, I hung up the phone without even bothering to say goodbye, my fingers working as rapidly as my brain would allow it to as I scrambled to dial those three magic numbers…

"911 what is your emergency?"

"Yes, uh… hi, um… my daughter… she's a… she has…" My words jumbled together as I struggled to find just the right statement that could accurately depict exactly what was happening… I paused for a second, reutilizing the simple, yet magical deep breathing exercises that had previously allowed me to achieve the calm I knew that I would need to not only get Sam through all of this, but myself as well.

I closed my eyes, slowly counted to three, and when I resurfaced, it seemed as if I'd found the strength in me that I needed to continue.

"My daughter is a leukemia patient and I just found her in the bathroom throwing up blood… I need an ambulance right away." Even I was surprised at how calm my own voice sounded as I spoke fluidly with an air of professionalism, not a hint of hesitation.

"Okay m'ame, I'm going to dispatch a paramedic unit to your house right now. Do you think you can give me any more information about what's going on with your daughter?"

I took another breath, wracking my brain for the specifics that would be qualified as important in this situation, simultaneously deciding that correcting this lady for calling me m'ame was not one of them…

"Okay… um… she was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in November; it's been almost two months now." I figured that was a pretty good place to start, and after I'd managed to assemble a reference point, the words just seemed to flood of my tongue, "She just finished her third round of chemotherapy yesterday and she's been fighting a cold for the past few days but… but nothing like this has ever happened before." I could feel the tears bubble threateningly around my eyes as I spoke, my own voice stimulating a rapid decline in my already teetering emotional stability.

I felt my legs lift themselves into a standing position; my brain so focused on everything going on around me that it deemed voluntary motor control an unnecessary hindrance, allowing my muscles to pace at their own free will, guiding me back and forth across the bathroom in a relentless circle.

I rotated so quickly I was starting to get dizzy, never once taking my eyes off of Sam as Peyton wrapped her shivering, bleeding body into her arms in an attempt to provide her with a means of comfort in my absence.

"M'ame? M'ame are you still there?" I guess I must have zoned out or something; I hadn't even noticed that the 911 operator had been vying for my attention until she began shouting. It took me a couple of seconds to process her words, but when I finally did, they brought me back to reality with a wave of fury.

"Brooke," I finally snapped, my frustration coming out in my desire to be called by my own name. "My name is Brooke."

"Okay Brooke, can you tell me when your daughter started getting sick?"

"Um…" I wracked my brain for the answer but at this point all of the hospital stays, the treatment schedules, the medications… well they all just blended together, and in my heightened sense of panic, I just couldn't seem to sort them all out. "She started her third round of chemotherapy, um…" I shut my eyes and willed myself to concentrate. Come on Brooke, you can do this…

"Saturday," I practically shouted the answer, so excited when it finally popped into my head that I couldn't control the means by which I delivered it, "She started on Saturday, and that's when she started getting sick. The doctor's said she just had a chest infection and they put her in isolation for a few days to clear it but they said she was fine, that she'd be okay to go home. Then today she started coughing again and her fever came back, and now she's throwing up blood…" I spoke with a progressively faster pace behind my voice, my rate of speaking correlating greatly with the rate my feet were moving across the bathroom floor.

My body reacted harshly to the overwhelming emotion; shutting itself down in an effort to block out all feeling, resorting to rely upon its involuntary primordial instincts just to be sure all of my focus was solely on Sam. I found myself sneaking casual glances over my shoulder every couple of seconds or so just to make sure she was awake, to make sure she was still alive… My mouth switched to autopilot and I found myself answering every question the operator delivered me without even really hearing what they were before hand.

There was maybe one thing in the entire world that could possibly distract me at the moment, and when I finally heard it, my head snapped up, my eyes widened, and I found myself cutting the operator that I was talking to off mid-sentence.

"Wait, I think I hear the ambulance."

I strained my ears in an effort; at first, I wasn't so sure I'd actually heard it, I was afraid that in my strong desire for time to positively move quicker, I'd just made the noise up, but after a few more seconds of listening, it became more and more obvious that it was indeed real.

"Okay Brooke, I'm going to let you go then, just make sure that you tell the paramedics everything that you told me, okay?" I gave her my assurance that I'd do just that, hanging up the phone without so much as another word, and barely listening to Lucas as he assured me he would guide the paramedics into the house and towards us…

Without a single word, I squatted next to Sam, reaching down to wrap her hand into my own, clenching my fingers around her own fragile ones so tightly that I could feel every drop of blood catch between the tiny crevices along my palm.

I imagined each droplet, sliding slowly across my skin, lubricated amidst the nervous sweat that had broken out over every pore of my body. I pictured Sam's tainted blood cells meshing with my own healthy ones, pictured her using all of the strength that I had in my body to fuel her own… It sounded crazy… I knew that things didn't work out that way, trust me, I did, but that didn't mean I still couldn't wish that they could.

I watched as Sam gathered all the strength she had left to power her neck muscles to tilt her head up towards me. When our eyes finally locked, the pain in her expression literally snapped my heart in half.

"Brooke, I don't feel so good."

A solid, fat tear fell from my eyes, so obvious that I didn't even bother to hide it. I tried my best to smile down at her, to feed her assurances with a positive outlook written across my face, but I couldn't do it; my facial muscles refused to contort into anything even close to a smirk.

"I know honey, I know." I squeezed her hand even tighter, simultaneously reaching up with my free one to wipe some of the residual blood off of her face, "But don't worry Sam, we're gonna get you to the doctors, and they're gonna take a look at you and make you feel better in just a few minutes, okay? You'll be fine… you'll be just fine."

I gathered everything I had in me to produce words of motivation, but it didn't matter because the end of my sentence was cut off anyway by an overwhelming commotion originating from all of the emergency crews storming through my house filtered in a rapid wave into the bathroom… I stood my ground, back to the paramedics as they shuffled and scurried to get around me and to Sam, but I couldn't move, couldn't take my eyes off of my daughter…

"Excuse me miss, are you mom?" My refusal to leave Sam's side ended up being short lived, as a paramedic's acknowledgment of me being Sam's mother forced me to rip my eyes off of her.

I locked eyes with the man; lingering for a couple seconds as his piercing blue gaze met my pained brown one.

"Um… yeah," I eventually stammered out, leaving the man to nod his head towards me and go straight down to business.

"Do you think you can answer a few questions for my partner over there?" I looked up towards a second man hovering in the doorway; only a few feet away, yet far enough so that I knew I would be just out of arms reach of Sam… I hesitated, and he must have noticed, because he added a final tone of assurance that allowed me to finally move, "She'll be in good hands, we'll take care of her."

I nodded, but a strong sensation had just come over me that felt as if somebody had just shoved an entire bag of cotton balls into my mouth, preventing me from actually producing anything even close to words.

"I'll stay with her Brooke." Peyton's voice rang through my ears as I once again locked eyes with my daughter and did my best to clear my throat so that I could physically let her know that it was going to be alright, that I wasn't going too far away, that I'd be right here just in case she needed me…

"Hey Sam, I'll be right back, okay?" She gave a slight nod towards my general direction, an indication that she'd heard me as her neck muscles shuddered with an attempt to produce words ineffectively, her weak muscles silencing her before she'd even had the opportunity to speak. "Peyton is going to be here with you the entire time, I just have to go over there and answer a few questions quick, and then I'll be right back."

She nodded once more as her eyelids slowly slid closed, too exhausted to do so much as will her own body to hold her eyelids open. I paused again, this time only briefly as I slowly slid my hand out of her own; feeling suddenly naked now that I didn't have anything to hold on to, my body growing colder and colder with every step backwards and towards the door frame that I took.

My house suddenly seemed starkly different, as if in those brief moments I'd spent with Sam on the bathroom floor, I'd completely forgotten that there was a world outside of the small, closet-sized room. Rotating blue and red lights filtered through the windows, surrounding the otherwise dark interior of my house with a force damn near bright enough to blind me… The entire world was changing colors; red to blue to white, over and over again until the face of a paramedic flinging himself into my line of vision allowed my eyes to concentrate on something other than the Technicolor flashing lights.

I didn't hear a single question he asked me, yet somehow, I managed to answer each one, becoming hypnotized by the frantic scribbling of the EMT's pen as he raced to keep up with everything I was saying… Poor kid... Sam's medical history was enough to give anybody carpel tunnel.

My attention was distracted frequently, and every once in a while, the teenaged kid in front of me would have to call me back to him just to make sure I was coherent enough to tell him everything he needed to know… But I couldn't find it in me to keep my eyes off of Sam for more than a couple of seconds at a time...

Peyton was holding onto her tightly, determined not to let her disappear straight into thin air as Sam kept her head buried firmly into Peyton's shoulder, concentrating intently on every deep, shuddering breath that she struggled to complete.

My eyes lingered on her frail form a couple extra seconds every time I glanced at her; unwilling to rip my eyes away, terrified that this would be the last time I actually got to see her…

"Do you know when the last time she took her medication was?" My focus on Sam was suddenly broken again, like it always was by the seemingly endless of questions the EMT had for me; a relentless reminder that I had another task to concentrate on other than Sam at this moment.

"Um… no… I guess, maybe around 5:00, right before we ate dinner…" He gave a brief nod before turning back to his clipboard, and per usual, I took the opportunity to look back over my shoulder, catching a quick glimpse of Sam just in time as her eyes widened, her cheeks puffed out, and the muscles in the back of her throat relaxed to release another fresh stream of blood out of her mouth and into her awaiting lap.

My heart sunk as the rest of my body stood still with numb stiffness; all at once, I forgot where I was, what I was doing here… in fact, I seemed to forget everything except for just how sick Sam was.

"Jeff, we need to move her now!" The abrupt display of rapidness emitting from the paramedic closest to Sam did nothing for my nerves… There was barely a second of hesitation as the man single-handedly maneuvered Sam into the air, rushing her past me to the awaiting stretcher right outside the bathroom door…

Determined to stay strong, I contorted the best neutral expression my face could muster at the moment as I watched tears sting at the corners of Sam's eyes and panic settle into her features…

There wasn't a second of hesitation before I was at Sam's side; practically achieving the world record in the long jump just so that I could make it the few feet's distance between Sam and I all in one stride. I threw my best efforts into comforting her, but the reality was there was only so much that I could accomplish when I couldn't help but wish there was somebody holding my hand to comfort me too…

"Sam honey, it's gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay, you just need to relax, okay?" Desperation laced through my voice as Sam approached a full blown panic attack; inhaling and exhaling so rapidly that she managed to accomplish nothing other than hyperventilation until a generous EMT identified her struggle and strapped a clear mask across her face, flooding her system with the oxygen her lungs so desperately craved.

She noticed a little bit too late that she was being slightly too greedy with her supply of oxygen, because she started sucking it down so quickly that it only took a couple struggling breaths for her to literally start choking on it.

Through her thin frame I managed to catch her every muscle shuddering with the crude force of every cough until a splash of red painted the inside of the mask with her own blood as if were a scene straight out of a horror movie.

The coughing ceased, allowing Sam to relax against the stretcher's firm mattress around the same time that the emergency workers managed to drag the stretcher out the front door and down the path of my house; outside for the whole world to see…

The small sidewalk that lead from my front door to the awaiting ambulance on the curb seemed to have increased about five times in length; paved in length by the addition of all the prying eyes of my neighbors glaring back at us from all directions.

I felt Sam's muscles tense underneath my grasp as she focused her eyes downward in a direct attempt to avoid all the wandering eyes of everyone around her that she knew was focusing straight on her, watching her in her most vulnerable of states…

"You ignore them, Sam. It's just me and you here right now, do you hear me? I am here with you and that's all that matters." I spoke gently, my words emitting in a mere whisper so that only Sam could hear. The motion of her hand relaxing within my own met me almost immediately… At first I thought it was from my own doing; I thought my comforting tones had done enough to make her relax, to inject some confidence into her ravaged body, but upon looking down to investigate, I realized in an instant that I'd thought wrong.

I managed to catch a glimpse of her just as her head rolled over to the side and hung so limp it was practically resting against her shoulder. The rest of her muscles gradually relaxed, the pace of her breaths slowed with the even tone of unconsciousness, and Sam finally accepted the darkness that had been inviting her in for a long time now… darkness I'd been praying she'd be able to hold off, darkness that I was disappointed to find, she just couldn't.

* * *

**LUCAS**

I'm not really the type of guy to use harsh language, but even I have to admit, I've seen a lot of pretty fucked up things in my life time.

I watched my father walk out of my life before I was even old enough to comprehend what it was that meant. I watched the love of my life nearly bleed to death… more than once, mind you. I watched my dad go to jail for murdering the only man that had ever truly mattered in my life, my mother leave the country under the pressure of loss, my daughter and my sister be birthed under tragedy, and God only know what else…

The point is, that throughout all of those things, all of those hardships, I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like this before… whatever it was that "this" was… It just makes you think, all of this does; it makes you think hard, it makes you analyze your life, it makes you compare all of the good shit you've done throughout it, but mostly just the bad, and I've gotta say… It's definitely grounding.

I've seen Brooke Davis succumb to a lot of different emotional states before.

I've seen her pissed, I've seen her scared, I've seen her ecstatic, worried, overjoyed, and nervous, but I've never seen her look quite so… petrified before.

The look in her eyes was more than enough to put me over the edge, the thing was, I was barely holding on to begin with…

We'd met up with Brooke easily; finding her quickly in the center of the crowded hallway in front of the nurse's station where she was standing stock still in a frenzied panic while irritated doctors and nurses shuffled around her just trying to get passed… We'd probably arrived no more than twenty minutes after the ambulance had finally pulled away from the front of Brooke's house, but I swear, in that twenty minutes, Brooke changed, and she'd changed in such a way that I barely recognized her when I first saw her.

Her face was sunken and had a look of rabid determination on it that I'd never seen before as she practically screamed at the young receptionist behind the desk for any information on Sam… It had taken Peyton and I a while to pry her away, and eventually, I ended up having to resort to physicality when I wrapped my arms across her thin biceps and literally carried her to the small row of chairs a mere few feet away…

She'd kicked, punched, and even bit in an effort to get me to let go of her the entire way, but the second I'd gotten her in that chair, she'd just gone completely limp, and I couldn't tell which was worse.

I was sitting directly across from her now, hands folded diligently in my lap as I tapped my toes in time with the sounds of the footsteps of all the people shuffling past us, barely giving us a second glance as we sat in the middle of the crowded triage unit, watching with crude attentiveness in hopes that one of these shuffling people was the shuffling person that would tell us what we wanted to know about Sam.

My eyes barely left Brooke's form as she slowly hunched over, burying her face as deep into her palms as she could manage as her shoulders shuddered and contracted painfully with every baseball-sized tear that dropped down her cheeks.

My wife had a protective arm wrapped around her back, rocking her slowly as she attempted to assure Brooke that everything would be okay, but I'm not even sure that Brooke even heard her over her mangled sobs… I didn't know what to do. I was terrified that the second I tried to contribute I would just end up saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move… So I just sat there.

We hadn't heard a single word on Sam yet.

I mean, sure, we've barely been sitting here an hour, but still, I'd imagined something; any kind of human interaction with a person that could actually make heads or tails out of what we'd just seen, why we were all sitting here… but instead we just got nothing.

"Ms. Davis?" Brooke was on her feet before I'd even had time to process the fact that somebody had just called her name. I looked up; the tiny nurse that had already tried once before to get Brooke to relay all of Sam's information to her was approaching us rapidly… At her last visit, Brooke was so emotionally distraught, she couldn't even remember Sam's date of birth when the nurse asked her for it… The woman had been kind enough to leave and allow Brooke a few minutes to settle herself down before she'd finally deemed Brooke competent enough to attempt round two.

I watched as Brooke's face physically sunk with the realization that the person that had just called her wasn't anybody who was going to tell her anything on Sam's condition and she dropped back down into her seat. The nurse however, didn't seem to notice Brooke's fleeting motion of defeat.

"Ms. Davis, I'm sorry, but our computer records are down so I was just wondering if you could let me know who Samantha's primary oncologist is."

"Um… her name is Dr. Lauren Miller." Brooke spit out after a brief pause, "I called her earlier and she said she'd meet me here… I have her… I have her phone number here somewhere…" Brooke rambled in sentences that were nearly incomprehensible as she began to dig through her bag, pulling sheet after sheet of crumpled bits of paper for the particular crumpled bit of paper she was currently looking for.

"Ms. Davis," The nurse reached a comforting hand over towards Brooke and rested it on top of her knee, "It's okay, we can find it."

Brooke paused in her endeavor; taking a breath amidst the multiple pieces of paper she'd just littered her surroundings with as she relaxed into her chair, regained her composure, and after a few more seconds, nodded her head to acknowledge the nurse's statement and that she was now ready to answer more questions.

"And do you happen to remember the date of her diagnosis?" Brooke's pupils dilated into a look of instant focus… Of course she remembered Sam's date of diagnosis; it was like asking somebody if they happened to remember the date of the World Trade Center attacks or something… a tragedy of near equivalence in Brooke's mind.

"November 1st," Brooke answered with no hesitation whatsoever. "She started chemotherapy the day after that."

The nurse simply nodded at Brooke's relaying of information, jotting brief notes across the paper work in her hand as she went.

"And where is she in her treatments now?"

"Uh… She just finished her third round of chemo yesterday. They um… they had her upstairs in isolation because she developed an infection, but her fever broke on Saturday so the doctors sent her home yesterday… They said that she'd be fine, they said she'd be okay at home…" Unshed tears flashed across Brooke's eyes at the mere memory of the lie the people she'd trusted the most with her daughter's life had told her.

The nurse stayed silent, and I couldn't tell if it was because she simply didn't notice the look in Brooke's eyes, or if she didn't want to get caught up in the uncomfortable accusation behind her voice.

"How have her treatments been up until she got the infection, Ms. Davis? Has she had any kind of serious side effects; anything unusually maybe?"

Brooke shook her head furiously in response to the nurse's question, determined to prove that Sam had been fine up until this moment, determined to show her that nothing like this has ever happened to us before.

"Her first two rounds were fine. Dr. Miller told us that everything was normal and she was progressing quickly, but this round ended up being a pretty hard one for her… I thought that maybe she was just having a bad reaction to the chemo because they used a few different drugs this time, but… Jesus, I should have known that something was wrong…" Brooke trailed, rubbing her hands over her face out of sheer frustration… I knew that Brooke would think that Sam being this sick was her fault; hell, I knew that she'd think that Sam being sick at all was her fault. That was just the way Brooke Davis worked; had been ever since I'd met her. She was the type of person that never really had faith in the strength of the rest of the world, so as a direct result, she just put the weight all on her own shoulders.

It was a God-given gift, really it was, but at the same time, it was also her biggest downfall.

"Okay, Ms. Davis, I'm just gonna go make a copy of these papers you gave me, and then I'll bring them right back to you." She sounded eager to leave, afraid of having an uncontrollably emotional woman in her midst.

"It's okay," I watched as Brooke waved her off, putting her best effort into cracking a smile, "I have about thirty copies. You can keep it."

The nurse nodded her head in response to Brooke, offering our small group an empathetic smile to go along with it.

"Well as soon as the doctors are finished with Sam, I'll make sure that the first thing they do is come out here to talk to you."

"Thank you," Peyton smiled and spoke on behalf of all three of us. Peyton was after all, our group expert in feigning happiness, easily conveying a tone of appreciation when in reality, all three of knew that they only thing any of us wanted to say to this woman was to get Sam back to us as fast as she could healthy, happy, and the same kid she'd always been before all of this happened… I didn't know if that was possible anymore.

The nurse in front of us finally turned her back to leave, and the second she did, Brooke's expression of confidence, she'd somehow managed to keep up this entire time, shattered. She sunk backwards into her chair, her muscles relaxed to the point that her body was positively contorting into the hard plastic seat as she struggled to lift her hands up just high enough to wipe them through her hair with a shaky, nervous sweep.

"Hey Brooke, listen, everything's gonna be okay, alright?" Peyton willed all three of us to believe the words she spoke, "Sam's a strong girl, she beats the odds all the time, B. Davis. She can get through this."

At the sound of Sam's name, Brooke released a loud sniffle, turning her head towards Peyton and burying her arm into the woman's shoulder just in time before the flood gates really opened and she'd found herself sobbing into Peyton's t-shirt.

I swallowed at a lump in my throat so hard that it physically hurt. All at once, this cramped hallway seemed way too hot, way too crowded, way too loud in its total silence… I needed to get out of here; even if it was only for a minute or two, I just needed air, I needed to breathe…

"Um… listen, I think that maybe I should go outside and call everybody," I said, creating a suitable alibi for my departure as I stood slowly, hovering awkwardly over Peyton and Brooke, "I think that they'll wanna know what's going on, you know, so they can be here."

Peyton glanced up at me from her current position of coddling Brooke like an infant; meanwhile, I wasn't even sure if Brooke had even heard me.

"I think that's a good idea, Luke." Peyton nodded, a sugar-coated affirmation that maybe it was for the best to get everybody together… just in case. "And would you mind giving Sawyer's sitter a call too? Just tell her that we're gonna be late."

Throughout all of the chaos and confusion that had managed to grab a firm hold on this night, I'd almost forgotten that there was actually a time limit on how long we could keep our babysitter at our house… It was fascinating really, because now that I'd been made aware of my child, just out of arms reach of me, there was nothing more than I wanted to do than grab onto her, hold her close and never let go, just to keep her safe from all of the horrors that this world has to offer.

"I'll be right back," I kept my composure and nodded myself out, dragging my feet slowly down the hallway because I was in absolutely no rush to get back.

I walked, and I walked, and I walked some more until I'd managed to make my way straight across to the other side of the hospital, out into the cold air of the outdoor ambulance bay.

I threw my back against the freezing concrete wall, ignoring the protest my muscles were currently delivering me; annoyed at all this motion; stiff from having previously been sitting down for so long.

Rubbing my hands over my face, I took a couple deep breaths, closing my eyes tightly and leaving them like that until the reflection of the flashing lights from all of the incoming ambulance seeped through my eyelids, initiating flashbacks in the back of my mind… images, clear as day of everything that I had just seen at Brooke's house as if I was watching a bad movie on repeat or something.

I ripped my eyes back open, using this momentum to motivate me to dig through my pockets where I grasped tightly onto my cell phone, dialing a familiar number, and placing my full concentration into the repetitive dial tone on the other line in an effort to ignore the stray flashes of all of the EMT's and paramedics rushing their dying patients passed me and into the ER doors…

"Hey Luke, what's up?"

I'd called Nathan. I'd called Nathan because I needed a voice that I knew would stay calm when I relayed the news that I had. I called Nathan because I couldn't bear to tell my best friend that the people we loved the most needed us right now, more than she'd ever needed us before… I called Nathan because I didn't think I could handle hearing the pain in the voice of yet another woman that I cared about deeply.

But as fate would have it, Haley answered Nathan's phone anyway, so in the long run, I guess it didn't even matter.

"Hales…" I spluttered out, falling into silence after I realized that I didn't really have anything planned to follow up with.

"Luke… Are you okay?" She grew suspicious of my silence and called me out on it so to make me speak up… I guess that means it was now or never.

"Haley listen… I'm sorry to call you this late, but it's kind of important." I could practically hear the sound of all of the muscles in Haley's face rushing downwards in a sudden whoosh of panic in response to the frantic, nearly crazed tone in my voice that I had really tried, yet failed, to control.

"Lucas, what's going on? Is something wrong?" I panted heavily, unable to control the sound as it echoed through the receiver of the phone, straight into Haley's ears.

"Something happened tonight Hales…" I finally managed to get my mouth to formulate words, "To Sam."

I heard a sharp intake of breath that was followed by a silence so deep that the very world around me seemed to have fallen into a complete standstill even though I knew for a fact that I was currently standing in the middle of a crowded ambulance bay.

I sensed the fact that Haley had found herself stuck; unable to produce any words that could possibly coax her into asking me what the extent of the situation was, because I knew that she'd caught the tone of the worst case scenario behind my voice, and I was pretty sure that as much as she wanted to know the details, another part of her just wanted me to stay quiet.

"She's in the hospital… Haley, it's pretty bad. I don't… I don't know…" My voice faded out without actually finishing my sentence, mainly because I just didn't know how to.

"When… when did it happen?" Haley asked me. I could hear a forced tone of nonchalant attentiveness in her voice, but behind Haley's strong façade, her nerves were starkly obvious… It was in the way she stuttered her vowels slightly, the way her consonants elevated with just a tad higher pitch.

"About an hour ago,"

"How's Brooke?" She asked urgently, desperate for the answer; but I couldn't help but hesitate… I didn't know how to answer that question. How was Brooke taking it? I had absolutely no idea; her eyes remained blank, she barely spoke, and her face… well her face was the least Brooke Davis-like I had ever seen in my entire life.

"She's not doing so well, Haley… she's just… I don't know… sitting there; I can't… I'm not good like you are with these kinds of things. I can't her to talk to me or Peyton."

There was a brief moment in which I knew Haley was silent in an effort to absorb everything that I'd just dished out all at once to her… Imagine; a life time's worth of bad news all in a time span of two minutes…

"Tell her I'll be right there." The only thing I heard following Haley's haste announcement was a solid click as the phone hung up abruptly from the other side of the receiver indicating to me that Haley was currently moving about as fast as her legs would carry her… She was faster than she looked, Haley was. I remember in high school I always tried to get her to join the track team… she would have been a freaking star.

In complete contrast to Haley however, I meanwhile decided to take my sweet ass time seeing as how I was in much less of a hurry than Haley was to bring myself back into that small, cramped hallway where the only thing bigger than our current situation was the hovering tension lingering over all of our heads.

I watched as an ambulance backed into the spot in front of me in a perfected motion of urgent carefulness as a teenaged EMT barely waited for the rig to finish parking before he jumped straight out of the backdoor, dragging a stretcher behind him that carried an elderly man who looked to be positively knocking on death's door.

I knew that it was rude of me to stare; my mother had been telling me that since I was a child, but at the same time, I just couldn't help it.

My pupils dilated and focused on the distant image as I stared hard and just began to wonder what the story of this man's life was; who he was, what he'd made out of himself, whether or not anybody would be waiting for him behind those ER doors; hoping and praying as they clustered closely amongst each other that he'll make it out of this one okay…

I wondered if there was anybody here, in the exact same spot where I was now when Sam had come out of her ambulance; if there was anybody around to care about the story of her life; who she was, what she'd made out herself, and whether or not anybody cared enough to hope and pray that she'd make it out of this one okay…

I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself positively hyperventilating. Suddenly, I just couldn't seem to be able to suck in enough oxygen to sustain my body anymore… I wondered if that's how Sam felt right now; I wondered if Sam was even able to feel anything right now…

I teetered over sideways, falling straight into the concrete wall as tears stung my eyes and I did absolutely nothing to try to stop them; I didn't care who saw, at this point, it didn't seem to matter…

Sinking down the cool concrete, I felt my body descend underneath me until my ass finally met with the solid ground below. I landed with a plop, but it just wasn't enough to satisfy my teeming frustration; it would never be enough… Winding up, I gathered all of my energy into the muscles of my arms and balled my fists so tightly my fingernails cut into the skins of my palm, plummeting both of my hands towards the concrete sidewalk below me in a fierce punch that had originated with such force, I felt something crack from somewhere deep inside the bones of my left hand… It stung with a sharp intensity, but I ignored it; and with a dull throb lingering in my knuckles, and an even deeper throb settling right in the center of my chest, I finally allowed myself to cry.

I heaved with great, powerful sobs for so long, I'd lost track of the time. I felt like I was getting positively eaten alive; crying for the two straight months of pain that had practically killed Brooke, that had put Sam in a position that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, but most of all, crying at the realization of how much this disease was not only killing Sam, but was slowly killing the rest of us too.


	40. Still I Can See the Light

**So, first of all I wanted to thank everybody for all the kind words you've been reviewing and everybody who's reading this story. I know I say it a lot but it really does mean the world to me so I appreciate it! And sorry for being an ass and making you guys wait an entire week but I kind of got caught up in all of the Thanksgiving hullaballoo so with that being said I hope everybody had a fabulous Thanksgiving, and if you don't live here in the US well I hope you had a fabulous normal Thursday.**

**One more thing, a lot of people have been asking and waiting patiently so (and if you don't want to know what happens don't read this) I am promising both julian and victoria back in the story spanning across the next two or three chapters so for all of you who have been waiting your time to shine is rapidly approaching!**

**With that being said hope you guys enjoy, here's the next chapter**

**

* * *

**Chapter 40: Still I Can See the Light

**Wednesday, December 21****st****, 2011**

**(Part II)**

**PEYTON**

There was a pretty substantial period of time in which the only noise that I actually heard from the confines of this crowded hallway was the sounds of Brooke's periodic choking sobs; so loud, they were powerful enough to even block out the variety of noises a crowded emergency room triage unit has to offer…

I held onto Brooke tightly; unable to do much to help her other than listen to her constant cries emitted alongside a steady stream of tears that had long since drenched the left sleeve of my t-shirt all the way through…

I had run out of ideas on how exactly it was I was supposed to provide comfort to her about ten minutes ago because at that point, I'd tried just about everything I could think of. The thing was, none of it worked… By now, the only thing I could do was pray to God that somebody who actually knew how to handle this situation would come out here soon and make something, anything happen that could possibly rectify this impossibly hopeless situation.

I was praying for an absolute miracle… of course, unfortunately for me, miracles had a tendency to pass right over me whenever I truly needed them the most…

"How the hell didn't I see this coming?"

Brooke hadn't spoken a single word in the twenty minutes or so since the nurse who'd come to claim Sam's medical information had left, since Lucas had gone wherever the hell he'd gone to call in our best of friends for back up… I guess that's probably why her words took me by such surprise…

"What?" She'd been quiet for so long that for a second there, I was convinced I'd simply made up the fact that she'd spoken, especially given the fact that I've been trying to get her to talk to me with such little success for so long now, that I was starting to believe she'd forgotten how to talk completely…

"How did I not even notice that my own kid was so sick?"

"Brooke, you can't think like that… Nobody could have seen this coming, Brooke, nobody could have ever thought… It's not your fault, Brooke."

For a while, Brooke made no motion of response towards my comment, and after a solid minute of silence, I was starting to think that maybe her brief bought of talking might have expired, and considering I knew from experience that she would only speak when she wanted to, I chose instead to enact a silent means of support. I reached down into Brooke's lap, grabbed onto her hand still stained with a thin layer of the iodine-like color of Sam's drying blood across her palm, and squeezed tightly.

"I can't do this." She whispered after a couple more seconds, her voice coming out so thin that I was surprised it didn't get lost in small space of air between our bodies.

"It's hard Brooke, I know it's hard, but you can do this." I spoke with the confidence of experience, from one person forever bound by grief to another…

"It should have been me."

"Don't." The word came out of my mouth instinctively; my mouth scolding Brooke on its own accord before my brain fully processed the severity of her proclamation. "Don't you dare say that Brooke; I know how hard this is, and I know that what you and Sam have to deal with is more than a tragedy, but Brooke, if she ever heard you saying things like that…"

Her eyes burned with tears and twitched under the desperation to control them from falling… I couldn't help but wonder how many tears a person could actually shed before their eyes simply shriveled up and fell right out of their head… Was that even possible?

"Brooke, you have made that girl's life the happiest she has ever known it to be, and there is gonna be much more where that came from, okay?" I gave her the smallest of smiles, trying desperately to stop her from crying, because Brooke Davis could be beautiful when she smiled… the thing was, these days, people rarely got an opportunity to see that side of her. "I know that it's not fair what you two have to go through Brooke, but you need to start looking at how amazing all of this time has been, not how amazing it could have been if you didn't have this in your lives… You'll drive yourself crazy going over all of these what-if's Brooke, trust me. Sam loves you no matter what happens… I know you know that."

The speech was as motivational as I could possibly muster at the moment, but still, I'm not sure that it achieved the desired effect I was going for.

"Hey, did you guys hear anything?" I wasn't sure if Brooke had any plans to respond, but whether she did or not, I would never know, because after a near solid half an hour of absence, Lucas chose the moment I was closest to achieving anything with Brooke to return…

I shook my head slowly, answering the question for both Brooke and I, particularly because Brooke had chosen to delve back into her previous routine of staring catatonic into an invisible interest point in the wall in front of her…

"Nathan and Haley are on their way," Lucas spoke with a loud confidence behind his voice, determined for Brooke to hear, determined to find anything to make her feel a little less broken than she did right now… But whether Brooke had actually heard him or not remained a mystery because she made no inclination towards either scenario…

"Brooke?"

The sudden presence of a voice that I managed to recognize as not belonging to me, Brooke, or Lucas stimulated a sudden shockwave through my body that sent my legs springing up so rapidly that I managed to shoot upright from my seat before anybody else.

Stumbling under the overwhelming dizziness that such a sudden motion enacted within my skull, I finally stabilized my body and focused my vision, finding myself so close to Dr. Miller's face that I could of freaking kissed her if I really wanted too… Of course, we'd see what she had to say first before I went that far…

Our heights were nearly matching, and if there was anything in this world that that was ever good for, it was to give me the ability to stop and get a good solid look into this doctor's eyes, to read her expression before she so much has opened her mouth and told you news on someone you loved… The thing was, the instant I so much as glanced through those deep, icy blue eyes, I knew… I knew in the time that it took for my heart to flutter and damn near completely stop that the news wasn't good.

And just as suddenly as I had stood up, I found myself back in my seat; fallen underneath the pressure of the realization that whatever it was that this woman had come out here to tell us, I wasn't so sure that I was ready to hear it…

* * *

**BROOKE**

"Brooke?"

People had been talking to me non-stop since I'd gotten to this god-forsaken hospital but the sound of my name being called by the familiar voice of Dr. Miller was the first god-honest word I'd actually _heard_ in hours… I guess that's why it took me an extra couple of seconds for me to actually process what was going on…

I stood last; unusual for me, I know, but when I did finally get up, I'd found myself strategically positioned directly between Peyton and Lucas… I couldn't tell if they'd did that on purpose or not, but I can tell you this much; I was grateful, because I knew that if Dr. Miller had come out here with anything less than good news and I crashed straight down to the ground below me, they would at least be there to catch me when I fell…

"Dr. Miller, did you hear anything about Sam?"

She grimaced… A word of advice; when your doctor grimaces at you, it means one thing and one thing only; that they do indeed have news; but it's not the kind of news that you're gonna wanna hear…

I willed my body to gain control of all emotion; I needed to prioritize, needed to focus on Sam… It was time to take a breath and stay infinitely strong, because I knew that if there was one thing that Sam needed right now, my courage was it, and even though it's hard to force yourself to remain strong after spending the past few hours fading into thin air, well you just have to hold your head up and remind yourself that we all fade sometimes… but it's only the strongest can manage to pick themselves back up…

"Brooke…" She was trying desperately to pull the right words together on the fly but I could tell by the look in her face that she was struggling. "Sam was very sick when she was brought in here tonight; I know you know that…" She was being cautious; I could hear it in her voice.

"Why don't you sit down…" That's what she'd ultimately settled on, and she attempted to enforce her suggestion by grasping gently onto my upper arm, motioning with her free hand towards the chair that I'd been sitting in all damn night… I didn't want to sit down again; in fact, that last thing that I wanted to do was to sit down, so instead of complying, I not-so-politely declined her offer.

"I'm fine," I spoke rather forcefully, the mere tone in my voice acting as a good enough catalyst in forcing the doctor's hand off of my arm.

"Okay…" She took a deep breath and contorted her face into the best neutral look that she could muster… she was stalling, trying desperately to find the means to relay the news to me gently but I couldn't help but wish she wouldn't… it was, if it was even possible, making me even more terrified… I could feel my heart racing in my chest, and I knew that if she didn't speak up soon, I risked having it positively explode through my very skin…

"Brooke, do you remember when we first put Sam in isolation? When I mentioned to you how prone Sam is right now to infections, and how difficult it will be for her body to clear one if it does enter her system?"

I nodded my head rhythmically up and down… that and crying; it seemed like those were the only two things I was capable of these days…

"Well, she caught one of those infections, Brooke… and it's a bad one."

"How bad?" My voice was barely a whisper; emitted as a high pitched squeak that I could barely recognize as coming from my own mouth.

She let out the smallest of sighs, and in her brief hesitation, I nearly snapped.

"Dr. Miller, please," I begged for an elaboration, "How bad is it?"

"Double pneumonia, Brooke,"

To my left, I watched through my peripherals as Peyton reached a hand up to her mouth in an effort to cover the look of wide-mouthed shock that had spread across her entire face… to my right, Lucas had suddenly developed the slightest hint of a twitch in the muscles surrounding his eyes, but me… well my entire body had suddenly went completely numb and I couldn't feel anything at all… I guess I could have at least made an attempt to fix that, the thing was, at this point, feeling absolutely nothing seemed like a much better alternative to feeling anything.

"Now we can't be certain where she actually caught this infection… It could be a progression of the infection she was admitted for on Saturday, but it's much more likely that it's something completely unrelated, but Brooke… it's in both of her lungs, and Sam… well her immune system is completely depleted; she just doesn't have the means to fight this off herself… We're doing everything we can for her now Brooke, but…" She paused, hesitating to speak the words that I already saw coming… "Sam's lungs have become virtually worthless, she's completely dependent on a ventilator right now…"

A single tear escaped from the corner of my eye… Stop this, Brooke… you're a strong woman, tears are the enemy, you are strong… I made the attempt to reach up and wipe it away, the thing was, my body was shaking so hard, I couldn't manage enough energy to so much as lift my hand.

"So… w-w-what does that mean?" I spoke with a stutter that made my question nearly incomprehensible and watched as Dr. Miller's face fell into a sympathetic look, reinforcing the fact that she'd been trying to tell me all along; the fact that I'd known before she'd even opened her mouth… And all at once, I felt it; hopeless for control as the mask of disbelief was lifted off of my face and my cheeks became sopping wet with understanding.

"Brooke… It is very… unlikely that Sam will ever wake up."

Her words didn't quite register in my head right away. In fact, the first thing I'd truly felt in response to her words was an overwhelming sense of compassion for this doctor…

I wondered how she'd ended up choosing this field of work… I wondered if she'd just woken up one day and decided that she wanted to spend her life surrounded by dying children… I wondered how many kids she'd had to watch die, I wondered how many devastated parents she'd had to deliver the bad news to…

And that was about the same time it all hit me… Sam had just become one of those kids; I had just become one of those parents… Dr. Miller had might as well just taken a knife, sliced open my stomach, and ripped out my very insides, because I suddenly felt very empty.

And then, all at once, everything inside of me seemed to rush straight into my head; overpowering me with such overwhelming force that I literally fell to the ground… Well, at least I'd anticipated on this happening, because Peyton and Lucas grabbed onto me underneath each arm, enacting their impressive reflexes to grab onto me just before I'd hit the floor… Of course, a tiny part of me wished they'd just let me fall…

With a solid grip under either arm, Peyton and Lucas lifted me into the chair Dr. Miller had been trying to get me to sit in all along just to prevent something like this from happening, and the second I felt my ass hit the solid plastic, I turned my head, hid it underneath the protection of the first thing I could find to lean on, and sobbed…

The bony joint that was so familiar to me it practically had an imprint of my face in it told me that I was currently staring into Peyton's shoulder… that is, if I could actually see anything through my thick fog of tears… I could feel her fingers lacing smoothly through my hair, I could hear the outline of words that I assumed were meant to comfort me filter through my ears, the thing was, I was way to wracked with emotions to actually make them count for anything.

"I'm sorry Brooke." The doctor spoke with a tone of empathy as she rested her hand gently on my shoulder… I could feel her extremity shaking slightly against my skin, and believe it or not, that slightest of actions is what ultimately made me feel better… not much better, but still, better…

"Can I see her?" I looked up and forced my senses to clear just so that I could see her answer.

"Of course," She nodded, "She's upstairs in pediatric intensive care; room 632… Do you want me to take you up there?"

I knew exactly where the pediatric intensive care unit was, I knew exactly where room 632 was… in fact, I probably could have gotten there blindfolded and walking backwards if I had to, but I nodded my head at her offer anyway, because there was a sense of comfort that came with having this woman at my hip that I wasn't ready to let go of quite yet.

We probably looked ridiculous… in fact, I would have bet my life on that fact as we travelled from the first floor emergency room, across the pavilion, six floors up in the elevator, through the inpatient wards, the outpatient chemotherapy rooms, and finally, into the pediatric intensive care unit, formulated into a tight, impenetrable diamond formation the entire time; Dr. Miller in the front, Lucas and Peyton on either side, and me, right smack in the middle of it all, being supported by bodies in every which side of me…

She brought us right up to the front of a closed door in the far corner of the elongated hallway. My eyes instantly dilated and focused on the small plaque outside of the door; the number '632' gleaming almost mockingly back at me with the name 'Davis' scribbled in an untidy scrawl directly underneath it…

My heart leapt up into my throat… it was the first time that Sam had been acknowledged as being a Davis here in this hospital, but the premises behind the situation just made it that much more painful…

"Brooke," Peyton's voice was what ultimately managed to pull me out of my trance; a stark reminder that there was still a world to be living in beyond this hallway. "You know that you don't have to do this alone, okay? I'll be right here for you."

She grabbed onto both of my shoulders carefully as Lucas took a couple steps backwards with the appreciated recognition that this was something that needed to be done simply between my best friend and I…

"I'll uh… I'll be right out here if you need me…" He made his presence known, hovering awkwardly over the bright orange plastic seats in the corner for a couple of extra seconds before depositing himself down in an effort to prove his statement…

"Are you ready?" Peyton asked, reaching out and taking a firm grip onto the metal doorknob however, waiting for my actual confirmation to make any move to open it.

"Ready as I'll ever be." I spoke through a deep breath in an effort to compose myself as Peyton's muscles contracted as she pushed strongly at the solid wood door until it opened just enough for us to be able to fit through.

With my breath stuck somewhere between my throat and my lungs, and my legs refusing to move, Peyton gave me a small tug through the vice grip she had on my shoulder to indicate to me to follow her forward…

The girl in this room couldn't be Sam… there was no way in hell, because I knew Sam, and this fragile body on this oversized bed wasn't Sam's… In fact, I had been so convinced that Dr. Miller had accidentally brought us into the wrong room that I stopped walking completely; my abrupt halt stopping Peyton directly in her tracks about halfway between the door and the bed containing this mystery girl that definitely was not Sam.

"Are you okay?" She spoke, but I didn't answer; I was too busy… too busy looking for any signs of Sam in here… I yearned to see it, begged to detect the fighter I knew to be in there somewhere underneath that skin and bones, but I couldn't find it… That's how I knew this just couldn't be Sam…

"Brooke, it's going to be okay." Peyton promised but there was no validity behind her argument, the premises were just too impossible to be able to believe…

I separated my steps out in an even rate; two or three paces forward… pause, regain bearings, and repeat… This even pattern lasted for several minutes as I got closer and closer to Sam, simultaneously finding it more and more difficult to convince myself that it wasn't her on that bed as the retreating distance between us began shedding light on some of her more prominent features…

I was ten feet away… five… one…

I watched her mechanically-induced breaths run evenly with ever step that I took; left foot forward; inhale, exhale; right foot forward; inhale, exhale…

I held my own breath instinctively; attempting to imagine how it was that Sam was feeling right now, attempting to put myself in her shoes, but most importantly, attempting to comprehend the fact that I knew that if Sam were to die here tonight, well they might as well write my name down on the grave stone right next to hers…

* * *

**NATHAN**

I have had a lot of weird, obnoxiously long days in my life. In fact, one might go as far as to declare me the king of weird, obnoxiously long days, but I have to say, I think this day could definitely make the top five.

I guess I should have known that any day that opened with the prospect of preparing for an early Christmas dinner with my mother would indicate nothing more than a long day… Christmas, I love to hate it… no, on second thought, I just hate it.

But surprisingly, I couldn't say that there was anything too out of the ordinary choosing to come to dinner with my mom tonight… Of course, by nothing too out of the ordinary I mean at least there were no fist fights, fires, mass casualty incidents, or anything else I've grown so accustomed to accompanying visits from my mother… Tonight, it was just the typical bull shit as usual.

And luckily for us, Haley and I had managed to survive it all, and I had finally found some excess time to relax on the couch; my wife leaned perfectly into my body watching as our son sat in the middle of the living room floor, eyes glued to the cartoons he watched every night before he went to bed…

And after he went upstairs, well then the possibilities were positively endless…

Of course, it had become obvious to me in my years of experience that if you are to ever find yourself wrapped up in a moment of perfection, something is bound to come along and ruin it, and tonight it did… in the form of my ringing cell phone; loud and persistent from its position all the way in the kitchen.

I groaned underneath the lost contact as Haley raised herself off of my body and stood in an effort to check what all of this commotion was about.

"Who would be calling at 9:00 at night?" She asked herself out loud, walking towards the kitchen as I simply continued looking straight ahead at whatever weird television show my son was watching, only vaguely interested to see who it was actually calling until that is, I heard an ounce of concern sneaking out of Haley's voice as she acknowledged the person on the other line… who turned out to be my brother.

"Luke… Are you okay?"

I immediately turned my head to face Haley who was leaning against the wall between the kitchen and the living room with a pronounced look of concern on her face. We locked eyes; her features widening with an expression of uncertain alarm as she offered a silent shrug towards my general direction to indicate that she had absolutely no idea what was going on.

"Lucas, what's going on? Is something wrong?" I strained my ears in an attempt to hear what Lucas was saying on the other side of the line, but my efforts proved worthless, and I was forced to settle for the next best thing; reading the expressions off of Haley's face.

I studied her features with careful interest, but the second I saw all of the muscles in her face sink so low they nearly touched the floor; I felt my heart drop right along with it… Whatever it was Lucas had to say, I knew in an instant that it wasn't good.

Haley's mouth fell open in apparent shock as her eyes scurried over to match mine; giving me a look that I was having a difficult time distinguishing.

"When… when did it happen?" Haley asked after several more seconds of silence. I recognized the situation as a serious one in an instant, and an effort to make any sort of contribution, I turned towards Jamie who's eyes were still firmly transfixed on the television screen, determined to keep him blissfully ignorant towards whatever it was that was going on right now… Keep him unaware that everything seemed to be positively falling apart at the seams around him…

"Hey Jamie," I called for his attention and he swiveled to face me as I attempted to make my shoulders as broad as possible in an effort to block him from seeing the frozen expression of anguish that was currently written across his mother's face. "Do you think you can do me a favor and head upstairs for a little while?"

"Am I in trouble daddy?"

"No bud, you're not in trouble, I just… I just need you to go get ready for bed, okay?"

"But dad, it's not a school night!" He whined and complained, and usually when this happened, I'd cave and let him stay up an extra couple of minutes simply to satisfy his TV cravings, but not tonight…

I opened my mouth, ready to strictly shoot down Jamie's desperate bid for more time, however, I found myself distracted by the sound of Haley's voice once again.

"How's Brooke?"

I took a sudden, sharp inhale, so harsh it got stuck painfully in the middle of my throat… In an instant, the pieces began to come together around me… Sam.

With adrenaline pouring through my veins and my heart pounding, I found myself automatically assuming the worst, making me temporarily forget what it was I was just doing before Jamie called me back to attention…

"Daddy, please can I just stay up for five more minutes?"

"Jamie… Go upstairs, now."

He must have noticed the sudden change in the tone of my voice… or maybe he'd seen the cold sweat that had broken out across my forehead because he didn't speak another word of protest; instead, he scurried up to his feet and practically ran up the stairs.

I watched him move with careful eyes, rushing to Haley's side the second I heard the confirming sound of Jamie's bedroom door clicking shut.

"Tell her I'll be right there." Haley spoke, hanging up the phone amidst her hand clutching to the small plastic device with white knuckles…

I waited for her to make a move; waited for her to tell me what that was all about, practically begged her with my eyes to tell me that what I had been thinking this entire time wasn't true, but when she didn't say anything, I was forced to instigate…

"Haley, what's going on?"

"It's Sam," She spoke as she moved; running through the house as she plucked her bag precariously off of the table in a desperate bid to be out the door as fast as she could. "Something happened to her Nate… Lucas said… he said it was bad."

Reaching downwards, she snagged the first pair of shoes she could find; a pair of heels that she usually only wore to work… She threw them onto her feet without even sitting down first, looking utterly ridiculous in pajama bottoms and five inch heels…

"Like… how bad?"

Haley didn't say anything, she just shook her head; a continuously revolving 'no' that made me realize instantly that the answer to my question was very bad…

"All Lucas told me was that it wasn't good… I don't… I don't really know the details."

I rubbed my hands awkwardly through my hair. I was never really good at these kinds of things; these catastrophes… You would think that after the amount of times I'd managed to find myself stuck in the middle of them I would be, but yeah… I wasn't.

"What do we do?" Haley had always been the best at these kinds of things; the person I'd learned to turn to when things went south.

"I'm going to the hospital to make sure Brooke is okay. I'm not sure how long I'll be over there so if you just want to put Jamie to bed and tell him I went… tell him I'm… I don't know…" She sighed in her indecision and I'll have to admit; the only thing that hurt worse than not knowing what to do myself was Haley not knowing what to do right alongside me… mainly because Haley always knew what to do when I didn't…

"I think I should come with you." Haley gave me a strange look; her face telling me I better explain myself, and I best do it fast, "To… to be there for Brooke too."

Haley stopped moving completely for what was probably the first time since she'd gotten off the phone with Lucas as she looked up at me with her eyebrows raised in total confusion towards my statement.

"But… but Jamie…" I could tell by the hesitation in her voice that she had a vague idea of where I was going with my statement… of course, whether or not she agreed with me was a whole different matter.

"Hales…" I sighed and reached over, placing my large hands on her tiny shoulders in an attempt to generate a joint calm between the two of us. "If this is really as bad as we think it is; I think that we should all go."

For a couple of seconds, Haley didn't say a word; she just looked determinedly directly into my eyes in a seeming attempt to read my very thoughts, but finally, she delivered a small, single nod of her head in a silent agreement.

"Okay," I nodded, removing my hands from my wife's shoulders, "I'll go tell him to get ready to go."

* * *

**JAMIE**

I'm a pretty smart kid… Or at least, people always tell me that I'm a pretty smart kid… so I guess it must be true… but I wasn't feeling very smart right now… In fact, I was just feeling kind of… confused.

I guess it all started on Monday.

Usually on school nights, momma makes me go to bed exactly at 8:30 after me and daddy watched ESPN news… But I guess because it's Christmas break or something and there's no school, momma let me stay up late on both Monday _and_ Tuesday night.

I was just starting to get really excited because I thought that maybe she would let me stay up late again tonight too, but then it happened… Momma got a weird phone call from Uncle Lucas and daddy made me go upstairs so early that it wasn't even my normal bed time yet, and I guess that's how I got here…

I was sitting on my bed playing with Chester when I finally heard my mom and dad coming up the stairs, and at first, I was scared because I thought they would yell at me for staying up and playing with Chester when dad sent me upstairs to get ready for bed, but when they came in my room, instead of looking mad, they just looked really, really sad.

"Jamie buddy, do you think we can talk to you for a minute?"

"Can Chester listen?" I asked as they both sat down next to me; my mom on one side and my dad on the other… I hoped they would say yes; I liked when I had Chester to keep me company when I was in trouble or when everybody was really sad because he was good at helping me not be so sad too.

"Sure he can, Jamie." Momma's voice sounded funny… it wasn't like how she usually talked… maybe that's why she didn't talk so much after that; instead she just reached down to pet Chester from inside my arms…

My dad put his hand down on top of my head so that it ruined my hair that I always liked to keep spiky because last year while we were at school Madison told me my hair looked cool like that… But I guess it would be okay for now, as long as it made him feel better and not look so sad.

"Jamie, we need you to get up and get dressed for us, okay? We have to go visit your Aunt Brooke and Sam."

Now I was even more confused than I even was before… My clock said that it was almost 10:00 at night, and I think that that's practically the latest I've ever been allowed to stay awake ever… We never, ever visited Sam and Aunt Brooke this late before; not unless we were having a sleep over.

I wondered if this meant that something bad happened to Sam… Momma always said that Sam was really, really sick… Maybe this meant that now Sam was really, really, _really_ sick.

"Is Sam okay, daddy?" They looked like they were afraid to tell me that there was something wrong with Sam, but I kind of wished that everybody would stop keeping such big secrets from me…They always thought that just because I was a kid that things like this would scare me, or that I wouldn't understand them but I didn't like when people thought like that… Sure, I maybe be a little kid, but I'm not a stupid little kid… I think that's why I missed playing with Sam so much. She always remembered that, she would always talk to me about stuff that made me feel like a big kid.

"Jamie honey, I know that you know that Sam has been sick for a long time now." I nodded my head because I wanted to show my mom that I understood so maybe then they wouldn't try to hide things about Sam being sick from me anymore… "Well… something happened to her tonight, Jamie, and now she's feeling even sicker than before, and Jamie… well Sam isn't doing very well buddy so I think that it's… important that we go see her and try to make her feel better."

I think that I understood… I mean, mom and dad looked really sad, and now Sam was really sick, so Sam being really sick must have been why they were so sad… I remembered how sad they looked when my friend Quentin died, so maybe… maybe this was kind of like the same thing… I remembered how sad I felt that day… I hope that this didn't mean that what happened to Quentin was going to happen to Sam too, because after Quentin went to heaven, I was sad for a long time and I missed him a lot… I didn't want to have to miss Sam a lot now too…

"And Jamie, you know, it's okay to be sad about Sam… I'm really sad about Sam, and I know that your mom is too." I turned to look over at my mom; I could tell that what my dad said was true because she was crying a little, and I hated it when my mom cried…

"What about Aunt Brooke? Is she gonna be sad too?"

"Your Aunt Brooke is especially sad, Jamie. She's even sadder than me and your dad right now." Momma told me, wiping her face really fast with her hands so that I wouldn't see her cry… I pretended like I didn't just because I didn't want to make her sadder than she already was. "That's why I think it's important that we try and make Aunt Brooke feel a little bit better right about now… What do you think, Jamie?"

I nodded my head really hard so that I made sure that my mom knew that I was ready to make Aunt Brooke and Sam feel better and not be sad anymore.

"I can do that momma." I told, hopping down off of my bed to put away Chester… I wanted to bring him to the hospital with me because Chester always made me feel better when I was sick, but momma told me a long time ago that Chester isn't allowed in hospitals and that he'd just have to make Sam and Aunt Brooke feel better when they got home.

I didn't even have time to get changed out of my Spiderman pajamas, that's how fast mom and dad carried me out of the house… In fact, they were moving so fast that I even had to buckle myself into my car seat just because they forgot to do it themselves…

The outside looks a lot different this late at night. I couldn't even remember ever being awake this late ever, let alone being allowed to go outside past my bedtime… I kind of wanted to stop and be able to see it all because I thought it was pretty cool to see Tree Hill like this, and when I told Chuck at school, it would make him so jealous, but momma was driving so fast that the only thing I could really see was the blurry lines of everything passing right past us.

When we finally did make it into the big parking garage right in front of the hospital, momma grabbed me by the arm and pulled me right out of the car, practically dragging me up towards the elevators… I pretty much had to run to keep up with her and daddy. I mean; I may be six years old and all, but I still have little legs…

Usually when we came to visit, momma lets me press the button in the elevator but I guess that today she was so busy worrying about Sam and Aunt Brooke that she forgot… Instead, she pressed the number six by herself, hitting it so hard I thought she might break it… but I guess she didn't because the elevator still took us up, dropping us off where it always does in the middle of the sixth floor, except this time, instead of making a left like we usually did when we came here to visit Sam, we made a right; and I was just about to tell my mom that I thought we were going the wrong way, but then I saw Uncle Lucas…

"Lucas!"

Momma dropped my hand and ran over to Uncle Lucas to give him a big hug… it was only a few seconds later when daddy went to do the same thing. I didn't really know what I should do because mom and dad never usually leave me alone when we're out in a strange place like this, and even though they were only a little bit in front of me, and I could still see them and all, I didn't want to move… There were so many big doors, and scary machines, and people I've never seen before that all I really knew to do was just stand there…

"Jamie! Jamie, honey I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to leave you by yourself." My mom must have noticed after a couple of minutes that I was standing in the middle of the hallway by myself because she practically ran back to me and scooped me up so that we were almost eye-to-eye.

"Jim-Jam, how are you doing bud?" Uncle Lucas tried to make his voice sound like it always did when he said hi to me, but as hard as he tried, there was something different about the way he sounded… He looked tired, like he did when it got really late and I forgot to take my nap after school, but still, he held his hand up for me so that I could give him a high five…

I wound up my arm and gave him the hardest high five I think I've ever given anyone ever because usually when I do that, Uncle Lucas would tell me how strong I am which I liked because I've been working hard to get strong like my dad, but he didn't do that this time… It made me remember that he must be really sad about Aunt Brooke and Sam too… and that made remember that so was I.

"Lucas, where's Brooke, what happened?" Mommy was talking really, really fast and really, really loud but the only thing Uncle Lucas did to answer her question was shake his head really slow and point to a big door behind us with the curtains over the windows so that we couldn't see anything inside, but I guessed that that must be where Sam and Aunt Brooke were…

"Brooke and Peyton went in there about twenty minutes ago… I haven't really seen them since… Peyton's trying to talk to her now."

"Okay… I'm gonna go see if Peyton needs some help with Brooke… Will you two watch Jamie?" I looked up when I heard my mom say name… Maybe things weren't so bad after all; I mean, I got to stay up really late _and_ I got to hang out with Uncle Lucas while I did it…

"Okay Jamie, I want you to stay right over here okay?" My mom put me down on top of this big orange seat in the corner of the room that was so high up my feet didn't even touch the ground. "I'm gonna be right back but while I'm gone, I want you to take care of your daddy and your Uncle Lucas for me, okay?"

I smiled and nodded my head really hard because I wanted my momma to know that I could definitely take care of them.

"Okay then…" I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or not because she stood up, ready to leave even though I kind of didn't want her to… but she did anyway; taking a few steps over towards the closed door that Uncle Lucas had just shown us a little while ago, took a deep breath, and finally, pushed it open a little bit; not enough so that I could see inside, but just enough so that she could walk inside, close it behind her, and disappear completely…

* * *

**HALEY**

I walked across the barrier formed by the heavy wooden door separating the hallway from Sam's room, using the small crack of light as a guide as it filtered in a growing pyramid; lighting the dark room with the fluorescent glow from the hallway…

Closing the door behind me, I made it a point to move as slowly and as quietly as I could possibly muster, just because I felt like the slightest disturbance would be enough to cause a sonic boom that would blast everything apart, breaking the thin seams we were already somehow managing to hang by…

My heavy breaths echoed across the emptiness as I slowly approached the curtain drawn across what was undoubtedly Sam's bed, safely tucking away not only her, but Brooke and Peyton as well… In fact, just as quickly as the thought entered my mind, I caught a glimpse from the small space between the curtain and the floor; a pair of black converse sneakers, marching a steady beat as they paced back and forth like an endless metronome…

Peyton.

I took another step forward, but this time, and I'll absolutely swear to this, the temperature dropped instantly; a solid ten degrees as if I'd just stepped between a barricade between worlds; the awkward in between that separated the dead and the living…

I hesitated only briefly before grasping onto the edge of the curtain with shaking hands; pulling it back slowly as to not alarm anybody on the other side.

"Brooke…" I spoke quietly, forced to take a step back as the light hovering over Sam's bed hit my dark-adjusted eyes so suddenly it hurt… My eyes blurred over for a moment, confused by the rapid constriction of my pupils before they finally managed to focus on Peyton, who had stopped pacing the instant I'd entered the room in order to look right up at me…

My eyes lingered directly beyond Peyton's shoulder at Brooke… poor Brooke, who didn't even move in recognition of her name being called… In fact, I was starting to think that she hadn't even heard me; all she did was stare; stock still and back straight, keeping a steady, uninterrupted watch on the sickly body below her…

Sam;s pale skin blended so perfectly against the white sheets that for a while, I didn't even realize that there was actually a person there at all… I froze in instant shock in my absolute refusal to recognize the person lying on this bed in front of me as actually being Sam… but I leaned in a little bit closer, took a couple extra steps forward, and there it was; like a slap across my face… But it couldn't be her; there was no way in hell that an actual human being still existed within that shell of the lively teenager I used to know…

And all at once, I suddenly felt as if I couldn't breathe… I swear, Sam might as well have reached up and wrapped her hand in a vice grip around my throat, because just by looking at her, I felt as if I were dying too.

I had been so focused on the initial shock delivered to me from seeing Sam for the first time, that when Peyton physically ran up to me and pulled me into a bone crushing hug, it had been so unexpected, I literally got the wind knocked right out of me.

I felt what little oxygen I had left in my lungs get pushed out in a millisecond as I struggled to suck enough air into my body for the hours it seemed like, that Peyton held onto me…

I forced myself away from her just before I started to get light headed, asking all of the questions I had with one silent facial expression, but all Peyton could do to respond was shrug her shoulders and shake her head, indicating to me that wherever Brooke's mind was at right now, she wasn't letting anybody into it with her…

I contorted my face into a look of genuine concern, stepping towards Brooke where I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently, filtering as much comfort from my veins to hers as I possibly could; but still, she wouldn't acknowledge me; she didn't move, she didn't speak, she didn't so much as twitch… she just kind of sat there, staring straight down at Sam without even blinking as she cradled the girl's right hand in a cocoon she'd formed out of the both of her own.

"Brooke honey…"

She jumped at the sound of my voice, startled by the suddenness of its appearance as if I hadn't already done everything in my power to make my presence adequately known to her… and for the first time since I'd entered this damn room, Brooke finally tore her eyes away from Sam.

"How are you holding up?" It was a stupid question, the thing was, I realized that it was the wrong thing to say a little bit too late… For a second there, Brooke didn't say anything, but her silence just proved to be the eye of the storm, if you will, because not two seconds later, the tears came; prominent and numerous… as I'm sure they've been doing all night long.

"They say… they told me that she… that she caught pneumonia somehow… and her immune system is shot from the chemo… she's not strong enough to fight it." Her words were broken up in between sobs while meanwhile, she was finding it very difficult to retain any sort of state of coherence with people like me filtering in and our forcing her to relive what was easily the worst day of her life over and over again...

"Shh… Brooke, it'll be okay, she'll be okay… You know Sam, you know how much she loves to keep us on her toes before she goes and defies the odds…" I told her with a small laugh to lighten the air, of course, Brooke wasn't having any of it… I had to give it to her though; I knew that probably the only way Brooke could ever find comfort in this situation was if Sam herself was the one to provide it… of course, that wasn't a prospect I was counting on any time soon, so instead, I switched to plan B; that is, trying to get Brooke to focus on somebody other than Sam for a little while… like herself.

"Brooke, how long have you been sitting here?"

She didn't answer my question; a gesture that made me assume the answer to my question to be a very long time.'

"Brooke, honey listen to me… you need to take care of yourself too… You'll be no good to Sam if you're lying in the hospital bed right next to her…" I hoped she would get the gist of what I was trying to tell her, but the empty look that continued to span across her eyes made it difficult to tell exactly what she was thinking…

"I'm not leaving her." Brooke stated her position in the matter firmly, and Peyton and I exchanged looks that were positively equal in expressing our concern towards Brooke.

"Brooke… maybe just… maybe just let me take you to the vending machines to get something to eat… You haven't eaten all day Brooke, and look at you, you're exhausted… Sam needs you to be strong for her for when she wakes up." I nodded my head absentmindedly towards Brooke, agreeing wholeheartedly with Peyton's mini-speech while simultaneously noticing the emphasis she'd placed on the word 'when'… a good alternative to using the word 'if'… even if that was what we were all thinking.

"I guess… I guess I could use something to eat." Brooke spoke hesitantly; torn between providing herself with the sustenance her body so craved and keeping an endless vigil at Sam's bedside… To me and Peyton, the answer was obvious; of course, things weren't quite that simple in Brooke's mind…

"Okay, come on, I'll take you down the hall, Haley will stay here with Sam." Peyton grasped a firm handful of Brooke's upper arms and helped ease her into a standing position as I backed off a little and nodded slowly with my arms crossed across my chest to indicate my acceptance of Peyton's assigned task.

I watched as Brooke stood under shaky legs, standing to her feet; her eyes barely leaving Sam's prone form as she took one step… two steps… and then, right before she managed to get another one in, it happened; she shook where she stood for a couple of seconds, her knees quivering dangerously before they finally collapsed underneath her, sending her body sprawling rapidly to the ground.

I froze at the sight; grimacing as I heard the sound of Brooke's kneecaps connecting painfully with the solid tile floor, but in contrast to Peyton, who moved like lightning to catch Brooke before she had the opportunity to fall any further, I couldn't move.

It's hard to describe in words a grief that is so severe that your body physically collapses underneath the pressure of it all… that feeling where a streamline of fight-or-flight responses get triggered one after the other so rapidly that the only response you can come up with is to just shut everything down completely, reboot yourself in one final effort to achieve the calm you so desperately craved…

For a solid minute, Brooke's eyes remained glossed over dangerously; expressionless, motionless, and leaving Peyton and I to desperately attempt to rouse her with absolutely no success…

"Brooke, Brooke come on, look at me!" I slapped at her cheeks lightly, resilient in my assault against her face until I saw that light switch click on somewhere in the back of her head, leaving her to shake her head quickly and slowly focus her eyes as she turned up to face me.

"Haley… what happened?"

"You kind of zoned out there for a minute," I explained to her, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine… I'm fine," She told us, and just as Peyton and I looked at each other with tight hands grasping respectively underneath each of Brooke's arms, and a skeptical look across our faces... Brooke caught us off guard; attempting to push herself up so fast that we couldn't even do anything about it as Brooke unsuccessfully attempted to regain access to her feet, only to falter and land right back down in the exact same position she'd started in…

"Brooke…" Peyton started, but Brooke stopped her in her tracks before she could even think about finishing her sentence.

"Don't." She warned her sternly, "Don't say it Peyton, I'm fine." She struggled a second time to force her body into an upright position, this time finding much more success as Peyton and I practically lifted her to her feet before forcing her into a nearby chair.

"We just watched you pass out Brooke! You are far from fine… come on, let me take you home; you can eat, take a shower, get some sleep… I'll bring you back here in a few hours to be with Sam… Come on Brooke, Sam would kill you if she saw what you were doing to yourself."

Peyton presented a valid argument, but it didn't matter; through her tired eyes, Brooke contorted a look of determined stubbornness on her face and shook her head harshly.

"You don't get it Peyton I can't just leave her here!" Brooke practically shouted, "What if she wakes up, what if something happens and I'm not here to let her know that everything is gonna be alright?"

"I'll stay," I spoke so quickly that I didn't even think about the possible implications of pulling an all-nighter at the hospital would be; not for me, and definitely not for my husband and five year old son still waiting outside in the hallway…

"I'll stay…" I spoke again, this time much slower, much less confident than the last time. Brooke stared me down; evaluated my sincerity up and down, and dare I say; I think I may have seen a genuine look of consideration behind her eyes.

"What if something happens to her?"

"I will call you the second anything changes, Brooke."

She stared through me so hard that I could physically see the wheels churning behind her translucent eyes as she conducted an inner debate inside of her head… If you asked, I would have sworn to you that our staring contest had lasted hours, but just as suddenly as that thought entered my head, she ripped her eyes away from mine and turned, walking with shaky legs back towards Sam so that I couldn't tell exactly what her final decision had been…

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the heartbreaking scene; all I could do was watch as Brooke grasped onto the girl's hand with one of her own, leaned forward, and planted a soft lingering kiss on the top of Sam's exposed forehead.

"I'll be back soon Sam, I promise…" Her voice shook and echoed across the otherwise silent room as Brooke fell over her daughter's prone body, admitting her defeat in her willingness to leave, "You just make sure that you stay strong for me while I'm gone."

I turned away, pretended as if I hadn't been listening in on this conversation that seemed to be a very private moment meant to be conducted between mother and daughter only… But it didn't seem to matter, because Brooke seemed to be done anyway; loosening the grip she had around Sam's hand one finger at a time before finally, she let go completely, retreating from the bed and back towards where Peyton and I were standing in the doorway.

"Thanks for staying with her, Haley." She spoke; wrapping me into a gentle hug that I could tell took all of the strength her muscles could muster to perform.

"She'll be okay Brooke." I whispered into her ear as I gently rubbed her back from behind, "She's a strong kid and she's got a good mom at her side to help her through it all."

Brooke couldn't manage much more than a simple smile at my words, nodding through teary eyes as she pulled away from my body and was lead closer towards the door by Peyton who was absolutely refusing to let go of Brooke's arms for fear that the woman would keel over the second she did…

"I'll bring her back over here as soon as she gets some sleep Hales," Peyton assured me, pulling me into an awkward one-armed hug; the only thing she could really manage while still holding tightly onto Brooke, "Thanks for doing this."

"Hey, it's no problem Peyton, really… Just make sure you take care of her, okay?"

Peyton nodded her assurance; a silent affirmation that she'd managed to take care of Brooke in her darkest of times several times before, and that she was sure as hell prepared to do it again… and I believed that she would try, really I did, but I had the strangest feeling that there wasn't much right now that anybody could do that would truly make Brooke feel better… except maybe make Sam magically well again.

I watched as the duo exited the room; Peyton practically dragging Brooke across the floor until they were behind the curtain and finally out the door completely… For a moment, I stood my ground, staring blank and expressionless into the middle of this dark, dreary hospital room, just trying to figure things out and organize the jumble that had steadily been taking over my brain this past hour or so…

Of course, I couldn't say I had achieved total calm by the time I'd actually turned to retreat back into the room, but I'd made a promise to Brooke; a promise that I was determined to keep, so I dropped my ass down in the seat Brooke had just been sitting in, still warm from its previous use, rested my elbows against the bed rails, buried my face into my hands, and did the only thing I could think of doing… I talked.

"Come on Sam don't do this to your mom…" I begged of her quietly, "I know that it's hard but you have to be strong for her… for all of us." I sighed heavily and leaned back against my seat, closing my eyes tightly… I didn't know what to do, I didn't know if I was physically capable of doing much of anything at the moment; in fact, there were so many options flying at me in so many different directions that they all meshed together in a way that made it so that I couldn't even focus on any particularly distinct one… I guess I was just scared that if I so much as moved, I would just get more scared all over again, and after that… well who the hell knows what would happen…

My thoughts quickly strayed to Nathan and Jamie; my two boys that I had insisted on dragging to the hospital in an effort to give an opportunity to see Sam one last time if that's what it boiled down to, and here I was, sitting on my ass alone in this empty hospital room, leaving them to do… god only knows what outside…

It's strange really; probably one of the hardest choices I would have to make all night; deciding whether or not I wanted to expose Jamie to the horrors of seeing Sam in the state she was currently in, but for some reason, it was the only decision that I'd managed to make without even having to think about it…

Instead, my legs simply forced my body into a standing position, pushing myself away from Sam's bedside with the idea in mind that as long as I was only gone for a second, I wouldn't be breaking my promise to Brooke not to leave Sam's side all night, as I headed towards the door…

The dramatic difference between the darkness of Sam's room and the brightness of the hallway I'd just entered was enough to make my eyes water momentarily until eventually, they managed to focus on the image of Nathan and Jamie sitting side by side in a small row of chairs outside of Sam's door with matching looks of worried exhaustion on their faces… It was one of those exceedingly rare moments where you could truly see how much Jamie and Nathan actually looked alike… the ones where the only difference between the two of them seemed to be eighteen years…

Jamie emitted an impressive yawn; his legs dangling impatiently back and forth from their mid-air position hanging off of the same seat I'd left him in before I'd entered Sam's room… I could tell he was tired, and to tell you the truth, he had every reason to be… the poor kid had been dragged out of his bed and into a hospital, forced to sit and wait for news that he could barely understand pertaining to a friend that he loved so much... a friend that he could be forced to watch die at a moment's notice...

"How are you holding up, buddy?"

"Momma!" Jamie responded to my question with an un-answering statement, but I couldn't pretend as if his expression of excitement upon seeing me was a total disappointment... He ran full force into my awaiting arms, and I grabbed onto him around his tiny shoulders tightly, pulling his body into my own, almost afraid that if I were to let go of him now, I would simply lose him forever...

"Is Sam feeling better yet momma?"

My heart froze; I hated being the one to tell Jamie that one of his closest friends was sick, was dying… And it wasn't fair to anybody involved that this wasn't the firs time that I'd had to do it either…

"No Jamie, Sam is still feeling very sick… But you know, I was thinking, I bet she can use some more company in there to try and make her feel better, what do you say?"

I watched as his little face turned upward to match my own, his features brightening with understanding.

"Can I?"

"Yeah… come on Jamie…" Nathan added his two-cents, determined to make a contribution as he grabbed onto the boy underneath the armpits and hoisted him into the air; whether to keep his son, or himself comfort, I couldn't be too sure…

"Now listen Jamie, I know that Sam might look a little bit scary, but you shouldn't be afraid, all right? All that stuff is just to help make Sam feel better."

"I won't be scared momma." He nodded his head and put an honest look on his face to let me know he was telling the truth… The boy was as tough as nails, just like his dad… I could only thank God that he didn't inherit my non-existent gene for emotional stability…

"Alright… are you ready?" Jamie nodded his head in response to my question, and I couldn't help but notice that Nathan did too…

"Okay then…" I extended my arm forwards, opening the door and motioning for them to take the lead, even though, as the only experienced one in this situation, it should have been me to go in first… but I couldn't; I couldn't find it in me to see the expression painted over my son and my husband's face that I knew would surface in response to the first time they saw Sam… I just couldn't.

"Is that really Sam in there, momma?" Jamie asked as I settled myself down into the chair next to Sam's bed, pulling Jamie out of Nathan's arms and into my awaiting lap so that he could see her better…

"Yeah buddy… that's Sam in there.

"Do you think that she knows that we're here?" I nodded the assurance of my belief that Sam knew we were all here rallying for her to get better as I rubbed my hand gently over the top of Jamie's head.

"She definitely knows that we're here for her, buddy…" It was genuine; really, I knew that wherever Sam was right now, she was definitely getting a hell of a laugh at all of us crammed, worried to death at her bedside in the middle of the night, just because that was the kind of person that Sam was. "And you know, I bet that she can hear you if you talked to her too… It might be nice of you to tell her how much you want her to get better, what do you think?"

"I think I can do that." He told me quickly, never once taking his eyes off of Sam as he paused briefly before leaning in so close to the girl, they were nearly nose to nose….

"Hi Sam, it's me… Jamie… My momma told me that you can hear me even though you're sleeping so I wanted you to know that I hope you feel better soon because I really miss being able to play with you."

He swiveled around in his chair mid-speech, eyes wide and desperate for assurance that he'd said the right thing… I'll tell you what; he was doing a hell of a lot better a job than I could have ever done, that's for sure.

"That's great Jamie, you're doing fine…"

He turned back to Sam, determined to keep showing that he could do this, but the only thing he managed to achieve was opening and closing his mouth a couple of times; unsure exactly what to say, not really knowing what he should be doing next, resulting in a period of extended silence that literally left me freezing inside…

His eyes looked sad; confused as if he believed he was doing something wrong in a way I wished he would never have to experience, but obviously already did… I scratched at the side of my head quickly, my brain literally itching it was so tired from thinking so hard before I finally reached down subconsciously and grabbed a firm hold around Sam's hand; afraid that maybe, just because the sound of our voices had dissipated, in her unconscious state, she would have thought that maybe we'd left her alone…

"You did great Jamie… you did great." I recognized his inability to produce anymore words of comfort and let him off the hook before he started feeling too badly about himself, using my free hand to pull him in closer to me while meanwhile staring down at my fingers still firmly interlocked amongst Sam's… and that's about the time I started to wait.

I waited right there, in that exact spot, pretending that maybe if I waited long enough, Sam would wake up magically healthy, everything that had gone wrong with her body suddenly disappearing…

I waited until Jamie had fallen asleep, curled into a ball on top of my lap. I waited until my legs finally went numb under the pressure of his wait. I waited until Nathan finally sunk into a seat, spending several minutes nodding off randomly before the temptation of sleep simply became too much for him to fight anymore…

I couldn't tell you how long I sat there, how long I stared, how long I prayed… but I can tell you this much; after a while, my stomach physically started to hurt from lack of sleep, I saw flecks of red and orange light emitted from the rising sun started infiltrating the otherwise darkened ICU bedroom, and I felt as my eyes finally reached that threshold of exhaustion so deep they couldn't even feel it anymore…

An entire night's worth of vigilance under my belt, just sitting, staring, praying...

But no matter how many times I thought I saw it; Sam didn't move a single inch.


	41. Tattered and Worn

**Hey guys, so here's the next chapter. Sorry it's a little bit late but here's the deal; my finals week isn't this week, but the week after so things are slowly starting to get really, really hectic so I can't promise too much for the next two weeks, but the good news is that after that, I have an entire month at my leisure so I'm hoping to get a lot of chapters up then. Anyway, thanks you once again for reading and for all your kind words in reviews and such I love you all you make me so happy hahaha. So thanks again and I hope you enjoy this one.**

Chapter 41: Tattered and Worn

**Thursday, December 22****nd****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I woke up the next day blatantly straddling the edge of the morning and the night before… Through my open blinds, I saw the morning sunrise raising in a compilation of red and orange, somehow blending together to form that perfect shade of early morning blue; the weather mocking me with what was bound to be yet another beautiful day outside…

Of course, when I said "woke up", I meant it in the absolute loosest of ways, especially considering how difficult it is to wake up when sleep was something that never actually happened to begin with…

I spent the majority of my night lying in bed; eyes staring straight up at the ceiling the entire time as I slowly faded in and out of consciousness throughout the night; fifteen minutes of sleep here, a half hour there… never completely asleep, but at the same time, never quite awake ever.

By the time 5:00 rolled around, I'd finally given up all together; instead choosing to simply lay there, periodically sneaking glances over at the clock every couple of seconds or so just waiting for a time of day acceptable enough for me to get up again and pretend to Peyton that I'd actually gotten a decent enough night's sleep to convince her that I was ready to go back to the hospital and visit Sam.

The last time I'd checked, it was 6:43 in the morning, but that felt like at least an hour ago… it had to be at least 8 by now, maybe even 9…

I swiveled back around and focused on the digital clock hanging behind my head… 6:58.

Shit.

Okay, screw this… I was sick of pretending that I was actually in her getting a good night's sleep while my daughter was dying simply to please Peyton… I was sick of everybody telling me that I wasn't fine when I so obviously was, and most of all, I was sick of everybody trying to hold my hand and guide me through the motions of taking care of my own daughter… I've been taking care of myself for this long; I could do it for a little bit longer, and frankly, I was starting to get offended.

I pushed myself out of bed, determination written across my face as I stretched widely and attempted to convince my body that it had actually been well rested…

I tip-toed out of my bedroom door, walking on the balls of my feet so that I could remain as silent as possible, the idea being that maybe if Peyton was still asleep, I'd be able to sneak out of the house, get to the car, and drive over to see Sam before she found an opportunity to stop me and tell me that I looked like I needed another few hours of sleep, or that I needed to eat, or that I needed to shower all before she would take me back to the hospital…

I got all the way to the hallway… in fact; I'd made it half way down the corridor before I was forced to do a double take… My eyes widened and a loud gasp escaped from the back of my throat as my heart began to race and sweat beaded down my forehead because I would have sworn to God that I'd just seen Sam walking out of the bathroom…

Panting heavily, I stared down the empty hallway; not moving, not even blinking as I focused in on the closed bathroom door, but there was nothing there… I knew it was impossible, I knew it made me sound crazy, but I've been seeing Sam wandering around this God-awful house ever since I'd gotten home yesterday… I couldn't help but wonder that meant… I mean, did it make me crazy that I was seeing ghosts of the living?

"What are you doing up?"

I lost my means for a silent escape as quickly as I'd put it all together as Peyton rounded the corner. With my face still wide in shock, I looked past her shoulder instead of directly at her, still looking for what I know I didn't see, for what I knew I could never see…

"Brooke?"

"Huh?" I shook my head of such ridiculous thoughts and concentrated once again on Peyton, because I knew that if I started acting as crazy as I felt right now, I would never have the opportunity to go back and see Sam.

"I was just wondering what you're doing up so early?" She took a couple of steps closer to me extending a full mug of coffee in my general direction that I accepted absentmindedly but didn't drink out of.

"I'm an early riser." I shrugged my shoulders in time with the movements of her eyebrows as they arched skeptically in my direction… if there was one thing of the millions of things that Peyton Sawyer knew about me, it was that I was a lot of things, but an early riser was not one of them.

"Nice try there, Brooke… How did you sleep?" I was more than certain that she knew the answer before I even had the opportunity to open my mouth and lie about it.

"Fine…" She gave me a look but didn't push me beyond that, a fact that I was beyond grateful for.

"So… I was thinking, maybe I'll take you out to breakfast or something real quick and then we can head over to the hospital… how does that sound?"

My head perked upward faster than it had in days… that sounded like a plan if I'd ever heard of one before.

"What did you have in mind?"

"I don't know," She shrugged her shoulders, "I was thinking anything that would get you to actually eat maybe… Brooke, I'm starting to get worried about you. I need you to take care of yourself too… I mean, I know you wanna just focus all of your attention on Sam, but… there's two parts of this equation Brooke, and it sucks that you have handle both of them right now, but remember… you don't have to do it alone, okay?"

She rested her hand gently against my shoulder as I nodded my head slowly, but still, I didn't say anything… I didn't know what to say; I knew that she had a very good point in what she was trying to tell me, but how was it that I was supposed to bring myself to take care of me when my child was positively knocking on death's front door?

"Listen Brooke, how about you go get dressed… I'll get us ready to get out the door, okay?"

There was no room to argue, and besides, I didn't have the energy to do it anyway… If it was up to me, I would have already been out the door, but of course, I was slowly accepting the fact that it wasn't up to me… nothing seemed to be anymore…

I dragged myself into my bedroom, not even bothering to shut the door behind me as I violently stripped myself of my pajamas, the mindset being that the faster I got ready, the faster Peyton would take me to Sam…

With my shirt half way over my head, the sudden sound of my cell phone blaring loudly from its position on my bedside table caused me to stop with a sudden, heart-stopping panic… There was only one reason that anybody would be calling me this early in the morning… Sam.

I finished pulling my shirt over my body; sprinting, clad in only a tank top and my underwear towards my bed where my phone was still ringing at me angrily, begging to be answered… Okay Brooke, relax; this doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing…

I dove over my bed, knocking a lamp harshly over in the process, barely even noticing as it shattered to the ground at the same time I ripped the phone forcefully from its charger, bringing it upwards with a shaking hand in an effort to identify the origin of the caller.

Julian…

It's been a while since I talked to Julian; in fact, ever since or last encounter more than a week ago now… you know, the one that ended with him leaving for Los Angeles, I haven't seen, spoke, or heard a single word from him…

It wasn't that I was mad at him; in fact, at this point, I was more mad at myself for letting him go than I was at him for leaving in the first place, the thing was that life, combined with about 3,000 miles got in the way of anything even close to an apology…

He'd left on Thursday… and Friday, well it just seemed too soon for me to make a move, then on Saturday, after Sam began the series in the steep decline of her health, well, to be completely honest, the idea of making amends with Julian was pushed to the very bottom of my list of things to do.

It all seemed so irrelevant now… I mean, yeah, we fought, and yeah, in the midst of that fight, I had my reasons for staying just like he had his reasons for leaving, but you know what they say about reasons… they're constantly changing; almost as fast as the days that come and go in the blink of an eye; the ones that continue to cycle no matter how ready you actually are for them…

You know the saying time heals all wounds? Well maybe, even though time was working against us in our fight to save Sam's life, at the same time maybe, just this once, it could work in my favor in bringing me and Julian back together.

Looking quickly back down at the phone, I released a loud sigh before slipping stealthily into my bathroom, desperate to keep this conversation private from the prying ears of Peyton before I finally answered the phone call that I'd waited so long to respond too, I was afraid I'd miss it.

"Julian, hi,"

It was less than an enthusiastic response, but honestly, it was all that I could really manage at the moment, as nice as it maybe have been to hear Julian's voice again.

"Hey yourself,"

"What are you doing up so late?" I asked, trying to initiate casual conversation as I struggled to come up with the gentlest way to break the news about Sam to him, "Isn't it like… 4:00 in the morning in L.A.?"

"Yeah well, I'm just getting off the set and finally caught a break. I figured I'd call, I mean, I haven't really talked to you or Sam in a while…" He trailed off, not even bothering to point out the reason behind his extended silence because we both knew how much it was currently lingering in the backs of our minds right now…

"Listen, I know that I didn't really leave under ideal circumstances…" He forced the acknowledgment of his terms of departure out of his mouth harshly but continued to speak so fast that he knew there wouldn't be a chance in hell for me to chime in with my opinion… not that I really planned on doing so anyway, "And I know that I said it might be a while before I made it back home, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm gonna be around for Christmas this year, I can fly in that morning… I mean, you know, if that's alright with you… I know that Sam asked me to come and I'm not sure if she's mentioned it to you or anything but…"

He trailed off as my heart dropped with the mention of Sam's name… it was the way that Julian spoke of her; so casual in his naivety of the fact that it didn't really matter whether or not Sam wanted him home for Christmas because of the high chance that she wouldn't even be around anymore to see that day come…

"Brooke…?" I'd waited so long to respond to his hinted question as to whether or not he would still be welcomed into my house that I think I made him nervous… The truth was, I would give anything to see him right now; anything to find that familiar comfort in his arms, anything to have him tell me that things will be alright… but I just couldn't bring myself to be enthusiastic about it; not when Sam couldn't be right there at my side to share it.

"Yeah," I spoke, not really sure exactly what I was agreeing to, just knowing that I needed to say something, "Yeah Julian… that would be great."

"Hey, are you okay? You sound tired." He'd finally picked up on my obviously unusual tone, and now fronted with the acknowledgment of how weird I was acting, I was suddenly at a loss for words… instead, I simply opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, searching for the right thing to say, but nothing ever came out…

"Brooke?" He asked, making sure that I was still there, probably because I'd been silent for so long that he probably thought I'd hung up on him or something, "Brooke, what happened? What's going on?"

I sniffled harshly, and probably a little bit too loudly, because Julian had caught it.

"Brooke, please, what's going on? Is it Sam? Brooke… is Sam okay?"

"Something happened last night, Julian…" My eyes began to well with tears as my voice came out in a soft, high pitched whisper.

"What? Brooke… what happened?" His voice sounded panicked; attentive and ice cold… of course, this didn't make telling him any easer; especially considering the fact that Julian was supposed to be the rock I held onto when things got tough… How the hell was I supposed to hold onto him when he was falling apart just as quickly as I was?

"She got sick…"

"How sick?" He begged me to elaborate, begged me to stop speaking with only context clues that forced him to assume only the worst.

"They say… they say she caught pneumonia, Julian… They don't think she's gonna make it through this one. It's bad Julian, it's really bad…" Tears streamed down my face, no less prominent, no less numerous than they had yesterday… I was starting to wonder if there was a limit on just how much a person could cry before they simply ran out of tears… apparently there wasn't, because if there was, I would have run out a long time ago.

There was silence on the other end of the line for a long time; in fact, the only thing that kept me from thinking that Julian had just dropped dead completely upon hearing the news was his heavy breathing, still clear on the other side of the line.

"I'm coming home… now." He spoke with a determined motivation towards keeping composure, and I knew that I was supposed to play the humble hero, I knew I was supposed to tell him that that wouldn't be necessary, that I could handle this, that he should keep doing whatever it was he had to do from half way across the country, but I didn't; and I didn't because I wanted him here, no, I needed him here… Did that make me selfish?

"How soon can you get here?"

"I'm taking the next flight out… Just hang tough, Brooke; I'll be there soon."

"Do me a favor and come home quick, okay?" I'm usually not the one to talk like that; in fact, I'm the exact opposite, but cut me some slack here, I've been under a lot of stress lately…

"I will Brooke, I promise… Are you at the hospital right now?"

I rubbed a shaky hand through my hair, "No, uh… Peyton took me home to get some sleep and to eat and stuff… we're just getting ready to go over there now."

"Okay, good, good… make sure you take care of yourself too, alright?"

I wished that people would stop telling me that; what would it take for them to see that I was fine… just fine.

"I did… I will." I corrected myself quickly, hoping that he wouldn't catch the error.

"Okay Brooke… I'm gonna go over to the airport right now and try to catch a flight; I'll be there soon, I promise. Tell Sam I'm on my way, okay?"

I sniffled slightly, quickly wiping underneath my eyes… Sure, I'd tell Sam all right; whether or not she'd be able to hear me, well that was a completely different story.

"I will, I'll see you soon…" I paused, and in the briefest of moments, I'd completely forgotten that me and Julian had ever even had a fight; it was like that moment didn't even exist between us, that in the wake of tragedy, things like that seemed too petty to even matter anymore.

"Julian?"

"Yeah?"

I sighed and took a deep breath, deciding to push my luck because honestly, at this point, what the hell did I have to lose?

"I love you."

"I love you too, Brooke." His lack of hesitation made me breathe with a sigh of relief; flooding me with the reminder that maybe there was a light at the end of this tunnel after all.

With the knowledge of Julian's imminent arrival making the pressure against my chest a little less heavy, I hung up the phone, closed my eyes, and took a couple deep breaths; embracing the relaxation of the moment until it was suddenly ruined by a sharp knocking on the door that originated from Peyton's knuckles.

"Brooke? Brooke, are you okay in there?"

"Yeah Peyton… I'm fine," I slunk quickly to the door and opened it, just so that Peyton wouldn't think that I was dead or something…

"Are you ready?"

"Uh… yeah," I told her, "I just have to pee real quick, hang on." I pushed past her into the hall, grateful when she didn't point out the fact that I could have just as easily used my bathroom, the one that I was already inside of, as I rounded into Sam's… I felt an urge… no, an obligation to confront the room that I hadn't even been able to look out since what happened inside of it yesterday… the one that I knew I'd have to face eventually just to ease my racing mind a little bit.

Peyton followed me… I don't know, I guess she just wanted to make sure that I wasn't about to go in there and swallow a handful of Sam's pills or something…

I slipped through the open doorway, the physical door still resting against the wall in the hallway with a giant hole that mysteriously resembled a foot through the center of it from when Lucas had kicked it in not twelve hours ago…

"Are you alright?" Peyton asked as I lingered between the door frame for a moment, taking in the scene, trying desperately to focus on what it looked like now, and not what had been inside of it last night…

"You cleaned." I didn't answer her question, instead, chose to make an observation of my own…

The blood that had stained the floor, the walls, the toilet bowl last night, it was all gone… scraped from the very cracks between the tiles in its thoroughness, and I was eternally grateful to Peyton who had probably spent the entire night on her hands and knees scrubbing in an effort to achieve it.

"Yeah well… I didn't really get much sleep last night either, so…" She trailed off in her admittance, and I thought about scolding her; thought about telling her that if I had to take care of myself, than she sure as hell had to too, but instead, I just remained silent, my eyes becoming strangely hypnotized in the focus of the sparkling clean, pearly white bathroom.

"I'll be outside, okay?" Peyton told me, resting a lingering hand briefly on my shoulder before she turned and walked right out the door… Me, well I took a little bit longer to compose myself, a little bit longer to dwell on the thoughts swarming in a hazy cloud above my head before I finally found the strength inside of me to turn around, walk out my front door, and start yet another seemingly hopeless day… just one amongst a million.

* * *

I know that it's rude of me to say I wasn't grateful for everything Peyton did for me today, taking me out to breakfast and all, and I was, really, the thing was, I felt kind of bad that she wasted ten bucks on a meal I didn't even touch…

By the time we finally got back to the hospital, I'd bet that it my muscles didn't feel as if they were gonna collapse just by walking a few feet, I probably… no, I definitely would have run all the way up the stairs straight to the sixth floor where I prayed that Sam would still be holding on strong from behind the walls.

By the time I'd actually gotten to Sam's room, the only thing I'd managed to achieve was a slow, awkward trot before I was halted in my tracks completely upon walking inside… I couldn't manage to get a strong hold on my emotions at the moment, and on top of that, I'd almost forgotten how bad Sam really looked until I saw her again today… I couldn't tell whether I was glad or if I was disappointed that not much had changed since last night… On one hand, Sam wasn't dead, but on the other, she wasn't much of what I would call alive either…

Peyton stopped at my side, continuing this hip-to-hip posture she's been going for since yesterday as to make it obvious that she was waiting for me to make the next move; and that she was willing to follow me whatever that may be… I loved her for it, really I did, but at the same time, I couldn't help but wish that she'd just leave me the hell alone.

I paused, the overwhelming desire to take everything in, embrace every inch of change across the room since I'd been in it last night and use it to program my brain to find something that might actually mean something to me…

Jamie was curled up into a ball, fast asleep on one of those familiar cots that nurse's always brought in for me just to make them feel better about leaving me to stay up all night at Sam's bedside just so long as they gave me a place to pretend to sleep on… Haley was split in the middle; lingering between Jamie's prone form and Sam's even proner one; torn between her son and the teen she'd grown to love so much; her left arm reaching out awkwardly towards Jamie while her right continuously grasped towards Sam's so that she looked painfully stretched… And Nathan… well Nathan had taken his usual peace-keeping role, his chair strategically positioned to ensure that he could look over everybody in the room… that is until he'd finally allowed sleep to get a hold of him.

He slumped loosely downwards against his chair; head back, mouth wide, snoring gently as his chest moved rhythmically up and down.

"Should we wake them up?" Peyton's voice interrupted the hypnotic strangle hold I'd had in observing Nathan's breathing patterns…

"Nah…" I whispered softly, stepping further into the room towards Sam, "Let them sleep."

I threw my bag carelessly onto the floor, carefully dodging the various sleeping bodies strewn precariously about the room until I was right up against Sam's bed, close enough so that I was able to lean over the bedrails and grab onto Sam's hand with one of my own, using the free one to linger against her cheek, still burning hot with fever.

"Hey Sammy…" I mumbled out of the corner of my mouth. "Thanks for being so strong for me last night." I whispered to her, pausing only briefly as Nathan shifted in his sleep... I tensed, turning towards him, terrified that I'd awoken him; but when he merely rolled over, still obviously fast asleep, I knew I was safe.

I allowed my body to relax loosely as I turned towards Sam, and I don't know… it's pretty hard to feel as absolutely worthless as I did right now… I mean, I personally am starting to get used to it, especially considering how much first-hand experience I've had with it lately, but still, this was just something you never really got totally used to…

I guess I was just still too damn weak to be the cure that Sam needed right now… that she always needed… I guess I should have known; I should have known right from the beginning that I wouldn't be able to give Sam my body, my heart, my lungs, fresh and ready to breathe for her yet…

I tightened my grip around her hand so firmly that my fingerprints bruised into her palms.

"Give me something, Sam… anything…" I begged the girl quietly, "Just a little sign…" I exhaled steeply so that my breathing had suddenly become louder than my voice itself. "Please just let me know that this isn't over."

"Brooke?" I jumped suddenly as Peyton's hands wrapped around each of my upper arms, shocking me back into reality as a tiny nurse juggling IV bags of medication larger than she was inside of her enclosed arms.

"I'm sorry… did I wake you up Ms. Davis?" She apologized in a voice only a little above a whisper as she approached the IV pole of dangling medicine bags of all different colors, sizes and types, and hung three more onto it before connecting them to the ports dumping them into her veins.

"No, no…" I assured her quickly, "I wasn't trying to sleep anyway…" The yawn that forced its way out of my mouth at the end of my sentence however didn't make my argument very convincing.

The women gave me a sly smile, indicating to me that it appeared that she'd had experience with stubborn parents like myself around here…

"It's okay Ms. Davis, you're allowed to sleep… we'll take care of Sam."

Yeah… I'd heard that one before; and I mean, it's not like the staff here didn't take exemplary care of not only Sam, but of me as well, it's just that… well, I just couldn't bring myself to trust something as precious as my daughter in any hands other than my own.

"How's she doing?" I ignored her comment, showing off my inability to focus on anything other than Sam as I watched her lean over her and press a stethoscope against her emaciated chest where her ribs stuck out harshly in a way that made her resemble a skeleton…

I held my breath, pretending that maybe if I was quiet enough, I'd be able to hear the same thing she did through the stethoscope, but I couldn't…

"She's about the same as last night." The nurse looked up after a few moments of silence, pulling the plugs from her ears as she wrapped the small device back around her neck and flashed me a sympathetic smile… "But that's a good thing, Ms. Davis… remember, she isn't doing any worse."

"Yeah… but she isn't doing any better either." I mumbled the last words and honestly, I hadn't anticipated on anybody hearing them, but of course, what I anticipate and what actually happens rarely correlates with me.

I shifted my gaze down; only looking up again after the nurse placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Ms. Davis, I've been up in this ward for a while now, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that kids are unbelievably resilient."

I've never met this woman before, but you know what, I was starting to like her already…

"Thank you," I finally managed through a watery smile.

"I'm Emma, by the way." She introduced herself, extending her hand politely in my direction, allowing me to grab onto it and shake as firmly as I could manage with my progressively dwindling strength.

"Brooke," I told her, hoping she would get the hint… I hated being called Ms. Davis.

"Well I'll be back to check up on Sam in a little while… until then, take care of yourself, okay?" I swear if I had a nickel for every time I'd heard that today…

I managed an empty smile and nodded my head in acknowledgment as she turned out of the room leaving me, Peyton, and the four sleeping bodies strewn about the room, making the walls suddenly uncomfortably tight and restricted.

The door swung closed slowly, clicking with a sharp loudness that caused Nathan to shoot awake and out of his chair so suddenly, she might as well have slammed that door shut while simultaneously setting a bomb off in the center of the room.

"Morning…" It was the only thing that I could think to say as I watched Nathan attempt to shake the haze of a rough night's sleep out of his system.

"Brooke…" He spluttered out, his voice groggy and his speech slurred so that if I didn't know better, I would have thought him to be drunk. "What are you doing back here so soon?" His sentences got progressively clearer and clearer as the bizarre purgatory between asleep and awake cleared from his system.

"I guess I just couldn't stay away, you know?" I offered him the smallest of smiles to back up my false façade of humor as Nathan flashed me a sympathetic smile at about the same time Peyton placed a supportive hand against my back; the combination of which doing a very good job in threatening those damned flood gates that just didn't seem to want to stay closed.

"We took good care of her last night, Brooke." Nathan assured me, standing up so as to give me a formal hug that I so desperately needed about now. "Well… Haley did… me and Jamie… well we kind of passed out early…" He tried to crack a joke and I at least pretended to be humored just to please him.

"I know…" I nodded instantly; I didn't want him to get the wrong idea or anything, "Thanks for that, by the way… last night, I mean."

"Hey, it's no problem. You would have done the same for us."

I froze; the thing is, I would have undoubtedly done the same for them had our roles been reversed; had it been Jamie lying here instead of Sam, Nathan buckling under the pressure of it all instead of me… The thing was, as terrible as it sounded, and as disgusted as I was with myself for so much as allowing the thought to even come into my head, for a fraction or something, I almost wished it was…

My heart stopped at the thought, at the disgust I felt for myself; I felt my face droop, my skin pale, and my eyes grow heavy with the acknowledgment that I'd just hit a new low point in my life.

"Brooke… Are you okay?" Nathan's voice suddenly seemed so far away, the thing was, I couldn't even bear to look at him right now… I was feeling very over-powered by well… by everything; and I guess, even though I knew that it was bound to happen eventually, I also knew that having a full-on nervous breakdown was absolutely not something that I could fit on my list of things to do today.

"Yeah, I just… I just need some air real quick." I stepped backwards so quickly that I damn near knocked Peyton flat on her ass.

"Brooke!" My head was so lost in the clouds I could barely make out the sound of somebody calling my name, begging me to come back, telling me to face my problems for once rather than run from them… "Brooke, wait!"

The second time I heard it, Nathan's voice became starkly clearer in the back of my mind as the sound of his size 15 sneakers jogging down the hall rang through my ears to signify his attempt to catch up with me.

I spotted a bathroom a couple feet down the hall, and in my desperation to simply get away from it all, I darted towards it; the idea in mind that I could find safety in a private breakdown in a very public women's restroom… at least I'd be able to lose Nathan…

Nathan called my name once more, but I was mere steps away from my sanctuary; and finally, without so much as slowing down, I body checked the door so hard with my shoulder, the thick wooden panel bounced off of the tile with a harsh bang before it glided smoothly back into place.

Panting hard and out of breath, my chest heaving with emotion, I grasped the cool edge of the sink basin, looking determinedly downwards at the tap just so I wouldn't have to see the dark circles of exhaustion blatant underneath my eyes or the frizzy strands of hair sticking up from underneath a messy pony tail.

"Brooke?"

I looked up mainly out of surprise and how deep and… well, un-womenly like the voice calling out to me from within the women's bathroom was… I looked up as Nathan snuck through the door as discretely as possible, shutting and locking it quickly behind him, and looking utterly foolish silhouetted against the pink tiles on the walls.

"Are you lost, Nate?" I asked, meaning for it to come out as a joke however finding it to sound like more of an accusation thanks to the inability of my face to form a proper smile at the moment.

"No," He spoke firmly, taking a couple steps closer towards me just to prove a point, "Just worried about you is all."

"Well I'm fine." I spoke, but my voice deceived me instantly; shaking and cracking under my emotions.

"Brooke…" Nathan sighed in his frustration of my refusal to accept defeat as he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder; his giant palm wrapping wholly around my much smaller joint.

"Don't say it Nathan. Please, don't tell me that I'm not okay…" I begged him because I didn't think that I could handle hearing it even one more time.

"I'm just worried about you Brooke…" Okay, sure, he didn't go ahead and directly say it, but still, the implication was there, and at this point, that was all I really needed to set me off. "We all are."

"You don't get it Nathan!" I hadn't meant to shout at him, but I did anyway; the emptiness of the bathroom echoing my voice so that it sounded even louder than it already was. "I need to get Sam better; I need to keep my mind on her, because if I started thinking about the both of us right now, I'd just go ahead and lose my damn mind more than I already have!"

"Then let us help you, Brooke. You don't have to do this alone; you just have to let us in."

"And how exactly am I supposed to let you in Nathan?" My words were harsh and true; a lifetime's worth of frustrations coming out on the man who probably deserved it the least. "How the hell are you supposed to know how I'm feeling? My daughter is dying, Nathan! You don't know what it's like to have a sick kid. How can you when your son is perfectly healthy?"

I knew I'd crossed a line the second I spoke… Bringing Jamie into this equation was completely out of bounds, completely unnecessary, completely unfair…

I wished that Nathan would have said something, anything in response to my comment… Maybe he'd put me in my place, yell at me, scream at me, friggen smack me upside the head for all I cared… At least anything would have been better than him just staring with a neutral expression on his face and a stance that told me he was willing to stand here as long as he had to and take everything I had to dish out if that's what had to be done

"I'm sorry, Nate… I didn't mean… You know I would never… I'm sorry." I sighed in defeat, my previously glaring eyes sinking back into my skull as my shoulders hunched and my posture faltered pitifully.

"Don't be sorry Brooke… I mean, you're right… Sometimes I try to think what it would be like to put myself in your shoes and I can't… I can't even imagine it. But that doesn't mean that I can't be there for you… that all of us can't be there for you. You're not alone in this Brooke, so you don't have to keep acting like you are."

For a while, I didn't move; instead, I just chose to take it all in, using Nathan's words as fuel to strengthen my body until I finally felt confident enough in my muscles to let go of the sink, take a step forward, and fall right into his chest, wrapping my arms around his muscular center as my body shuddered with sobs that left unproduced tears; my tear ducts simply too drained to actually produce anything…

He tensed for a brief second in response to the suddenness of me throwing myself on top of him, it taking him by such surprise that even his strength stumbled against the impact of my tiny frame.

"Thanks Nate," I choked into his chest.

"No problem Brooke." He whispered, pulling me closer into him, just holding onto me for a little while… It was nice to have an oversized pair of arms that I could just fall straight into again, but of course, at the same time, it just made me miss Julian even more than I already did, it just made me wish he'd get home even faster…

"Just remember what I told you okay Brooke? You don't have to be alone, and I mean, I know you're like… Brooke Davis superwomen, and you're this crazy, strong, independent person and stuff, but we all need help sometimes, you know?"

I gave him an extra squeeze around his middle, and with one final, unattractive sniffle, finally pulled away from him; nodding my head sheepishly and avoiding eye contact.

"I'll remember…"

"Are you gonna be okay?" He asked, and I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't sure; I mean, as much as I wished that I could open a time portal to the future, I couldn't… but for what it was worth, I felt better, and for the situation that I was currently finding myself in, that was saying a lot…

"I think so…"

"Alright… well, I'm gonna get out of here before some lady walks in… The last thing I need is for the media to get word that Nathan Scott is a pervert."

I laughed, allowing the genuine motion to escape my throat for the first time in what seemed like days… I'd almost forgotten just how good it felt to laugh.

"Yeah, I feel that."

"Are you coming?"

"Yeah… yeah, I'll be out in a minute." He shot me a quick look of skepticism but nodded his head anyway as he slunk out of the bathroom, leaving me alone behind him.

For a minute or two, I just sat there; standing upright in the middle of the bathroom until I slowly found the strength inside of me to stagger over to the sink basin with the idea of washing all of my problems away with just a bit of water… so I stuffed the drain with a wad of paper towels, filled the sink up all the way with freezing cold water, and plunged myself face-first inside of it until my entire head was soaked.

I lingered underneath the water for a minute or two, embracing the unusual comfort in the lingering tightness within my chest, strengthening with every second my breath was held… And just when I was really starting to wonder just what the hell the point of resurfacing even was, my neck muscles involuntarily pulled my head up, and I took a deep breath that flooded my lungs with the oxygen they so desperately desired, and looked deep into the mirror, watching as the water dripped from my skin and my hair until my clothes were soaked through, a dangerous puddle had formed underneath my feet, and I found myself stuck, just wondering to myself what the hell I have ever done to get myself here.

* * *

**HALEY**

I can't particularly remember what it was I'd been dreaming about per se… In fact, I couldn't' even particularly remember falling asleep last night to begin with… but whatever happened between those brief hours I'd spend passed out uncomfortably upright against a stiff chair, the ultimate result of it all was my sharp, sudden awakening, where I shot up so quickly from my chair that for a second there, I'd been convinced that I'd thrown my entire damn back out… Good thing I was in a hospital, I guess…

I stood outstretched and elongated for a long time; spine stiff and panting heavily as my brain slowly turned on in the various positions required for me to make conscious decisions and my surroundings slowly started to come back to me…

My breathing slowed as bits and pieces of the night began to piece together slowly; as the image of Sam, looking just as still, just as sickly as the night before cleared in front of my eyes, as Jamie, curled up blissfully asleep in a cot ran across my peripherals, and as Nathan… wait a minute… where was Nathan?

In my heightened emotional state, an overwhelming sense of panic towards not knowing where my husband was filtered through every crevice of my brain as I powered upward, ignoring the surge of dizziness the movement caused me, double checked one last time to see that Jamie was indeed still fast asleep, and finally, left the safety of the hospital room for the open hallway.

In the early morning still continuously hovering heavily over the entire hospital, the first thing that truly struck me was how empty it all was… But as my eyes began to focus underneath the blast of the multiple fluorescents decorating the ceiling, I managed to make out a single figure standing in the middle of the hall; back turned, yet still distinguishable under a curly mass of blonde hair.

"Peyton!" My voice stumbled amidst my confusion as I staggered towards her, eyes desperate for answers as she turned to identify the caller of her name. "What's going on? Where is everybody?"

My heart was fluttering underneath the fear of everything that was going on, everything that I didn't know about, everything that seemed to have happened while I slept through my intended all night vigil.

Peyton wordlessly beckoned me closer to her, guiding me forward until I was side by side with her, following her eyes forwards as, from the other side of the hallway, Brooke stumbled forwards, wrapped up in Nathan's arms as he supported her in a way that, had I not known the situation, and had Brooke been a total stranger, would have made me jealous.

"What happened?" I asked the question, but the truth was, I wasn't really sure I wanted the answer… to get it, well that would just mean I'd actually have to face the reality; and I wasn't sure I was ready for that quite yet.

"I brought Brooke back up here about 20 minutes ago…" Peyton shrugged, shaking her head to indicate her own lack of understanding as to how they'd gotten to this point, "Brooke went in to see Sam and I guess… I guess she kind of just got overwhelmed… I'm not quite sure what Nathan told her… but I guess it worked."

I looked up at Brooke; judging by the look on her face, I wasn't quite convinced that what Nathan told her did much of anything… but I guess that Brooke was after all, upright on her feet and walking, so I could only take that as a good sign…

The duo sauntered past me and Peyton, and the first thing I noticed was how determinedly Brooke was staring down at her feet… the second thing I noticed was that she was soaking wet…

I looked up at Nathan and locked eyes with him, projecting silently the question as to what the hell had just happened between him and Brooke, begging him to let me know whether or not my fears were justified; but he didn't offer me much in return; just a silent grimace and a quick nod of the head to let me know that he had the situation under control… And then, without so much as a single word, he guided Brooke back into Sam's room; disappearing quickly behind the thick door.

Peyton made the move to turn and follow, but when I didn't take after her lead, she stopped herself, turning to address me…

"Hales… Are you okay?"

No, I wasn't okay. In fact, I was far from it… I was feeling empty, week, and positively worthless inside as everybody around me continued to attempt and help Brooke, as they did everything in their power to get Sam better while meanwhile, the only thing I could do was sit here and get lost in my own feelings… the ones that probably mattered the least right about now…

"I'm fine," I told her instead of projecting anything even close to the truth…

"Haley…" The hesitation in her voice told me that she didn't believe a word of it, and I guess that in retrospect, I probably could have made myself a little more convincing, but she didn't have the opportunity to get into it with me, because the next thing I knew, her cell phone ringing from somewhere within her bag was the only thing I heard; the only thing I could concentrate on.

Sighing, she gave me a look as to tell me that she wasn't done with me quite yet before she turned her attention towards the ringing phone in her bag.

"Hey Luke, what's going on?" She gave me one final glance before turning around to focus on the phone call, and I turned away to be polite; concentrating on the wall in front of me until Peyton's voice caught my attention once again.

"You what?" The suddenness of her outburst caused my head to snap up suddenly as I stared at her inquisitively; longing for an explanation towards what was going on; but her wide eyes stared right through me… "Okay, okay; I'll be right there, hang on."

Sighing, she hung up the phone, looking up at me to finally acknowledge the question longing behind my eyes.

"That was Lucas," She explained, but I'd already gotten that far… "Apparently, he punched a concrete floor yesterday and thinks he might have broken his hand… He was trying to wait it out to see if it felt better this morning, but supposedly it's just getting worse… I'm gonna go take him to the doctor. I should probably make sure Sawyer's okay anyway…" She rambled in her frustration… well at least now me and her were on the same page…

"Can you tell Brooke that I'm really sorry I had to leave and that I'll be back a little later to check up on her?" She called after me, already half way down the hall.

"I will!" I called back, but I whether she actually heard me or not was a different story, because by the time I'd said it, she was already disappearing around the corner.

I lingered within the hallway for an extra moment or two, but ultimately, I just kind of felt like a creep just standing there, so I sauntered slowly back into Sam's room.

"Momma… momma, I'm hungry." I'd barely entered the room before the fact that my son was wake… and apparently very hungry exploded through my senses.

"Uh… hang on Jamie," I subconsciously pushed right past him without so much as another word, moving towards Brooke, who was filtering back and forth across the room, precariously organizing things as she went just to have an excuse to move, just to have something to focus on, just to attempt to remind herself that there was still a world out there beyond this hospital room…

"Brooke honey…" She turned and made eye contact with me but didn't so much as slow down in her movements, "Peyton had to leave… um, Lucas just called, he uh… he may have broken his hand last night… she had to take him to the doctor." I spoke with vague details, consciously aware of the fact that Jamie was currently listening in.

"Is he okay?" Brooke asked; her face full with the concern that she'd have the worry of yet another person's health on her shoulders; but that was the last thing I wanted so I waved her off and nodded my head.

"He's fine, he's fine…" Of course, I didn't know that per se, but Brooke didn't need to know that… "I think that Peyton just wanted to take him for an x-ray… he'll be fine."

Brooke's shoulders slouched as she noticeably relaxed in response to hearing that we didn't have yet another life-threatening crisis on our hands, and for a moment, the mood of the room soothed into a comfortable silence for the first time in what seemed like, well… ever.

"Momma, I'm hungry!" Jamie must have noticed the build in the silence and recognized it as a perfect opportunity to force me to focus on him and his unattended empty stomach.

"Jamie…" I sighed; feeling bad for denying my son's bid for food, but at the same time, feeling nervous about leaving just as quickly as Brooke had arrived.

"No, it's fine Haley…" Brooke interjected, "I could use some time alone with Sam anyway."

I paused for a moment, my mouth opening and closing without producing any words for a couple of seconds before I finally spoke.

"Yeah… yeah, of course…" My voice must have sounded thrown off at Brooke's expression of her desire to be left alone here… "But Brooke, if you need anything… anything at all, please call us, okay?"

I attempted to emphasize my statement, knowing full well that if I didn't, she wouldn't have even considered following my advice… of course, I knew she wouldn't call, but at least I'd gotten the idea across to her, and that was all I was really going for at this point.

"I will Hales," I wasn't so sure about that, but I didn't say anything; instead, I leaned forward and squeezed her tightly.

"Stay strong Brooke," I spoke so that only she could hear me, "I'll be back to check up on you in a little while."

I felt her nod her head against my shoulder before pulling away.

"Thanks Haley," I nodded once more, briefly offering her as much of a smile as I could affix on my face before I backed away slowly, allowing both Nathan and Jamie an equal opportunity to offer Brooke their goodbyes as I snuck into the corner and placed a gentle hand on top of Sam's in a silent statement emphasizing my later return that I prayed she'd be able to understand.

"Hales, are you ready?" Nathan's voice pulled me from my trance as I jumped and retracted my arm hurriedly, taking a couple steps away from Sam's bed.

"Yeah…" I nodded, steadying my feet in a manner that finally allowed them to carry me towards the door.

"Remember what I said, okay Brooke?" I passed the advice one last time alongside a gentle hand to her shoulder that I left lingering for a moment as she nodded silently nodded to me.

I returned the motion of the head before trailing along the line of my family members out into the hallway; and with one final glance backwards towards Brooke and Sam, I slunk into the brightness, back into real life, back into open space, back where I merely felt like a small blip on an oversized radar…

Nathan wanted to e the one to drive, but in the long run, I knew that it had to be me. I learned a long time ago that in moments of crisis, the only thing that kept me at least semi-sane was concentrating on anything other than the problem at hand; and that included driving under the haze of treacherous emotions…

We spent the entire ride in dead silence, and by dead silence, I mean dead silence… no talking, no radio, not so much as a sneeze or a throat clear… By the time we finally pulled back into the driveway, the tension had grown so thick that Jamie was practically running to get out of his car seat and into the house…

He opened the door, prepared to positively leap from the car, but when neither me nor Nathan so much as moved in an effort to join him, he retreated inwards slightly.

"Are we going somewhere else, momma?"

"No buddy, but me and your dad have to have a grownup talk… So why don't you go ahead inside and we'll meet you there, okay?"

Questions lingered behind the boy's eyes but they went unasked, and I was grateful for that… Nathan and I watched as he jogged into the house; eyes straight ahead, hands in our laps, and seat belts still firmly strapped across our shoulders… It wasn't until Jamie had safely disappeared inside that Nathan finally spoke.

"Are you okay?" He asked me bluntly, kicking off the conversation even though I had been the one to actually initiate it.

"I'm not sure, Nathan…" I answered him honestly because I knew he knew the answer before he'd even said anything… lying would have been absolutely pointless.

"You know, everything is going to be okay Hales, it's…"

"You don't know that," I shook my head firmly. I was tired of hearing it, because after spending an entire night awake at Sam's bedside, it became more than obvious to me that everything was going to be far from alright… "How can you say that everything's gonna be alright, Nate? Sam is dying, and Brooke… well we're losing her too."

Nathan didn't say anything in response but to be honest, I wasn't sure that there was much you could say towards being called out so harshly… and besides, his silence acted as all the answer I needed.

"I'm just tired of being this scared all the time, Nathan. I'm tired of worrying about everybody; I'm tired that I have to worry about everybody… It's not fair Nate. It's not fair for any of us."

I couldn't help but ramble; I was once again finding myself caught up in my emotions, in my heartbreak… I was so sick of being terrified for the lives of my friends all the time… You'd think that after a while, we'd catch a break, but so far, that break hadn't come… in fact, it hadn't even gotten close.

Nathan reached over gently and grabbed onto my hand, squeezing it tightly in his silence for a moment before loosening up a bit, but never letting go completely.

"You're right, Hales… it isn't fair to us, to Jamie… especially not Sam and Brooke, but you and me both know that fairness hasn't exactly been good to us in our lives…"

He cracked a joke and I tried to smile, but the truth behind his statement was just too… well, true for me to be able to do that.

"I guess sometimes it just makes me feel better to say that everything's going to be okay, but sometimes it's hard when everything around me is telling me that it's not."

His brutal honesty if anything, actually made me feel better… sometimes it was nice to know that I wasn't the only one feeling so bitterly hopeless around here.

"What are we gonna do, Nate?" I don't think I actually meant to say it, the thing was, it just kind of came out anyway.

"I'm not sure yet, Hales." He sighed in his defeat and I felt an empty pang ring out from somewhere deep inside of my chest that echoed our dual unknowingness about everything… I swear, some days I didn't even know which way was up anymore… "But I'm gonna figure something out… I promise."

He gave me his word and sealed the deal with a squeeze of the hand that lingered along with our silence.

"Are you ready to go inside?" Nathan finally asked me after a couple more minutes and I nodded, finally flipping the car off as I began to feel more and more confident with my legs' ability to carry me from one place to another.

Nathan and I each stepped out of the car, walking around and meeting in the middle where he wrapped his strong arm around my shoulder, guiding me towards the house and refusing to let go until we were safely back inside.

"Listen, I think that you should go upstairs and get some sleep… I know that you were up all night…" He suggested the one thing I would have done absolutely anything for; a few extra hours of sleep, the thing was, I knew it was impossible, I knew I couldn't do it, I knew that somewhere deep inside, that the worst things in my life only occur while I'm sleeping, and I was afraid considering the only thing that could be worse than this was… well, I didn't even want to think about it…

Yeah, I wasn't quite ready to embrace sleep yet.

"But Jamie…" I used my son as an excuse, but it wasn't a solid one, and I knew that; and I knew that Nathan knew that to, because he offered me a quick shake of his head as he pushed my body towards the direction of the stairwell.

"I'll take care of Jamie… Listen, I just want you to be able to get a few hours of sleep, a few hours for you to stop worrying so much and let me do it for you, okay?"

I nodded slowly, but I knew that even if I was asleep, there was no way in hell I could ever stop worrying… not about Nathan, not about Jamie, not about Sam… not about anything.

I meandered slowly up the stairs, taking as long as humanly possible to walk up them because there was some tag of defeat linked to me allowing myself to succumb to sleep that I wasn't quite ready to accept yet… But after turning a thirty second journey into a five minute one, I was out of excuses and was left to fling myself forwards where I landed not-so-gracefully on my bed, sprawled out and instantly ashamed with how comfortable I felt…

Flipping over, I landed on my back, breathing steadily and staring up at the ceiling with wide, focused eyes.

For a long time, I just sat there; so wrapped up in the tunnel vision towards my plain white ceiling that the solid brightness of the color started hurting my eyes…

I clutched at my cell phone still firmly gripped between both of my hands, revolving it slowly over and over again inside of my palms just waiting for something to happen, anything at all, the thing was, no matter how long I sat there for, nothing ever did…


	42. But I Must Kneel to Fight

**So lucky for all you guys I am the biggest procrastinator in the entire world and managed to escape from the stranglehold of finals long enough to finish this next chapter. So I got this chapter up quicker than I thought I would and I'm done with finals on Tuesday so the next one should be up fairly quickly too. Hope you enjoy, thanks for reading!**

Chapter 42: But I Must Kneel to Fight

**Friday, December 23****rd****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

Time has a strange tendency of moving at about half pace when you're sitting in the same position for a solid twenty four hours and the only thing around you that actually changes is the clock.

I could literally feel the little energy I had left in my body draining out with every passing second; a result of the combination of the fact that I'd gotten a total of maybe two hours of sleep in the past 72 hours, confirmed by the fact that the only thing I'd really had to eat in a nearly equal amount of time was a cheeseburger and french fry platter from the cafeteria that the nurses practically shoved down my throat last night under the threat of hospitalizing me after my blood sugar plummeted to a point that caused my legs to give out from underneath me as I walked to the bathroom.

I was losing control faster than I could keep track of anymore, but to be completely honest here, I was having a hard time… a hard time finding something that I could believe in again, a hard time finding a little hope that I could pass along from those of us who are actually still breathing straight into Sam.

It was about 8:00 in the morning when something inside of me finally snapped; when my eyes, sunken so deeply into the pits of their sockets, deepened by the dark circles surrounding them bugged about half way out of my skull so that when I jumped up from my chair, I looked even more crazed, even more panicked than I already was.

"Sam open your eyes… please Sam, just look at me, come on!" I pleaded desperately with her, my volume rising with every incoherent word that spilled out of my mouth as tears swelled underneath my eyes for what seemed like the millionth time that morning alone.

I was at the point where I was willing to do anything, willing to try anything to fix this… I was ready to give her whatever it was that she needed; I would apologize profusely for not being able to take all of this pain away from her… Hell, I would physically take it away from her if that's what Sam needed… or if I knew how to.

It was my final option, my last chance, the only idea that I actually had left, the only thing that I hadn't tried yet.

"Give it to me, Sam." I reached down and grabbed her hand, waiting to feel some sort of physical transference that would indicate the passing of her illness onto me, "All you have to do is wake up and give it to me. I know that you're tired; I know that you feel like you can't do this anymore… I can finish this for you Sam, I promise I can, just let me do it."

I know it sounded ridiculous, I know that if somebody were to walk in here right now and find me, they would probably mark me as insane… of course, they might have had a good point there, the thing was, I didn't care, because if this was what I had to do to get Sam better again, well I was willing to do it.

I paused briefly, waiting intensely for something, anything to happen… One minute passed by, then two, then twenty, but by the time a half an hour went by with me just standing frozen stiff, grasping onto Sam's hand without her so much as twitching, I found myself completely out of ideas, left with nothing to do other than listen to all of the noises around me as they harmonized rhythmically with each other and pray to God that he'd at least do me the favor of keeping the sound from running out so that I would know that this wasn't completely over…

The knowledge of the physical impossibility of me being able to take over Sam's battle for her seeped through my veins painfully, and now that all of my plans of bringing Sam back to life have ultimately proved to have failed, the thoughts of what would be left of me if she died completely took over…

If you truly stop to think about it, it's crazy how many people die every single day… A sick elderly person who just can't hold on anymore, a young high school student with dreams of becoming a professional athlete drops dead on the field of an undiagnosed heart condition, a premature baby born to faulty genes or addicted mothers lose a fight that hasn't even really started yet…

I wondered how many people anticipate their deaths before they happen… I mean, do people just wake up on New Year's Day watching as other people around them make resolutions to lose weight or to quit smoking, and just know that they shouldn't even bother because they won't even live to achieve that goal anyway? Do they just enter into a day and know that this is it?

I wondered if things in heaven… or, wherever, worked the same way they do down here on Earth… You know, if all of the normal social rules or the characteristic laws of physics apply… I mean, they say that it's supposed to be like, this big, vast Utopian paradise but do gunshot victims exist up there with bullet holes between their eyes? Do old people walk around with hunched backs, arthritis, and missing teeth?

I guess I always just assumed that when you died, you just got to choose to exist however it was you wanted to; you could choose to be younger, you could choose to be older, hell, you could even choose to look completely different if that's what you wanted… but if you did choose to exist looking completely different than what everybody would remember you as… well, would Sam recognize me when we were to cross paths again? Would I recognize her?

I don't know, I've never really thought this way before so it's all starting to get kind of overwhelming for me… I mean, why should I have? There was a time not so long ago now when I didn't even have to… when I was nothing more than a successful, independent women, a kid against the world, 24 years old and totally invincible… of course, those times have long since changed.

All of this thinking was starting to make my head heart, so I finally forced myself to let go of Sam's hand and sunk backwards into my seat with my elbows digging into my thighs and my face buried so deep into my hands that I could make out every detail of my palm, but even that motion was short lived at best.

My cell phone quickly began to buzz from somewhere in the depths of my back pocket, the heavy vibrations reverberating off of the chair and against my ass so that I got distracted from the thoughts that I was initially thinking about just to distract me from my previous thoughts… which, I guess, if I think about it that way, was ultimately the goal I was trying to achieve anyway…

I moved slowly, in absolutely no rush to do anything, especially anything that involved communicating with the outside world, but I recognized my mistake for what it was immediately the second I saw Julian's name flash into my eyes… My heart lifted substantially, and with the belief firmly in my head that he was calling me to deliver me news of his return, I rushed to answer it…

"Julian?"

The last I'd heard of him was yesterday afternoon, I don't know, maybe an hour or two after Haley, Nathan, and Jamie left the hospital… As it turned out, in the holiday rush currently clogging every airport in the country, it turned out to be impossible for him to catch a last minute flight… I mean, personally, I'd completely forgotten altogether the fact that Christmas was only two days away… I guess I just wished that other people would do the same.

Anyway, I'd spent the rest of the conversation so worked up about the prospects of spending yet another night alone that I hadn't quite caught the rest of his conversation… Now I was just hoping that I'd get a little bit more information about his travel plans the second time around now that I was in a somewhat more decently coherent state of mind.

"Brooke, hey listen, I'm at the airport right now, my flight was supposed to leave at six this morning but it keeps getting delayed because they say that the weather is supposed to get bad over there. Right now they're saying 9 or 10, so hopefully I'll be in North Carolina by 7 or 8 tonight… North Carolina time, I mean."

He spoke so quickly that I only really caught little bits and pieces of it all. I could hear the panic behind is voice, but the thing was, that in some kind of weird, sadistic manner, it made me actually feel better; I mean, it was at least nice to finally feel like I wasn't the only one completely losing my mind throughout all of this… It was nice to finally feel like I wasn't the lone crazy amongst a sea of sane people… I guess that's one of the main reason why I felt like I needed Julian here so much… I was just sick of feeling like I was all alone.

"It's fine Julian, it's fine, don't rush yourself okay?" Of course, I was speaking one thing while thinking an entirely different thing all together… Sure, I wanted him to get here as quickly as humanly possible, but in my acceptance of the fact that this was impossible, I figured that I would at least attempt to convince myself that I would be able to survive the next couple of hours without him.

"I just wanna be there with you, Brooke… I don't want you to be alone right now."

"Julian, it's not your fault…"

"Yes it is," He cut me off in his strong desire to degrade himself in front of me and try and make sense of the reason why he was clear across the country in the middle of a crisis. "I left Brooke. I left and I didn't have to… We both know I should have dropped this movie two months ago, after… when… well, you know."

"Don't Julian," I stopped him because it wasn't helping either of us to sit here and listen to him berate himself. "This isn't your fault, this would have happened whether you were here or not so stop blaming yourself… You'll get here eventually Julian, and when you do, both me and Sam will be right here waiting."

I don't think I'd spoken with that much confidence behind my voice since I'd gotten here… it was a nice reminder to know that there was still a little piece of myself trapped somewhere inside of this body that I barely recognized as my own these days.

"How is Sam?" Julian played a topic change off of my sentence because I'd criticized his criticism of himself and there was really nothing he could say to that anyway…

"She's the same."

"Can you tell her that I'm on my way?"

"I already did." I assured him, and it was the truth… Sometime late last night, or… early this morning, whichever it was, I'd gotten the wildest idea that maybe, just maybe, I'd actually be able to coax Sam awake with the knowledge that Julian was on his way, that maybe he could act as my knight in shining armor like he always did this one last time… of course, that didn't work… in fact, nothing seemed to work to my advantage anymore.

"Thanks Brooke," I recognized the deeper meaning behind his voice almost instantly and my heart melted with the desire for him to be here right now…

"No problem…" We faded into a comfortable silence, and in that silence, I swear to God, everything about our still-mending relationship came together; every problem, every broken, lingering piece… it all just snapped right into place… we didn't even have to say anything; it was all just kind of, there.

"Uh listen…" The quiet lasted seconds, but given its significance, it could have been hours. "They're making an announcement about my flight; I should go so that I can hear what they're saying."

"Oh… right, okay…" I'd gotten so caught up in the moment, I'd completely forgotten the initial context behind the call, and I'm not gonna lie, it kind of threw me off for a second there.

"I love you," I finished my sentence with an extended sigh.

"I love you too Brooke. I'll see you in a few hours." He spoke and hung up quickly in order to catch the tail end of the message that would send him back home to me, and I allowed for my hand to linger upwards, holding the one-sided phone conversation to my ear for a couple more minutes before I finally allowed my arm to drop back down to my side where it barely reached thigh-level before it started vibrating again.

In the excitement produced by the belief that maybe Julian had forgotten to tell me something and was calling me back just to talk to me a little bit longer, I rushed to answer it, bringing the phone back up to my ear so quickly, I didn't even check the name on the banner beforehand.

"Julian?"

"Is that how you answer all of your phone calls, Brooke?"

My heart froze… that definitely was not Julian… I mean, unless of course Julian had suddenly mastered the impression of a cold, heartless bitch… a.k.a. my mother.

"Victoria," My tone hardened instinctively as my muscles tensed in time with my rising guard, responding to the realization that I had just entered a threatening situation because I was stupid enough to not check my damn phone before I answered it…

I was trapped, and if there was one thing that I could not deal with right now, it was Victoria.

"Don't sound too happy to hear from me Brooke." Victoria spoke harshly, and in my emotional instability, her words stung harder than they usually would, leaving me open-mouthed and completely unable to even respond to her.

"I'm just calling to let you know that my flight will be in by 10:00 tomorrow morning."

In my confusion, I didn't immediately process exactly what it was she was trying to tell me. In fact, my first thought was just me wondering why the hell she was calling me just to tell me about the tropical vacation she would spend her holiday embarking on just like she did last year… and the year before that, and the year before that one too.

"What?" I sounded ruder than even I had anticipated on, and really, that was saying a lot.

"My flight, Brooke, I am flying into Tree Hill tomorrow morning… Don't worry, I'll be taking a cab to your house, you don't have to pick me up… Not that you would anyway. I'll be there by around 10 a.m. and I am telling you this so you'll actually be home to let me in and not leave me outside on your front porch for three hours like you did the last time I came to visit."

My face sunk with realization, my heart simultaneously falling down into my knees as Victoria's intentions came to light all around me.

"What!" I shouted so loud that I was surprised I didn't wake Sam up. "What about Hawaii? Or the Bahamas; or some other distant vacation spot you've deemed more important than your own family for the past ten Christmases? What, did you finally decide that I was more important than your tan for once?"

"There's no need to be so dramatic Brooke. I swear, you get that from your father, he always was the selfish type."

Was she being serious right now? She'd just picked the most inconvenient time in the entire world to finally care enough about me to plan an unannounced visit and she was calling me selfish? "It's Christmas Brooke, and it's been a long time since I've seen you or Sam, so I'm sorry for wanting to spend the time with my family."

My eyes welled with tears at her mention of Sam's name as my blood ran ice cold in my veins at the realization that Victoria's visit might not go exactly how she was currently anticipating… that she still didn't know that Sam was even sick, let alone knocking on death's door as we spoke...

"It's not a very good time Victoria, me and Sam, we… we have… we're going to…" My voice lost its calloused undertone and dripped with emotion as I struggled unsuccessfully to come up with a proper excuse that would allow me to extend this escalading lie I had going on unbeknownst to Victoria for a little while longer; eternally, if I could manage it… But of course, I faltered, and in that hesitancy, I failed miserably.

Victoria noticed… I could tell by her extended silence that she recognized the substantial change in my tone of voice. I think the worst part of it all however, was that she chose to ignore it.

I'm arriving tomorrow morning Brooke, and if you could please just find it in your heart to at least pretend to like me for the next week, for Sam's sake, that would be fabulous. I'll see you tomorrow."

And with that she hung up, leaving me stunned stupid, looking down at Sam's ever-prone form as I tried to gather an understanding of how monumental a mess I'd actually just gotten myself in.

Holidays… Victoria knew just as well as I did that people called them optional for a reason. God only knows why she's choosing right now to make them mandatory… So now as I'm in a panic praying that something would come up and deter Victoria's visit, while praying even harder that Sam will choose to come back to life for the occasion, I'm left wondering just what I should do about the situation when neither of those things actually happen… just like I know they won't.

I slowly hung up my phone; and for the first time in about three days now, a thought whose sole focus wasn't on Sam entered my mind, and the only thing it kept telling me was this:

I'm screwed.

* * *

**PEYTON**

I arrived at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital probably a little bit after one o'clock in the afternoon after spending the past several hours preparing Sawyer for an extended stay with Lucas, who would be spending the next couple of weeks completely incapable of doing anything for her that required the use of two hands thanks to the cast that was currently wrapped around the broken index, middle, and ring knuckles of his hand.

I walked hurriedly up the hallway, just like I always did, greeted the same nurses that I saw every day, the one's that I'd practically come to recognize as family, and turned the corner into Sam's room.

"Hey Brooke, sorry I'm late, I…"

I stopped suddenly; the thing was, Brooke wasn't there.

I raised a skeptical eyebrow at her potential whereabouts because I hadn't expected her to leave Sam's side unless somebody had physically forced her; and considering that somebody was almost always me, and I definitely haven't been around to do it… well I had no idea where the hell she could be.

"Brooke?" I called out her name as I rounded into the bathroom in the corner of the room, but it was empty… With one final glance back towards Sam, I re-entered the hallway and checked the public bathrooms, the vending machines… pretty much every empty room on the entire damn floor, but still, I got nothing.

"Hey Emily, have you seen Brooke?" I asked the closest nurse to me whose name I could remember, watching as she stopped suddenly in her tracks, turning to face me in response to her name being called as she attempted to juggle a large load of medical supplies between her tiny arms.

"Um… I think she left about an hour ago." She scrunched up her face as she attempted to search for the closest explanation that she could offer me.

"Uh… okay, okay… um, thanks." I spoke quickly, my mind jumbled painfully with all of the different possibilities as to where the hell Brooke could have run off to all by herself, and completely voluntarily as I turned and ran down the hall; exiting the exact same way that I had just come mere minutes ago.

I sprinted like a mad woman, ducking and dodging each confused patient, doctor, and visitor that I brushed past with my phone practically glued to the side of my head as I called Brooke's cell phone, praying for an answer.

"Hi this is Brooke I can't come to the phone right now so leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can… unless you're a reporter or my mother."

"Brooke, hey, this is Peyton, I just stopped by the hospital to check up on you but the nurses said you left a while ago. I'm just calling to see where you are and to make sure you're alright. Give me a call back, okay?"

I hung up the phone, but the second I did, I just picked it up and dialed it all over again, being met with as little success as I had the first time I'd tried this… In fact, I'd totaled about twenty phone calls to Brooke between the time I'd gotten into the elevator and the time I'd finally got back to my car, each one getting me absolutely no where, leaving me frustrated to the point that I just ditched the phone all together, throwing it harshly across my car as I tore down the street towards Brooke's house.

When I finally parked my car along the street outside of her house, the first thing I truly noticed was how strangely uncharacteristic it looked of Brooke… You see, Brooke was one of those people who, during the winter holidays, single handedly caused an environmental crisis because she had so many Christmas lights around her home. She was the one who had to cut down at least five pine trees just to make enough wreaths to hang precariously about her property, she was the one who's neighbors couldn't sleep for a five mile radius because of the candles that blazoned from each one of her windows…

Her house looked almost dead; the flowers, still planted from early October withered and drooping in the cold December air, the grass looking like it hadn't been mowed in months, and the only decorations adorning it being the ones that were still up from Halloween…

Her car wasn't in the driveway, but I knocked tentatively at the door anyway, figuring I'd driven all the way here; I might as well try…

"Brooke!" I called her name through the door, knocking for a second time, just a little bit louder than the first, "Brooke are you in there? It's Peyton!" I waited for an answer in silence for a couple more futile minutes before I finally accepted my defeat, turning my back towards the door with a sigh as I sat myself down on Brooke's bottom stair, rubbing my palms firmly over my face, and desperately tried to think of an idea as to where the hell she could have gone.

I continued to twirl my cell phone around over and over again between my hands, waiting desperately for Brooke to call me back, or at least, just waiting for something to tell me what it was I should be doing right now…

I know that it should have been obvious, but I'm not gonna lie, it took a couple of minutes for inspiration to strike, and really though, the only reason it actually ever did was simply because in my desire to do something with my hands just to keep me occupied, my fingers automatically dialed the second best number I could come up with in my quest to find Brooke… one that I could hopefully get answers from.

"Hey Peyton, what's up?" Well, I finally wasn't getting a voicemail; at least that was a start…

"Hey Haley listen, I don't want you to worry or anything but… um… have you seen Brooke?" I spoke as casually as I could manage, trying not to express too much concern so that Haley wouldn't go straight ahead to thinking that Brooke had positively fallen off the face of the Earth never to be found or something like that.

"No… I haven't talked to her since last night. Why, is she okay?"

"Yeah… yeah, she's okay…" I lied because I didn't know the real answer to that question, and this one seemed to be the one I liked the most, "I just went over to the hospital and she wasn't there so…" I trailed off, allowing Haley to piece together the end of the sentence.

"Did you try her house?"

"Yeah, I'm there right now. She didn't answer the door." I sighed, perhaps just a little bit too loudly to continue on with this false façade of calm because I was pretty sure that Haley heard me.

"Peyton… should I be worried?" Haley's voice sounded strangely neutral as to tell me that she was waiting for my word to flip on the concerned switch.

"I don't know Hales, I…" I started expressing my personal fears to her, but I stopped mid-sentence. A light bulb had just flicked on inside of my head so suddenly that I swear my face glowed.

"Not yet," I reworded my initial phrase to Haley, "I know one more place to look. I'll call you back." I hung up on Haley before she could even respond as I lifted myself up off of Brooke's stoop, literally ran to my car, and tore off down the street practically before I'd even had time to close the car door.

I was suddenly feeling incredibly stupid towards the fact that this wasn't the first place I'd thought to look… Brooke and I had a strange history that in our darkest of times, we'd come down here to feel better, because even if during any given day our lives were being shot straight to hell… well we were younger back then, more naïve; we needed a place to go to in order to believe that when we'd grow up, we'd find something better than all of this, and even though those days have long since came and went, there was still a sense of comfort to be had in the remembrance of a time where we actually thought that our lives would turn out to be good.

There was a small bridge all the way on the other side of town that was so old, they'd closed it off to cars in the early 90's for fear that it would collapse entirely… I don't exactly remember the first time Brooke and I had ever gone down there, I don't exactly remember the day I realized that it could change my mood for the better, but I do remember the first day this place actually changed my life…

It was right after my mom died. I ran an entire mile from my house to this bridge… and Brooke followed me the entire way. She sat in the dirt with me underneath it, holding me as I cried, telling me that everything was going be okay until the sun set and my dad finally found us and brought us home… Ever since then, this kind of just became, I don't know… our place.

I scaled the steep slope downwards, almost instantly finding exactly what I was looking for…

Brooke's back was turned to me. She was propped up alongside one of the bridge's large, concrete platforms with a pile of rocks at her feet, and every couple of minutes, she would pluck a single one from the pile and toss it into the small quarry that ran through the small trench…

I stared at her a little while; silently mesmerized by how childlike she looked in this moment… A flash of déjà vu washed over me as I was distinctly reminded of all the times we came down here when we were kids… of all the remarkably huge situations we used to get ourselves wrapped up in then… and the remarkably huger ones we found ourselves stuck in now.

"It's gonna rain soon…" I used the most basic of opening lines, and perhaps the lamest one to catch Brooke's attention, causing her to pause mid-throw and turn to face me as I hunched my shoulders, put my hands in my pockets, and strolled slowly towards her.

"What are you doing here?" She released the small stone from her hand and I watched as it rolled slowly down the small hill, so focused on its motions that I had to wait until it came to a complete stand still to actually answer her question.

"I just went over to the hospital and then to your house to check up on you and when you weren't there…" I didn't finish my sentence, instead, I allowed Brooke to piece it together so that she would be forced to actually think about it, so that she would know how worried I was about her.

"This was the only place I could think of coming." She sighed as I hoisted myself onto the concrete block next to her and sat at her feet. "Everything is just exploding at me all at once… I needed to get away for a little while. I needed to go somewhere where nobody could find me… or at least almost no one." She flashed me the briefest of grins and I reciprocated with a sympathetic grimace before breaking eye contact.

"It's just that… it's been three days Peyton." I turned my eyes back on Brooke as she continued speaking… I knew Brooke Davis; talking was always her best mode of therapy, and once she got rolling, she was good to go for a while. "It's been three days and Sam isn't getting any better. And then Julian was supposed to come back last night… and he was gonna make everything okay again, but his plane got delayed… and then Victoria called me to tell me she's coming here tomorrow, and she still doesn't know about Sam… Peyton… I just… I'm running out of ideas on what to do."

Her body sunk down until she was eye level with me and I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close.

"Brooke… listen… I know it seems like you've been waiting for a long time without actually getting anywhere, but you know Sam… I mean, sure, she hasn't woken up yet, and I know it's hard to believe that she's actually getting better, but Brooke, the doctors… they didn't even think that she was gonna last three days, and she's still fighting, and she's fighting hard, and she's got you right by her side to help her. Listen, I know it's hard to be patient when things like this happen, but if there's anybody that beat this, it's Sam."

I gave her an extra squeeze as she wove her fingers through her hair and attempted to control her heavy breathing patterns as she nodded her head in recognition of the fact that she was at least trying to force herself to believe what I was telling her.

"And Julian… well, I know Julian Brooke, and I know that he would freaking sprout wings and fly here himself to get back here to you and Sam… He loves the two of you; I can see it… every time he looks at you. He's crazy about you, Brooke Davis, and he'll be here before you know it… but until that happens, I can be there for you for him for a little while, okay?"

She nodded and sniffled, wiping a quick finger across the underside of her eye as she leaned her body closer into my own.

"And of course, we all know that Victoria has always had this uncanny ability of squeezing herself back into your life at the most inconvenient times possible." Brooke snorted out a brief laugh in her recognition of the truth of that statement for what it was, nodding her head in agreement.

"You'd just think I would have figured out a way to deal with her by now."

My soft smile suddenly faded into a serious frown as I watched Brooke's face screw up in confusion as she struggled to find a way out of this mess she'd gotten herself in with her mother.

"Brooke, I know you don't like her, and believe me, she's not exactly on my list of favorite people either, but… and as much as I hate to say this, Victoria is good to Sam, and she cares about her a lot... and I'm pretty sure that Sam does too…"

Brooke nodded slowly, hesitant to admit her belief towards the truth behind my statement.

"I'm not here to tell you what to do or anything Brooke, but I think that it's time that you told Victoria the truth about what's going on with Sam… She's gonna find out eventually and… it might be best if she learned now instead of walking head on into it tomorrow with her eyes closed…"

For a little while, Brooke didn't say anything in response to my comment, and for a few minutes, I was almost afraid that she was gonna yell at me or something for even so much as suggesting such an abomination… and then something weird happened… Brooke's eyes screwed up with emotion, her face wrinkled with the threat of unshed tears, and she shook her head defiantly towards me and started yell.

"She should have known, Peyton!" Her voice was teeming with frustration, rising in volume with every syllable to the point where she had to physically stand to her feet in order to support her flaring emotions. "She should have heard it in my voice every time she asked me how Sam was doing. She should have stopped avoiding magazines just because she didn't like what reporters had to say about her. She should have opened her damn eyes and seen all of the signs that were all around her. She should have cared enough about me for once in her life to actually see what was going on to her own damn family!"

Brooke yelled, and I didn't even bother trying to stop her. It was a lifetime's wroth of feeling exploding in one, long, extended sentence… but still, I couldn't help but notice how much her voice hosted that vast sea of self-blame at the same time she was trying to pinpoint it all on Victoria…

I didn't know what to say… didn't want to do, so I just paid attention and let her talk, let her let it all out until she was finally finished and we faded into such a deep silence that the only thing I could hear was the echo of her previous words still lingering across the empty air.

"I saw a kid today… in the hospital," She continued talking when I didn't start, just looking for something that could potentially fill up all of this empty space, "He was probably around Sam's age… maybe a little older… He was just walking around with his mom, and I could tell he just started, you know, all the chemo and crap because his poor mom… she was just a mess." She smirked to herself at the memory, but it wasn't a pleasant smirk… more of sorrowful one.

"I guess it just kind of hit me when I saw them, I mean, it seems crazy now that I was that kid's mom once… She was, you know, still just trying to adjust to this being her new life… It was so weird to see because I don't even remember my life not being like this anymore… We started all of this, and Sam… she was just a kid… she was just a little kid, and got that taken away from her… It seems so long ago now… we were all that young once." She let out a long, extended sigh, closing her eyes as a single tear dripped down her cheek, "And look where we all ended up."

I could only sit there with my mouth wide open in response to what I'd just heard come out of Brooke's mouth… this must have been what it what like for people when they talked to me when I was feeling all emotional about something…

"How's Lucas' hand?" She spared me the awkwardness of having to come up with something to say even though I wished she'd given me more of an opportunity, because I hated myself for freezing up, I hated myself for not doing anything, for not even knowing what to do to help her…

"He broke three of the knuckles in his right hand, but he's fine… but Brooke… I don't think that you are." I eased back into the topic of conversation because I was determined not to stop until I was absolutely convinced that she was going to be alright.

She didn't say anything; she just slowly turned her head to look at me, lingering for a second before turning back away; a silent acknowledgement that she agreed with me.

"Brooke… I know how hard this is for you, but you can't give up hope, okay?" I think the hardest part of all this was the fact that that fire in Brooke's eyes, that feistiness that I loved so much about her had vanished, and it may have been selfish, it may have been impossible, but I wanted it back. "You and me both know how these things work, Brooke… you know that all they're doing is trying to test the strong ones…"

My words faded and faltered, and eventually, they just got lost right into thin air completely, because Brooke never said anything, and I didn't have anything to say.

The remnants of my last sentence fermented heavily around us, lingering on my tongue so that it was left with a strong, soury taste that made me scrunch up my face as I looked down at my feet, starting to feel skeptical of even my own advice, deciding that if testing the strong ones meant having to suffer through the pain of trying to hold on to who you loved for the last time, well than I think that I'd rather just keep being weak.

* * *

**JULIAN**

I guess that in general, I usually considered myself to be a pretty lucky person.

For example, I'm pretty lucky that 4:00 in the morning in California time is equivalent to 7:00 in the morning in North Carolina time so that when I felt the need to place an impromptu call to Brooke at such a ridiculous time, I knew that she would answer.

I had been so excited just to hear her voice for the first time in what felt like weeks, that the possibility of the fact that what she might have to say to me was something I didn't want to hear didn't even register in my head… that is, until I heard the tone in Brooke's voice… the miniscule pitch change, the way her consonants dragged and her vowels dropped… something was wrong.

"Something happened last night, Julian…" When Brooke spoke those words to me last night, my heart literally dropped down into knees… The very first thought that ran through my head was the possibility that this was it, this was the phone call I'd been dreading, yet at the same time anticipating ever since the day that Sam was diagnosed.

It was immediately after that moment that I became a man on a mission. I had two goals, and those were to pack, and to leave… It was only in that most inconvenient of moments that I finally realized how much crap I'd managed to accumulate in only a matter of two or so weeks…

I tore through my hotel room with an open duffle bag, grabbing anything I saw lying on the floor and shoving it inside so that by the time I checked out of my hotel and en route to Los Angeles International Airport, I was about 99% sure that I'd left something, and probably something really important behind on my hotel room floor…

But that didn't matter right now. I had to stick to the task ahead. I had to get to LAX, and I had to get there fast.

So remember all of that crap I just said about me being lucky? Well you can forget about all of it now, because as it turned out, it was very unlucky for me that the first plane flying non-stop from Los Angeles to Tree Hill, North Carolina didn't leave until 11:30 that night. It was even unluckier for me that that plane was already completely full.

I pushed with the woman behind the front desk for nearly an hour until there was a line practically out the door and I damn-near had to be physically escorted away from the premises… I'd used every excuse in the book; my ten million or so frequent flier miles, my media influence… Hell, I even tried to play the pity card, waving a photo of me and a bald-headed Sam in the hospital as I put on my best display of our intense sob story, but even after all of that, the only thing she gave me was a flight leaving at six a.m. tomorrow morning and the knowledge that at least I'd be in North Carolina before Christmas…

The first thought that swept across my head was that by then it would be too late… I mean, what didn't this woman understand? Sam could be dead by six a.m. tomorrow morning… But I guess that wasn't her problem, what did she care whether or not I was there for Sam as she took her last breaths?

God, I hate L.A… I swear, every time I come visit I swear to it that I'm never coming back… and yet, here I am…

I finally accepted my cruel fate, realizing it was best to back off before I got arrested and probed as a terrorist suspect or something, so with my six a.m. plane ticket into Tree Hill, and nothing but a duffle bag that would barely stay closed due to the various items I had stuffed inside, I parked myself against an isolated row of chairs, and I waited.

Now, I can tell you that those nineteen or so hours went by really, really fast… I could tell you that I spent the time lounging luxuriously against the best features this airport had to offer, but the only thing that would have been would be a big, fat lie…

When I finally did get on the plane; twenty four hours and one five hour delay later, I was stuck in a middle seat in between two elderly people, neither of which would stop talking to me the entire time despite my mumbled responses and the fact that I put my headphones on about half way through the flight…

I didn't mean to be rude, honestly I didn't, but I just wasn't in the mood to talk right now, and it had a lot to do with the anxiety that was slowly starting to creep its way up my spine with ever second closer we flew…

Our plane landed in Tree Hill, North Carolina at 7:04 p.m., and with no bags to pick up, and nobody waiting for my arrival, I sprinted through the airport, past the baggage claim, past the parking lot, and straight into the taxi pick up point, waiting for the ride that would take me straight back into the life I'd left behind… the family that I swear, I'd never turn my back on ever again.

I drummed my fingers impatiently across the cab's leather interior, getting antsy in my panicked frustration stemming from my heinous thirty hour travel experience as we sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic along the highway… I did so much backseat driving I was surprised the driver didn't just kick me out and leave my ass in the middle of the highway to walk to the hospital… I mean, hell, practically the only thing I didn't do was jump in the driver's seat myself and slam right through all of these cars…

I'd eventually gotten to the point that I swore I'd never get to where I needed to be, but just as the clock rounding 8, and the sun sank backwards leaving total darkness, the familiar skyline of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital appeared ahead, becoming distinctly clearer with each passing second until finally, my taxi pulled up into the small cul-de-sac in front of the busy general entrance.

I jumped out of the car, slinging my backpack around my shoulder as I threw a jumbled up wad of cash at the poor driver… I wasn't even sure how much I gave him; it could have been $5, it could have been $500 for all I cared… I had no idea, and now, I probably never would, because by the time he'd had the opportunity to count out the bills and call me back in the case of a miss-match, I was already out of sight, through the front doors, and up the elevator headed towards the sixth floor.

It wasn't until I was headed down the long path of Tree Hill Memorial's crowded oncology wing that I realized that I had absolutely no idea where Sam even was…

I scanned over each door hurriedly, looking down at the name plates that adorned each one for any sign of the name "Walker"… But I walked the length of the circular hallway twice, and still, I never found anything… So much seemed to have changed around here these past few days I've been gone… I didn't seem to recognize anything anymore… anyone…

I just stood in the middle of the hallway, looking like a total greenhorn, lost and disoriented in my unfamiliar surroundings with no one around to tell me what to do, no one to point me in the right direction…

I felt like an idiot just standing here, so I walked across the corner a couple more times, just getting ready to consider calling Brooke and asking for directions when a thought entered my head and struck me frozen where I stood…

What if I was too late?

For what felt like hours, I couldn't find the strength inside of me to force my muscles to move, and then, slowly but surely, my body began shaking, the tremors starting at my feet and gradually travelling straight up to the top of my head as the fear of possibility flooded throughout my entire body.

In front of me, a set of automatic double doors materialized into my vision… I knew where it led to but I'd never actually been back there before… It was the medical ICU, the place they stuck the sickest of the suck kids, the place that I knew would be my last option to look.

I walked towards it slowly, but every step that I took forward, it seemed as if the hallway was just growing longer, creating the illusion that I wasn't actually going anywhere… but somehow or another, I managed to make it to the door.

I slammed the button to open them and stepped inside where I entered a tiny alcove, watching as the automatic doors shut slowly and mechanically behind me, locking me into this tiny, bright box…

In front of me, a second set of doors flashed a loud, bolded sign across the frame reminding me that I was about to enter into a sterile environment and was required from here on out to wash my hands before entering for the safety of the patients, their families, and the staff.

I shuddered involuntarily at the isolation of this place as I ran my hands under the burning hot water, scrubbing at my skin with precision of a surgeon before finally feeling confident enough in my cleansing to press the button that would release me into the other side of the hall.

I felt instantly as if I'd just entered into an entirely different world… it was hotter inside of this hallway, brighter; but still, somehow it all seemed much hotter, much darker… The irony began messing with my head as I walked through the empty hallways. The first thing I noticed was that there were no kids walking around with their parents. The nurses would do what they had to before disappearing into a patient room or the nurse's lounge. It was so silent I could hear the sound of my shoes against the tile floor with every step that I took… Every door was closed, every curtain drawn… the environment of the area changed so suddenly, that I'd missed the transition entirely.

I began my quest to find Brooke and Sam once again, praying to God that I would find them here as my heart thudded harder and harder against my ribs with each door I passed that wasn't Sam's.

I'd been succumbed to such tunnel vision in the search to find the name 'Walker' written against the door, that when I saw the word 'Davis' written on the nameplate instead, I walked right past it.

I had to double take and read the name twice over before the remembrance of Brooke's official adoption of Sam hit me over the head like a blunt object… It seemed like quite the celebration to me; get adopted, get your very own personalized nameplate imprinted on your hospital room door in the pediatric medical intensive care unit.

I opened the door slowly; peering in tentatively just in case I'd gotten the wrong room. My eyes focused in the dim light that emphasized the center of the room onto the large bed containing such a small body so that for a second there, I thought that I had actually gotten the wrong room… or at least, I wished that I had.

I'd never seen anyone look so sick before, so fragile, so close to death… and I wasn't particularly happy that my first experience with it all was with a girl who was as good as my own daughter as the main subject.

My feet subconsciously shifted forward, determined to get as close as I possibly could, determined not to take my eyes off of Sam, not to miss any detail in her face, just in case this was the last time I'd have the opportunity to do so.

Her image sucked the life right out of me to the point that it literally sunk my face inwards with the effort to suppress my tears so that it left me looking withered, pale, skinny… mostly just exposing me as the phony that I was currently feeling like.

It was strange the way a single situation left you evaluating your entire life… how every memory you've ever had in your life flashes through your head in a manner of seconds… It started to make me think… I guess that before all of this happened; I used to consider myself to be a good man, a stable man, a generous man… In general, I always chose to go with the flow and make things easier on myself, and in the begging of all of this, I'd make sure that my face always remained the same; neutral, cool, calm; anything that would help me from facing the fact that I wasn't okay… But when that stopped working, even that idea started getting old after a while.

I forced my gaze from Sam, and believe it or not, I noticed Brooke for the first time; sitting on the other side of the bed, curled up in a ball fast asleep, and I finally focused all of my attention on her; taking in her soft features, immediately beating myself over the head… once again, mind you, for leaving her to begin with.

There is only a single piece of advice that my father has ever given to me that I actually took to heart and remembered to this day… On my 6th birthday, my dad took me to a Dodgers game to celebrate… It was the last time I'd ever really remembered the two of us just hanging out… How sad is that, huh? Two decades later and the most lasting memory I have of me and my dad is from when I was six.

Anyway; I remembered that after the game, he dropped me off at home because at the time, he was living out of a hotel room; a direct effect of my mother catching him in bed with some big-boobed, bad actress from his last movie… Now that I thought about it, he probably had a little bit more alcohol in his system than he should have driving his six year old son home, but we'd made it back okay, and then, right before I was about to get out of the car, my dad reached out, grabbed me around the back of my neck, pulled me in close to him, and said:

"Son, you're growing up now, and I know that it may seem like a long time away, but one day you're going to be a man, and you need to know that men can do the most terrible things… So don't ever become the man that I am, okay?"

I tried living my entire life to this one, single standard, and deep down I really thought that I became a good guy. But I guess that it was just built into my genetics or something to turn my back on the ones who I love, because the second I walked away from Brooke the other day, I knew in an instant that I had just done that terrible thing that my father warned me about, and I had suddenly become just like him.

But unlike my father, I had time to rectify my mistakes, I had the will power, the reason… excuse me, the reasons to make them right… and they were both sleeping right in front of me as spoke.

"Julian?"

I'd been staring at Brooke for so long that my piercing gaze became enough to wake her up… I snapped out of my trance the second I heard her voice, stepping around Sam's bed, watching as she rubbed her eyes of sleep and sat up from her position in the giant chair in the corner.

"Yeah, it's me Brooke… I'm here now." In my confirmation for her that she wasn't dreaming up my arrival, that I really was here, she shot up from her chair so sharply that she staggered on her feet, ultimately falling right into my open arms, just where I'd wanted her to be all along anyway…

I held onto her tight, my muscles tensing across her entire body as she pulled herself into me, buried her face deep into me chest, and automatically began sobbing into it.

I couldn't think of anything to say that would make her feel better, so instead of doing anything, or saying anything, I just held her, rubbing her back gently with one hand, weaving my fingers through her hair with the other.

We stayed like that for a long time, but to be completely honest, I didn't mind much; to me, I could have stayed this way for the rest of my life and been okay with it.

I ultimately left it up to Brooke to decide when to pull away from me, and when she actually did, she did so with a blast of cold air that left me shivering and shaking from somewhere deep inside of my very bones.

"I'm sorry Julian," She sniffled, wiping her eyes in an attempt to rid herself of the evidence of tears even though there was a wet imprint of her entire face clearly embedded into the fabric surrounding my chest.

"Hey, don't be sorry…" I grabbed her by the shoulders and lowered her down onto the large, cushioned chair before I squished myself in next to her so that she was practically sitting in my lap. "If anybody should be sorry it should be me for leaving you here by yourself to deal with all of this."

She took a deep, shaky breath, one that I couldn't really translate so that I was left slightly nervous that she'd taken my statement the wrong way until her body relaxed fully against my own, her head burying deeply into the nook of my shoulder until we were both attached comfortably to each other.

"How's our girl?" My gaze shifted onto Sam as Brooke turned her head to face her after me.

"She's staying strong."

"Just like her mom."

"I'm not so sure about that anymore, Julian." Brooke sniffled as she unconsciously buried her face a little bit deeper into my shoulder, "I'm not feeling so strong right about now…"

"Hey…" I pulled her away from me, turning to face her as I tilted her chin upwards just so that I could look directly into her eyes, "Brooke how can you even think that way? You and Sam are the two strongest people I have ever known in my entire life… It takes a lot for you to have stuck by Sam's side for this long… It takes a lot more for you to even be here with her right now. Brooke, you have a lot more strength than you think you do… Hell, I wish I could be as strong as you are sometimes."

"You've gotta be strong if you've managed to stick around with someone like me for this long." She flashed me a quick smile upward before resting herself back into position against my shoulder.

"Nah… I'm just really lucky." I turned to her, squeezing her tightly around her shoulder as I buried my face deep into her hair.

For a moment we just sat there so that the lingering darkness; prohibited in its completion by the soft light hanging over Sam's bed reflected all three of us perfectly. Brooke and I just stared ahead in our silence, the only thing deterring us being the feeling of Brooke yawning so steeply that I could feel the contraction of her jaw muscles against my body.

"You should get some sleep, Brooke."

"I can't, Julian… Sam…"

"I'll stay up with tonight, Brooke," I made my promise with every intention of keeping it, "You let me be the strong one for the two of you for once."

"Will you wake me up if anything happens?" She asked me, her voice heavy with sleep as she shifted her head in an effort to find a more comfortable position against my body.

"I promise,"

"And you'll… and you'll…" Her sentence was cut off amidst another yawn and left forever incomplete as she fell asleep completely, her neck bent at an awkward angle against me and my arm pinning uncomfortably behind her back.

Before she'd gone to sleep, Brooke had asked me to wake her if anything happened, alluding towards the false belief that something would actually happen here tonight worthy enough that it would cause me to wake her up, but nothing ever did… nothing pertaining to Sam, anyway.

I couldn't have been sitting here for more than an hour; in fact, it wasn't even that late yet… It was probably a little after nine, maybe ten when I heard it… I can't describe it really, it was almost like some kind of distant, strangled cry; too soft to be a yell, but at the same time, way too loud to be normal as it originated from somewhere within the hallway.

My head perked up instinctively as I looked away from Sam for the first time in that hour or so I'd been sitting here and shifted over towards the door; ears poised and attentive, waiting to hear the noise again, waiting to identify it… And then it came again, and even though I was ready for it this time, it sounded like no noise that I'd ever heard before, and one that I'd never believe any human capable of making…

In my curiosity, the desire to investigate took over as I carefully repositioned Brooke's body, which was folded like a pretzel around my own, and moved with slow precision into a standing position; but of course, Brooke was so deeply asleep, I probably could have thrown her to the ground and stepped on her on my way up and she still probably wouldn't have woken up…

I was just pulling the spare blanket a bit higher over her shoulders when I heard the noise again…

I walked slowly and cautiously over towards the large observation window that separated the room from the hallway, afraid to move too fast, afraid to see what I might find on the other side of this glass… I peeled the curtain away from the window, forming the smallest crack I could manage while still being able to see out of it and peered outwards…

At first, I didn't see anything; but when I stepped further into the open, and my surroundings became clearer around me, it became painfully obviously exactly what it was that I'd just heard.

There was a woman a couple of doors down the hallway… she was young… I'm talking late 20's, early 30's at the most… She had the distinct features of somebody who used to be beautiful before she was torn apart by everything that the world had to offer her… I watched as she fought and twisted her way out of a much larger, much stronger man's arms, ultimately achieving her goal in her insurmountable anguish, but finding herself so overcome by emotion, that she just fell to her knees the second she lost her support anyway.

Her face looked savage to the point that it almost appeared disfigured in the emotion prevalent across it as she reeled her head backwards, opened her mouth, and released yet another ear-splitting sob that sounded like it originated straight from her very gut…

I couldn't tear away my gaze; I could only sit here, completely mesmerized as I studied this woman carefully, read her emotions like an open book, and attempted to identify the cause of all of her pain… But as it turned out, I didn't have to wait very long… It was only a few minutes later that the floor shook under my feet with the familiar feeling of a large stretcher being wheeled down the hallway…

Squinting my eyes for a closer look, I leaned into the glass as the stretcher wheeled past my window, carrying, for a brief moment, what I believed to be an empty stretcher.

I looked closer as my eyes constricted and focused until it became distinctly obvious to me that this wasn't an empty stretcher, it wasn't empty at all, I just thought it was because of the blank white sheet, drawn in its entirety over the outline of a very prone, very dead outline of a body…

My heart shattered at the scene; the stillness of it all, the child lingering lifelessly in front of me… the child who couldn't have been more than four or five years old judging by the size… the child who had just lost a battle with life that really had only just begun.

My eyes stung and reddened with my attempt to stem the tears that were pouring down my face as the mother on the floor struggled to her feet and ran over to the stalled stretcher, clawing at the body underneath it in a desperate attempt to hold her child one last time before he disappeared around the corner completely.

In my shock, my inability to watch this scene without thinking of Sam and Brooke, I stumbled backwards away from the window, willing everything I'd just witnessed to vanish from my mind completely even though I knew that it would probably be permanently embedded in there for as long as I lived.

I thought about Sam… and then I thought about Brooke, and all at once, the only thing that I wanted was to be closer to them, to attach myself physically onto them just so that maybe everything bad that had ever happened to them would transfer onto me… so that maybe I could put things to order amidst an otherwise unfair battle…

In an effort for me to achieve this endeavor, I crawled back over towards Brooke, positioning myself back into the chair besides her, once again finding her barely moving a single inch as I sank back into the cushions and relaxed my body against her own…

My breathing eradicated as the image that I'd just seen outside in the hallway played over and over again across my brain as if it were still carrying on right in front of me… In my heightened senses, I managed to make out the sound of the rain as it slowly began to pound against the large window of Sam's room that overlooked the hushed city of Tree Hill, North Carolina below it…

I used to like the rain; to me, it used to represent something pure, something clean… that ideal that it was simply washing away all the bad things, flipping on the re-do switch so that you could simply start all over again… But those days have long since been over… these days, the only thing the rain ever did for me anymore was remind me that no matter how you envision things like this playing out, the weather didn't actually have to be perfect for you on the day you died after all.


	43. Friend of Mine

**Hey guys, sorry I know this chapters a bit late but I'm finally getting settled in with finishing up my finals and all that and moving back into home for break and all that fun stuff so I finally found some time to finish up with this so here you go. Hope you enjoy!**

Chapter 43: Friend of Mine

**Saturday, December 24****th****, 2011**

**JULIAN**

Last night, I learned a very valuable lesson about the sleeping habits of Brooke that she had firmly established in my absence. First and foremost, I learned that she never sleeps for more than two or three hours at a time anymore. Second, I learned that she can function almost fully on about half of the sleep that your average human like you and me requires. And finally, I learned that once Brooke Davis was up and ready to begin her day, there was absolutely no stopping her.

Of course, important as those lessons were to me, as it turned out, it wasn't the most valuable one I would learn today… not by a long shot.

It was exactly 8:00 on this bright, shining Christmas Eve morning that I learned that Brooke had acquired a complete mastership in disguise since I'd been gone, because I'd also learned that she hadn't left this tiny box of a hospital room in nearly forty eight hours, but of course you would never be able to tell that just by looking at her…

In fact, the only reason I had actually learned this seemingly minor detail that Brooke had so conveniently left out of our conversation was because at exactly 8:00 on this bright, shining Christmas Eve morning that Peyton stopped by to check on Brooke, only to find that I was doing just that for her…

But believe it or not, there was actually some good news that had stemmed from that brief period of intense awkwardness in which me, Brooke, and Peyton sat in a perfect triangle for several tense, silent seconds just staring at each other like chickens with our heads cut off, because somehow; Peyton and I managed to combine forces, believe it or not, and actually convince Brooke to go home and take it easy for a while…

I designated responsibility onto my own shoulders, making sure that Brooke got home safe while at the same time ensuring that she adhered to each and every one of Peyton's strict guidelines towards caring for her own health while meanwhile, Peyton agreed to man down the fort and stay with Sam for a little while…

I was the one who brought Brooke to her car tucked away in the parking garage of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital. I was the one that drove precariously through the traffic that congested even the most residential of roads with rushed, last minute holiday travelers. I was the one that lead Brooke inside of that big, empty house, left unfilled by the loss of one its inhabitants… and to be completely honest with you, it was difficult for me to do… It was difficult for me to guide Brooke Davis when I could barely see the road in front of me myself.

Actually, I've been feeling completely blind on my feet… more so than usual I mean, for these past two days or so… The problem is, no matter what I do, I just can't seem to find the right footing to get me back up again.

But somehow amidst the aimless, clumsy messes that were me and Brooke right now, we'd somehow managed to find our way back to the house and through the front door on our own accord… Eventually, that is…

I juggled both Brooke's bags as well as my own in between my hands as I lead the way into the house and kicked the door open; staggering in under the weight of the bags underneath my puny arms as I immediately dropped them down onto the couch.

Straightening myself up, I looked over towards Brooke who looked totally and utterly confused; just standing there in the middle of the hallway, completely unsure of what it was that she should be doing now that she was home.

"Do you want me to make you something to eat? Or… or I can go out and pick something up if you want." I asked, just trying to steer her over in the right direction of doing something that would make her look less like she was about to collapse under the pressure of sheer exhaustion.

"No," Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper as she shook her head in response to my request, "I think that I'm just gonna go get changed and take a bath or something."

"I can get it ready for you if you want." I was so determined to help, so determined to do something… anything, that I hopped into action so quickly, I literally tripped over my own two feet, nearly falling flat on my face.

She offered me the smallest of smiles, and I couldn't be so sure if it was a smile of appreciation, or if she was making fun of me for looking like a fool in front of her… but either way, it was nice to see her face glow like that again… It was an action that was way too few and far between these days for me not to stop and appreciate it.

"Thanks Julian," The corners of my mouth tipped upwards as Brooke disappeared down the hall and into her bedroom while meanwhile, I lingered for a couple of extra seconds just staring down the corridor before I found the strength to power my legs to follow her, sneaking stealthily into the bathroom where I took my time lowering myself down onto the edge of Brooke's Jacuzzi-sized bathtub to turn the water on.

I watched absentmindedly as the small waterfall shot from the faucet, thrusting my hand underneath the flow to test the heat as a thin layer of water across the bottom of the enormous tub.

"Thanks for this Julian… for all of it." I turned my head at the sound of my name, watching as Brooke reappeared in the doorframe wearing her bathrobe with her towel draped across the back of her neck.

"No problem…" I sighed, wiping my hands dry on the fabric of my jeans before standing, making the quick move to leave the bathroom in an effort to give Brooke some privacy. "I'm just gonna… I'll just wait outside."

"Julian?" I was half way out the door before Brooke called me back inside.

"Yeah Brooke?"

"I just… I really don't wanna be alone right now." I smiled and nodded my head in recognition of her request, stepping back further into the bathroom, closing the door behind me… I mean, how could I resist that offer, right?

I took a couple of steps closer towards her, wrapping my bulky arms across her much smaller ones as I pulled her body tightly into mine and held onto the back of her head so that her face was pressed firmly against my chest until the only sound inside of the room was that of the water as it slowly filled across the bathtub.

"It's okay Brooke," I mumbled my words into her hair, "You don't have to be alone anymore. I promise that I am never going to leave you alone ever again, okay?"

She didn't say anything in response; instead, she just lifted her head upwards in perfectly orchestrated movements with my own as my chin tilted down until our lips met on their own accord, in an action that wasn't particularly planned, but hell, Brooke and I couldn't have scripted it better…

I felt every motion of every muscle in her body as she struggled to shrug her robe down and off of her shoulders until I finally reached up myself and slid the soft cotton down her arms, consciously allowing my fingertips to graze along her smooth skin with every motion that I made.

I wanted to hold her forever. In that instant, my desire to remain attached to Brooke's body for the rest of my life made it so that even those brief seconds that our lips parted so that I could lift my shirt up and over my head were physically painful.

We fell together into the still-filling bathtub as a single unit, the water splashing up and out of the sides of the linoleum tub so that it fell and gathered into a significant puddle across the floor, but that thought hardly registered across my mind; it was all so miniscule, so insignificant in this moment… and besides, right now, I don't think it would have been physically possible for me to focus on anything other than Brooke anyway.

The water rose higher and higher against my skin; the motions of the faucet being constantly counteracted by the substantial tidal waves that would empty the tub faster than it could fill from the continuous back and forth motions that Brooke and I continuously performed against each other's bodies until finally, there was more water on the floor than there was in the actual tub…

The combination of water and sweat made my back slick so that it slid down the smooth surface of the bathtub as Brooke shifted on top of me and repositioned herself over my chest, her lips hovering over my own so that we were connected at all points as our muscles tensed simultaneously for several seconds before finally relaxing; completely limp so that Brooke's full body weight was rested entirely against my own, filling me with a sense of complete fullness.

I could have stayed like that forever, I swear to God I could have… In fact, I think that the only reason I actually finally did move was because after a while, now that Brooke and I were no longer moving, the water rose so high over my face, it completely eliminated my capacity to breathe.

Still holding Brooke firmly by the arms, I shifted the both of us upwards until I was rested into a seated position against the back of the tub, Brooke lying comfortably against my chest, her head leaned back against my shoulder and her eyes closed, just waiting as both of our heaving chests slowed back to a steady pace of rhythmic breathing.

Leaning forward, I tilted my head until my face was buried into Brooke's hair, inhaling deeply just so I could breathe in that scent that I loved so much.

"I don't think you realized just how much I've missed you, Brooke." I mumbled to her as the water rose and filtered between the cracks of my arms, still holding firmly around Brooke's middle.

"I think I have an idea," She responded, using her feet to fumble with the tap until she successfully shut off the water so that the silence built through the air until the only thing that we could hear was the occasional splash and shuffle across the surface of the small pool of water collected around us.

"Me too…" I sighed, taking a breath so deep that the movement of my chest physically moved Brooke up and down along with it. "Brooke, I want you to be the first one to know that I'm done with L.A… I can't do it anymore; I can't be that far away from you and Sam ever again."

"Julian…" She spoke with an air of surprised skepticism in her voice as she swiveled against me so that she could look directly into my eyes, "Julian are you sure?"

I gave her the softest of smiles; in fact, I have never been so sure about anything more in my entire life. The decision had ultimately been an easy one; I mean, I don't know a lot about life, and honestly, I don't pretend to either; but I sure as hell do know a crutch when I see one… A film offer here, a few thousand frequent-flier miles there, and one all-expense paid condominium off of the coast of Southern California… all of these things were the absolute definition of crutches, because as elaborate and glamorous as all of that sounds, as it turned out, they were the only things that were ever keeping me from truly living all along.

"When did you make that decision?"

I felt myself wrap my arms around her body a little bit tighter as I subconsciously pulled her in closer to me. To be completely honest, there was never really any decision to make… Every single day I spent in Los Angeles was sunny, warm, bright… absolutely perfect. The thing was, no matter how beautiful the weather got, and no matter how picturesque L.A. was, it didn't change the fact that I could never stop thinking just how much my family back home on the other side of the country would love to see it.

"It was easy really" I responded to Brooke's question, "The glamorous life doesn't really mean anything when all it does is leave you empty… we both know that much."

She didn't say anything in response, but I could tell by the way that each and every muscle in her body relaxed against my own that she did indeed know exactly what it was that I meant… that being rich and famous meant absolutely nothing if the one person who was always there to catch you when you fell was constantly getting pushed to the side…

I tilted my head sideways in an effort to get a good look into her face and attempt to read her thoughts. A sad look was splayed out across her features, and in that moment, I couldn't help but wonder how it was possible that somebody as flawlessly beautiful as Brooke Davis could ever be put through this much pain.

"What's going on in that beautiful head of yours, Brooke Davis?"

"I'm just thinking, that's all,"

"About what?" She shrugged her shoulders gently, but I could still feel the motion of her delicate shoulder blades as they flexed against my exposed chest.

Sniffling slightly, she let out a shaky breath; a distinct sign that she was trying her damned hardest to hold back the tears.

"Hey… Come on Brooke, talk to me." I lifted my hands and placed them down gently on her shoulders, rubbing softly in slow up and down motions across her upper arms as she took yet another deep breath before hesitating slightly, and finally speaking.

"I never got to tell her how much I loved her." Her body shuddered involuntarily against my own so that I instinctively held onto her tighter. "On Wednesday… when Sam… when everything was happening… I got so caught up with it all that I didn't even stop to tell Sam that I loved her… Now what if I never get to tell her, Julian? What if I don't have the chance to make this better?"

I understood exactly what she was telling me. Hell, I could probably tell you exactly how she was feeling… You see, the second I'd gotten that phone call from Brooke the other day, and she told me just how sick Sam really was, I found myself suddenly overpowered with this urge… no, this relentless need to run home, to hold Brooke in my arms, to tell Sam how amazing it made me feel just to see her smile… How in life, in sickness, and even in an uncomfortably close inch away death, I just wished that I could tell that kid how much she'd stolen my heard ever since day one… and not being able to do just that was absolutely killing me inside.

"You'll be able to tell her Brooke… You just have to believe that you'll be able to tell her. You have to believe that everything is going to be alright."

"But what if I don't, Julian?"

I paused and took a deep breath, releasing the smallest of nods with the recognition of Brooke's acceptance towards the fact that she knew that everything around her was pointing towards the knowledge that Brooke's deepest fears were warranted…

"She knows, Brooke…" I promised her, "She know, and even if you don't get the chance to tell her directly, you can still hold your head up knowing that whatever happens, and wherever Sam does end up, she will know just how much you love her, and because of that, she'll be fine… She'll be okay Brooke… she'll be okay…" My voice lowered in volume until my motivational speech came out in barely above a whisper, setting the stage for the incoming silence that filtered across us as my skim began to prune and bathwater grew colder and colder with each passing minute.

I was just about to suggest a change in location when I heard the doorbell ring; the prominent noise echoing across the otherwise empty house, bouncing off of the water and straight into our poised ears.

"Ignore it…" Brooke sighed, her eyes closed and her body so relaxed against my own that I was starting to get the impression that her intentions were to stay here forever.

I opened my mouth in a quiet confirmation of Brooke's request, but my reply got lost; drowned out by the doorbell as it rang for the second time… and then once again for a third.

I sighed; whoever it was that was at the door was persistent, and I was starting to think that simply ignoring it wasn't exactly going to be a plausible option.

"Brooke, I know that you're in there! I can see your car in the driveway!" Haley's distinct voice fluttered through my ears as Brooke released a sigh in response to it, pausing for only the briefest of moments before she finally lifted herself off of my body and out of the tub.

"On second thought…" She sighed, wrapping a towel around her body, trying her hardest to dry off as quickly as possible as I jolted upward; pulling the drain on the bathtub, stepping up to join her back into the cold, unwelcoming air of the real world.

"Hey Brooke, you take your time... I'll go get the door, okay?" I assured her, watching as she immediately relaxed towards my offer, while meanwhile, I struggled to dry myself half-assed before pulling my boxers and jeans back up around my waist, draping my towel across the back of my neck as Brooke responded to my comment with one last quick, yet lingering kiss that was only broken by Haley ringing the doorbell again, this time accompanying the motion with a stern knock that echoed harshly through the house.

"You better let her in before she knocks down the door."

I detached my lips from Brooke's with great reluctance, forcing myself into the hall as I walked swiftly towards the front door at the end of the long hallway, leaving behind wet footprints with ever step closer that I took.

"I'm coming Haley, I'm coming," I shouted, my voice getting drown out by a streak of obnoxious doorbell tones as I reached forward and ripped the door open; the blast of the cold wind outside hitting my wet skin so that goose bumps formed across each exposed surface of my body.

"Julian," Haley fumbled with the large paper bag she was holding, clearly surprised to see me standing in the doorway instead of Brooke, "When did you get back?"

"Late last night," I answered, reaching out to grab the oversized bag that Haley was still struggling to control between her arms, "Here Haley, let me take those."

She accepted my offer, passing the bag gratefully towards me as she stepped inside and into the house, leaving me standing in the doorway, immediately realizing what a good idea my chivalrous action had been when the smell of freshly baked bagels originating from inside of the bag I was holding wafted across my nostrils.

"I guess Brooke called you…" She longed for the details of my return, but left her sentence hanging for fear that she'd be overstepping her boundaries by bringing up Sam.

"Um… yeah…" I scratched at the back of my head awkwardly, not really knowing what else to do to avoid this uncomfortable feeling currently seeping through me veins. "Yeah, I talked to her on Thursday, but I couldn't get a flight until last night, so…"

I drifted away into open air as Haley nodded her head absentmindedly, leaving me to try to come up with what to say next… I was just starting to really struggle when Brooke saved me by simply strolling into the kitchen, wearing a fresh pair of sweats and adjusting the towel cocooned firmly atop her head.

"Hey Hales… What are you doing here so early?"

"Not much," Haley shrugged, clearly as grateful to get out of the trap of awkward conversation with me as I was. "I just wanted to bring over some breakfast… Peyton texted me this morning to tell me that you were home so I figured I might as well check up on you… But I guess you didn't need it."

I looked up at Haley's comment, watching as she eyed the towel around Brooke's head before moving towards the one still hanging from around my neck, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of us slyly as she slowly began to piece two and two together.

I felt my face flush instantly red with embarrassment while meanwhile Brooke, whose hand was already digging through the collection of bagels, didn't seem to even notice…

I pretended not to notice as Haley attempted, but failed to be as inconspicuous as possible in her attempt to study me; probably trying to figure out why the hell Brooke and I were showering together when the last she'd heard of me, the only thing Brooke and I were doing was fighting…

I was just trying to decide whether or not she was sizing up any potential plans for me to leave Brooke and Sam again when the doorbell, still warm from Haley's recent assault against it once again rang through the house; making my head ring with the pain of repetition.

I looked up towards Brooke for answers, but her face showed just as much confusion as mine did so that I could tell she was equally, if not more confused about our potential visitor than I was.

"I wonder who that is…" Brooke spoke what we were all thinking out loud, placing her breakfast back down on the counter, preparing to step forward to investigate, but I stopped her; I wanted her to worry about herself today and nothing else… and if that meant me playing doorman for the day, well so be it.

"No Brooke, you eat, I'll go get the door."

She smiled at me appreciatively, grateful to be given at least a few minutes to herself for a change as I strolled out of the kitchen the same way I'd just come in, walking towards the front door, squinting in an effort to make out the shadow of a stock straight, tall-ish figure, along with what looked strangely like a suitcase or two silhouetted behind the outline of the grooved glass of the front door.

With little to no expectations, I opened the door casually, realizing in an instant that I should have been more prepared to keep my guard up as my eyes focused across the blast of sunlight and adjusted on the image of none other than Victoria Davis herself.

* * *

**BROOKE**

"So… you and Julian…" Haley snuck a not-so-stealth inquiry between our silence the second Julian disappeared from the kitchen. "What's up with you guys? Are you doing alright again?"

Her noisiness ruined my best efforts to simply avoid that subject altogether so I just looked down at my feet, trying to hide the fact that my cheeks were glowing bright red by focusing all of my attention on cutting my bagel into precisely measured halves.

"Well, he came back last night… and we talked…"

"And showered together apparently," Haley through her observation bluntly into the middle of my vague explanation, eager for details per usual with Haley.

"Well… technically it was a bath." I grinned slyly upwards towards Haley who responded to me with a giddy smile and a high pitched squeal as she clapped her hands together in delight. I couldn't help but grin back towards her. Her actions seemed to have put me away in a time machine, blasting me back to a period in my life where things were simpler, where I had time to waste gossiping with my friends…

It was so nice to feel that way again that for a split second, I forgot the reason why I'd since lost that simplicity… Of course, when that second was over, and I remembered again, it just made me feel worse about myself than I even felt…

The reminder struck me hard over the head as my broad grin faded slowly into a deep frown and I watched as Haley's face took a rapid plunge as well in response to my own as thoughts of Sam still struggling to hold on mere miles up the road once again filtered across my brain, forming a thick, impenetrable layer.

Her mouth opened to form the small bubble of pre-formulated words, and just as I was about to get nervous that she'd ask me if I was okay, that she'd force me to start talking about my feelings again, her unspoken inquiry was silenced permanently by Julian calling for my attention from somewhere along the front door.

"Uh… Brooke, can you come over here for a minute?"

Haley and I flashed each other quick glances of confusion before pulling away from the countertop simultaneously, me leading the way as I traipsed rapidly down the hallway, squinting as I rounded the corner into the foyer, the bright light emitting from the open front nearly blinding me so that I couldn't immediately identify the person standing within it…

Of course, by the time I finally did see who it was, it was already too late.

"Brooke… Good to know that the face of America's fashion industry answers her front door looking like she just spent the night in a homeless shelter."

I stopped dead in my tracks, my eyes widening as Julian grimaced at me apologetically, silently expressing his remorse towards opening the door and subsequently inviting the vampire inside before I had the opportunity to put a freaking wooden stake through her heart…

"Well, are you going to invite me inside, or am I just gonna have to wait outside in the cold all day?" She withdrew her attention from me and snapped at Julian who jumped slightly inside of his own skin in response to Victoria's command before thrusting himself forward, rushing to grab a hold onto Victoria's suitcases so that he could drag them inside and subsequently silently invite her to follow so that I knew I'd been permanently trapped in a commitment to this visit the second that Victoria's feet crossed the border between the outside and the interior of my home.

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just sat there; wide eyed and open-mouthed, pressed up against the wall of the foyer behind Haley in a desperate last-minute effort to retain some sense of a security blanket for the inevitable explosion that was about to occur within the walls of my house…

As worried as I'd been about it yesterday, after Julian came home last night, Victoria's visit had blown clear to the back of my mind yesterday so that I'd completely forgotten all about it, leaving me without the opportunity to have rehearsed just what it was I was going to say.

"What?"

It was only after Victoria had travelled a decent way inside of my house that she said something and I suddenly realized that all three of us were staring right at her with matched expressions of concern written across our faces; the knowledge of the fact that we knew something that Victoria did not bubbling across the surface of our skin so that I was surprised that Victoria couldn't see the news about Sam from it being written straight across each and every one of our faces.

"What!"

She asked again with more force behind her voice this time when nobody answered her, swiveling her head between all three of us in an attempt to get an answer from somebody, anybody… but still, it never came.

Haley and Julian's eyes pierced through every inch of skin across my body as my face grew red with pressure and my lower lip quivered with unformulated words meshing together to form an incoherent babble that not even I could comprehend.

I tried to pretend as if I didn't have three sets of eyes glaring at me in the search for answers. I tried to pretend that there was no answers to be had, no news to be recited. I tried to pretend, for what felt like the millionth time in this week alone to Victoria, that everything had been carrying on per usual here in Tree Hill during her absence.

Of course, this was much harder when staring at her face to face than it was when we were simply talking over the phone.

"Nothing…" For a split second, the motivation to tell her had run rampant through my veins, but just as quickly as it had come to me, it disappeared again and I retreated in my mission to finally tell her the truth.

Through my peripherals, I watched as Julian and Haley's faces drooped with disappointment, their eyes practically begging me to tell Victoria what was going on with Sam before I made it even worse on myself.

"It's just… it's just that none of us have really seen anything this nasty in here since Sam and I got rid of a rat in the basement back in September, so I'm sorry if we can't help but stare."

"You're hilarious Brooke," Victoria scrunched up her face sarcastically as she rolled her eyes and used her shoulder to push past me and invite herself further into the house towards the guest bedroom that I hadn't even put clean sheets in yet for her… I watched as she casually peered through each and every open door down the hall, slipping her head in before retreated again with a blank expression on her face each time.

"Where is Samantha?" She called from down the length of the hallway as Haley, Julian, and I exchanged nervous glances with one another before I took a deep breath, and once again ruined a perfectly good opportunity to speak the truth in my desperate last minute effort to stall.

"She uh… she went… she's… she's out…" So much for keeping cool and collected I guess… I stumbled nervously over each word; coming up with what could possibly have been the worst response, the vaguest excuse, the most horrendous lie I have ever spoken in my entire life.

"Out where?" Victoria was persistent; I would know, it was after all, one of the few traits I'd actually inherited from her. Strolling back into the foyer with a determined look across her face and her hands on her hips, she directed her face so that she was looking straight at me so that I could feel myself getting backed further and further into the corner with every second of this investigation that passed.

"Um… she's uh… she's…" I coughed nervously; I couldn't find the words, I couldn't think of anything to do to push this lie any further than it had already gone. It was suddenly starting to hit me how stupid I had been to think that that I could make it throughout this entire thing keeping this lie up with Victoria…

"Brooke," Haley intervened, probably recognizing just how much I was struggling here. And just when I thought that maybe she was going to help me make a decent excuse as to why Sam wouldn't be joining us for Christmas dinner this year, she did the exact opposite. "Maybe it's time that you tell her what's going on…"

I flashed Haley a look that was laced with clear desperation, trying to express to her that I would have done that a long time ago if I only knew how.

"Tell me what?" I watched Victoria as she straightened her spine with anticipatory concern as she inched closer to me and I retaliated by backing up slowly…

"Ms. Davis," Julian tried to come to my rescue, shifting over against my side where he wrapped an arm around my shoulder in a supporting fashion.

"Tell me what, Brooke?" Victoria cut him off before he had the opportunity to truly deliver, making it distinctly clear that whatever had to be said had to be said by me. Victoria's eyes matched mine, locking us into an inseparable eye contact that I couldn't break no matter how hard I tried.

"It's Sam…" I eased forward slowly; attempting to keep my voice as stony and expressionless as humanly possible as I finally found myself able to tear my eyes away from Victoria and pointed them down to the floor.

"Brooke, don't you dare tell me that you let her go back to living with that miserable old hag of a woman, because I swear to God if you did…"

"I didn't Victoria, it isn't that… Sam's still living here, it's just that… It's just…" I took a deep breath, emotion dripping with thick, heavy globs off of every word I spoke so that I knew in an instant how poorly I failed in my attempt to retain a neutral calm.

"Well spit it out already Brooke! Where is Sam? Is she okay?" I could hear the worry slowly etching into Victoria's normally stone cold voice as my heart pounded so hard against my rib cage that I was starting to think… no I was starting to hope, that maybe I would have a heart attack and I'd get out of this situation I'd currently found myself in.

"She's sick Victoria."

"Sick? Like how sick, sick?" She struggled to fit the pieces together, growing increasingly frustrated with me as I moved as slowly as humanly possible getting to the point that by sick, I meant _sick_.

I met Victoria's eyes once again and recognized a look of genuine concern across her face that actually made me feel a quick pang of jealously… Victoria was the mom that sent my nanny with me to the hospital when I had my tonsils out. Victoria was the mom that waited a week to get me to a doctor when I broke my wrist after Jesse Reynolds pushed me off of the school jungle gym when I was ten.

Of course, I knew that this situation wasn't quite the same as those, but still, seeing her care so much about Sam when she'd gone my entire life barely sneaking a second glance back at me… well, it stung, and I was starting to get to the point where I couldn't hide it anymore.

My gut twisted painfully, screaming at my brain that Sam and I were doing just fine without Victoria that I should just send her away, that she didn't deserve to know the truth… But then I saw that pained look flash across the eyes so similar to my own and that feeling vanished, and before I even knew what was happening, I was speaking again.

"Really sick," I mumbled so low that I was surprised Victoria caught a word of it.

"Brooke… what's going on here?" There was something written in Victoria's face that I couldn't place… Something unusual, something foreign… Something I've definitely never seen from her before ever.

"She has cancer, Victoria… leukemia." I ripped the Band-aid off of my skin so quickly, it even surprised me. I watched as Victoria's mouth slowly slid open until her lower jaw practically touched the ground below and her and her face settled dumbstruck so that she looked similar to how she would if she'd just been beaten over the head with a large, blunt object…

Of course, I was the master of that feeling so I wasn't too concerned; I knew that after a few more minutes that feeling of numb shock would just go away on its own, that after the blood finally started flooding back into her brain again, she would finally be able to move again.

"When did this… when did it… when?" She stumbled blindly over her words for a couple of seconds as the tunnel vision began to slowly set in so that the only thing she saw was me and the only thing I saw was her.

"November," I scuffed my toes into the hard wood floors, unable to look at the pain written across Victoria's overly Botoxed features as she acknowledged the fact that she'd been in the dark for so long… And despite everything that has happened between us these past years, I still felt a painful burn of shame filling my body in bizarre sort of way that I couldn't quite pinpoint.

"November…" Victoria breathed out slowly in search for a confirmation, refusing to believe that I'd actually kept something like this from her for so long.

I nodded; one quick motion of the head to confirm that she had indeed heard me correctly.

"She started getting sick in the end of October… Julian and I brought her to the hospital on Halloween… She was diagnosed the next day."

For a long time, Victoria didn't say anything. She didn't move, she didn't speak, in fact, she didn't even give me so much as a facial expression to indicate what it was she was currently feeling… A part of me wished she would do something; hell, I would have preferred for her to yell at me, scream at me, beat the shit out of me for all I cared… anything would have been better than watching as her face paled significantly and her hands began shaking slightly so that the bracelets around her wrist clinked together, filling the uncomfortable silence in the air with the sound of metal scraping against metal.

"Are you okay?" Even I couldn't believe the words coming out of my mouth.

"Am I okay?" She breathed, releasing an angry, airy sort of laugh that sent chills up my spine as her face contorted from an expressionless stare to one of pure rage. "Am I okay!" She practically screamed the second time she spoke as her cheeks reddened and she advanced towards me in a threatening manner that literally made me recoil out of fear. "You just told me that my granddaughter has cancer, Brooke! Not only that, but you kept it from me for almost two months!" She screamed, yelled, and got so up in my face that in my shock, I'd almost missed Victoria identifying Sam as her granddaughter.

"Do you really despise me that much, Brooke? Do you really have so much hatred towards me that you couldn't find it in you to call me and tell me that all of this was happening?"

"No Victoria!" I fed off of her rage, feeling as it slowly replaced the shame and self-disappointment I had previously been feeling, leaving me to puff out my chest indignantly and raise onto my tip-toes so that I could match her height and lock eyes; ready to release twenty four years of pent up rage and anger onto her in the next couple of seconds.

"I can't trust you with myself so do you really expect me to trust you with my daughter?" She rolled her eyes and broke eye contact with me so that monster currently growing inside of my chest roared with victory. "Where were you my entire life? Where were you for every important thing that had ever happened to me? You weren't there Victoria; it was my friends that were there for me then, and it's them that are here for me now. It is my friends that have been at Sam's bedside for the past two months helping her get better, not you."

The angry tirade spewed off my tongue in a synchronized fashion so that I knew that once I started going, there was no way in hell I'd be able to stop… I had after all, been waiting to tell off Victoria since the day I was born.

"You can tell me that you want to have a second chance with me by using Sam all you want, but Sam is my responsibility, she is my child." I spoke defiantly, jabbing my finger into my chest with every exaggerated "I" that I spoke. "I'm the one that has to make sure that Sam doesn't get hurt by anything or anybody, Victoria. I'm not going to let Sam get her hopes up in thinking that you're gonna be here for her just to have you leave again. I can't deal with that right now, and I know for a fact that Sam sure as hell can't either. She's got enough to worry about right now."

"That is crap Brooke!" Victoria shot back at me angrier as our conversation quickly started to get ugly. "You have no idea how much I care about Samantha. I would do absolutely anything to get her better. I can't believe that you would think that I would just leave her to do all of this by herself, what kind of person do you think I am Brooke?"

I chose not to answer her question because I know that if I did, I would have just ended up saying something I'd regret. I had a lot words to describe what kind of person I thought that Victoria was, I just wasn't willing to say any of them out loud for fear of being damned to hell for

I had a lot of words to describe what kind of person I thought Victoria was; but I wasn't willing to say any of them out loud for fear I'd get damned straight to hell on the spot for my vulgarity.

"You wouldn't have been there for me!" Tears of rage swam across my eyes as in my rage, I accidentally spewed out the words I'd been begging myself not to since Victoria's arrival.

"What are you talking about?"

"What if it was me Victoria?" My volume rose exponentially as my face reddened to a point where it physically burned. "What I was as sick as Sam is when I was sixteen years old? You wouldn't have been there, Victoria. You would have just left me to deal with it by myself like you did every other significant thing that has ever happened in my life!"

"Are you crazy?" Victoria asked the same question that I had just been starting to think myself, "Brooke I know that we have had our disagreements through the years, but you have to know that I've always cared about you, and I care about Samantha and I want to help the both of you get through this."

I breathed heavily, panting so hard that I couldn't even find it in me to formulate the words necessary to respond. My mind was racing so quickly that I was unable to form a single coherent thought to answer her.

I squinted my eyes in an effort to detect an air of authenticity behind Victoria's face and I watched as it set in behind a steep droop that not even all of her plastic surgeries could hide, and I would absolutely swear to it that I saw tears form a thin layer across her eyes.

"Mrs. Davis, listen…" Haley stepped between me and my mother, probably afraid that blows would be thrown next if she didn't intervene.

"Where is she?" She acted as if Haley never even spoke. Victoria didn't look at her, she didn't acknowledge her, in fact, she didn't make any indication that she'd heard her at all… instead, she just stared right into my eyes and asked the question that I had been fearing the most ever since this conversation began.

"Brooke, where is she?"

There was a couple of seconds in which Julian, Haley and I just stared at each other uncomfortably as Victoria's head swiveled between the three of us in search for answers.

"Brooke!" She yelled in her third attempt at the question, but still, I couldn't bring myself to answer; instead, I could only manage to stare at her with my mouth wide open as my lower lip trembled harshly to the point that my teeth chattered against each other so hard, it physically hurt. "Can somebody please just tell me what's going on?"

"Mrs. Davis, Sam… she's in the hospital." Haley took another step forward, making her presence noticeable the second time she spoke as she recognized the fact that I was out of words to speak.

"She's in the hospital where?" Victoria broadened her stance, initiating her natural defense mechanisms as she lifted her bag higher up her shoulder giving me the distinct impression that she was getting ready to go out somewhere… and I had a distinct impression that I knew just where that somewhere was.

"Mrs. Davis… Sam isn't… she's not doing so well, Mrs. Davis… I'm not… I don't think…"

"She is in the hospital where?" Victoria cut off Haley's vague warning, emphasizing every syllable she spoke so that poor Haley froze nervously, not experienced with Victoria enough to know what to do next.

"Tree Hill Memorial," She mumbled under her breath, the words barely leaving her mouth before Victoria was advancing threateningly towards the door, barreling so heavily she nearly knocked Julian flat on his ass in the process.

"Where are you going?" I shouted after her only when she was about half way out the door.

"Tree Hill Memorial!" She disclosed her intended destination, shouting amidst the strong whoosh of the door as it slammed shut so harshly, the entire house shook.

"Well… that went well." Julian sighed, trying to force some humor between the silence that sunk in amidst the fading echo of the slamming door.

"Do you think that she'll be okay by herself?" Haley asked, instinctively taking a couple of steps closer towards the door… Leave it up to Haley to be the one actually concerned for Victoria's well being, I guess…

"She'll be fine." I sighed, turning away from the door, although I did have half a mind to lock it behind Victoria so that she wouldn't be able to get back in.

"Brooke… I mean, she's your mom, you know, and she was just delivered a huge blow… I'm just not sure that she'll be okay out there all by herself, especially not if she sees Sam right now." Haley had this strange, uncanny ability of forcing me to take my most certain acts I have ever committed in my entire life and rethink whether or not they had been the right decisions…

I scrunched my face in thought… of course, at first thought, I would have said hell yeah she would be okay… actually I probably would have just said that I didn't really care either way… But now, just looking into Haley's eyes was making me start to feel bad.

Damn it Haley and the things she's able to do to me.

"Listen Brooke, why don't you hang out here and cool off for a little while. I'll go get Victoria and… I don't know… do something." Haley put the gentlest of hands against my shoulder and I closed my eyes against her touch, reaching up to cup the top of her hand within my own; a silent gesture of appreciation towards the fact that she was voluntarily willing to go venture into Victoria's clutches…

"I'll be right back." She moved quickly, lifting her hand from my body before swiftly wrapping her coat around her shoulders in one fluid moment and marching out of the front door right behind Victoria.

"Are you okay?" Julian stepped towards me and inquired towards my mental sanity only after we were in the comfort of privacy so that I would feel more comfortable revealing everything in my confidentiality.

I didn't answer him verbally; instead, I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head 'no', and fell forwards where I landed harshly into his chest.

The truth was, I didn't really know what it was that I was anymore… I mean, these days, I found myself describing me using a lot of words, but I can tell you this much, the word 'okay' never seemed to be one of those words… not right now, and by the looks of things, not for a long time coming either.

* * *

**HALEY**

This was awkward.

True, it was my own fault that I'd found myself in this situation to begin with, but still… that didn't make it any better… In fact, I was quite sure that maybe, if it was even possible, that might have just made it worse.

I had been the one who just had to open my big mouth and volunteer to chase down Victoria. I had been the one who found her practically running, already five blocks up the street in the direction of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital. I had been the one who'd been stupid enough to open up my fat mouth and offer her a ride to the hospital when she refused to go back to Brooke's house with me even though I knew full well that she had no idea what to expect or what to prepare for.

It was only later, when I had been sitting in my car with this woman, the only thing thawing the uncomfortably thick silence between us being the Christmas music I had blaring from the radio just to keep the sound from running out that I realized that I wasn't even sure if I'd ever even been officially introduced to Victoria…

I mean, sure, I've seen her around with Brooke from time to time, and of course I've heard the never ending complaints Brooke made about the woman, but this was actually as close to a formal meeting I've ever had with her… Of course, if this was a preview of what the rest of our relationship was going to be like, well I figured I'd better just end it now while I still had the chance.

"You said back at my daughter's house that Samantha wasn't doing well." Her voice sounded chiseled from stone but behind the façade, I heard the desire to go deeper; the desire to express something more and let me know that there was an actual human being somewhere trapped within that icy infrastructure. "What did you mean by that?"

I paused briefly, looking up towards Victoria with sorrow laced in my eyes as I jabbed at the button on the side of the wall and waited for the automatic doors leading up towards the oncology wing to open. I racked my mind for an appropriate explanation as I lead Victoria into the bustling hallway, feeling her shudder strongly against me as we brushed past the sign that designated the Oncology Hematology unit.

"Mrs. Davis… I'm not really sure that it should be me telling you all of this… maybe Brooke…"

"Listen Megan," She stopped me short and I didn't even bother correcting her with my real name, just because that wasn't really the point of all of this. "My daughter clearly did not want me to even know what was happening with Samantha to begin with. Now I know that you are quite good friends with Brooke, Lord only knows why, so you know how selfish she can be when it comes down to situations such as this one, which is why I am asking you to please tell me what my daughter won't about what is happening with Samantha."

I cringed towards Victoria's criticism of Brooke, unsure as to whether or not I should be holding it against her given the circumstances.

"She was doing well… for a while." I chose not to and instead dove head first into the story after only the briefest of pauses, deciding that it would probably be for the best to start at the beginning. "She took to the chemo well and even her doctors were saying she was getting better faster than they expected…"

We passed through the doors of the medical intensive care unit but Victoria was so enthralled with my story that I didn't even think she'd realized where it was we just entered into…

"But then one day last week she developed a pretty bad infection… and because of everything going on with the chemotherapy, she basically lost her entire immune system so she had no means to fight it off by and her doctors decided to put her in isolation for a couple of days, but they released her… and then on Thursday she collapsed at Brooke's house."

I slowed to a halt right in front of Sam's room, gesturing slightly with my arm to indicate that this was where we were at now; this is where we'd ended up. Victoria tore her eyes between me and the closed door in front of her, her face begging me for answers to the simplest of explanations that I'd actually provided.

"The doctors said she developed pneumonia somehow and because she's not strong enough to fight it off… well, they're saying she might never wake up."

I watched as Victoria took a slow, deep breath, closing her eyes in a final attempt to ease her emotions even though she was clearly losing that battle.

"She'll fight this off. She's strong, she's a Davis… She'll beat this." I think that even Victoria was surprised by the words that came out of her mouth as she reached up and allowed her fingers to graze over the faded Expo marker letters that spelled 'Davis' across the door outside of Sam's room.

"The adoption was made official last Wednesday." I answered Victoria's silent question, lingering in her eyes as to why Sam was being identified as Davis as opposed to Walker for her, but all she did was nod her head and take a deep breath in acknowledgment before she finally pulled herself away from the door.

"Thank you for bringing me here Harmony." It was the second different, and most importantly, the second wrong name she'd called me in the past five minutes… well, at least Harmony was closer than Megan. "But if you don't mind, I would really like to see Samantha alone."

"Of course," I nodded, taking a couple of steps backwards in order to give Victoria her space as she disappeared behind the door, softly closing it behind her so that I was left standing awkwardly by myself in the hallway, wondering whether or not it would have been rude of me to leave Victoria stranded here in the hospital by herself or if that's what she'd wanted me to do all along…

I struggled to formulate a plan, which was frustrating considering I was usually the one that always had the idea ready… I mean, should I wait here for Victoria to come out, should I have followed her into Sam's room with her, hell, should I have called Brooke to see how I should deal with this situation? I had absolutely no idea… but luckily, I didn't have to wait very long for answers.

It wasn't two minutes after Victoria had disappeared inside of Sam's room that the door swung open again; this time, so harshly that it literally caused me to jump straight out of my skin in shock. In fact, I'd just barely gotten out of the way of the solid swinging plank of wood as Victoria stormed right, barging right into me so that she'd practically knocked me down flat on my ass… The weirdest part was that she didn't even seem to notice that she'd almost killed me, instead, she just kept on going; stomping her feet heavily down the length of the hallway until she disappeared completely.

I stood frozen in shock, peering tentatively through the crack of the slowly closing door that exposed Sam still just as motionless, just as sickly as she had been the last time I'd seen her, and for a second, I got lost in my thoughts.

I don't know, I guess that the way that Brooke always describes Victoria, I'd pictured her as this stony bitch-like woman completely incapable of producing an emotional response… but judging by what I'd just seen come out of her, Victoria Davis had emotions all right, and she had a hell of a lot of them by the looks of it…

"Do you see what you do to people Sam?" I mumbled into the still room towards the unconscious girl just as the door sealed shut tight once again, re-creating the heavy barrier between me and Sam, leaving me all alone in the middle of this desolate hallway so that I had no other option other than to turn around and follow Victoria straight down the hall.

She'd gotten fairly decent head start but I caught up to her easily, which I guess I kind of should have expected considering I had the advantage of having a complete, two months in the making blueprint of this hospital permanently embedded into my brain while poor Brooke remained relatively new to this trade..

I'd found her upstairs, one floor above, hovering within the main hallway of Tree Hill's ever-expanding maternity ward; her sad, drooping features reflecting off of the bright sheet of glass that separated the hallway from the small collection of softly cooing newborns just waiting to be held by their parents.

I always found it strangely ironic that the pediatric oncology unit could be found directly underneath this hallway… that a thin sheet of linoleum, and a small plank of wood was the only thing separating young lives just beginning from young lives completely crashing to the ground… I don't know… maybe it was just me.

"Which one is yours?" I was still a pretty decent distance away from Victoria but I could still hear her voice distinctly as she shuffled her feet slightly closer towards a man whose eyes were glued to the glass window in front of him; permanently attached to his newborn so that he didn't even look up when Victoria addressed him.

"That one," He grinned broadly, practically glowing as he poked his finger firmly into the glass towards the baby that was too far away for me to properly identify.

"Congratulations," Victoria whispered to him with an air of sincerity behind her voice.

"How about you; which one is yours?" The man asked, and for the briefest of seconds, Victoria just stood still in her spot; her eyes glossy and unfocused before finally, she spoke.

"My granddaughter is downstairs… one floor under."

For a split second, the man's young eyes wrinkled with confusion, but slowly… very slowly, they relaxed into that awkward realization of the fact that the only people currently being held one floor under them were kids whose lives had been ground to a virtual standstill by diseases they were barely old enough to even pronounce the names of yet.

The man didn't say anything; probably because he simply couldn't think of anything to say… Poor guy; he'd walked himself straight into that question without even considering the possible consequences… I guess that he'd learn his lesson about opening his big mouth after today…

"Hold onto him close, will you?" Victoria offered the silenced man her most desired request before she finally stepped away, walking back in the direction towards me, only pausing with surprise when she'd realized that I had been lurking around the corner the entire time.

"Brooke can never know about this Haley." Victoria spoke her terms and conditions after a brief silence, her towering frame casting a shadow over me as I found myself torn between a feeling of heartbreak toward Victoria's efforts to keep the love towards her family a secret and a feeling of joy towards the fact that at least she'd finally remembered my name…

"I don't get it…" I mumbled before I could stop myself, "What's so bad about Brooke knowing how much you care about her and Sam?"

"Everything…" She sighed deeply, shaking her head slightly. "You wouldn't understand."

And just like that, Victoria walked her way; her heels clicking down the tile floor with each slow, steady step that she took; so different from the pace I'd seen her take when she'd been sprinting out of Sam's room mere moments ago; and as determined as I'd been to designate myself as Victoria's caretaker earlier that morning, that was about the time I'd lost her completely…

I wasn't sure where exactly she'd ended up after that brief interaction we'd had upstairs in the maternity ward. I'm not sure if Brooke ever found out about me and her mother's brief spontaneous trip to Tree Hill Memorial. I'm not sure if anybody but me and Victoria would ever know that Victoria Davis had just poured her heart and soul into begging for Sam's recovery… but I did know this; I knew that after a while, my head began to pound and my heart began to break with this overwhelming desire to take on the responsibility of caring for Sam…

I guess it all started late in the afternoon, long after I'd gotten home from the hospital, long after I'd taken care of my boys, and long after I'd sat down and poured myself a glass of wine… Julian called me just to tell me that Brooke wasn't doing so well; that she was physically sick from all the stress she'd been under these past few days, and emotionally exhausted from everything else so he took it upon himself to make sure that Brooke was to say in today; that she was to get the food and rest that her body so desperately desired, and that he would take her to see Sam first thing in the morning…

As he hung up, I heard the click of the dial tone ring simultaneously alongside a pang in my heart that told me that if that was the case, than Sam would have been all alone to ring in Christmas morning, and for some reason, that struck me down hard, so I designated the responsibility onto myself, deciding that I would sit the night with Sam, and spend that night ringing in the holiday I'd been begging not to come for months now…

It was late now, and the thing was, I just couldn't stay up like I used to… I grew tired easily, but I was determined to hold out at least until midnight… besides, I was willing to bet anything that Sam was tired too… hell, more so than I was, so if she could stick it out than I could too.

I sighed deeply as I stared down at the girl, gripping her hand tightly as the digital clock next to her bed blinked once and 11:54 became 11:55… that Sam, she was a unique one all right… strong and independent, almost frustratingly so.

The first time I'd met Sam, the first time I'd thought that I would be able to save her life, she'd told me not to bother; that she didn't belong anybody, that I was no match to pull her out of whatever trap she'd found herself sunk in, and at the time, I thought she was crazy, because I also thought… no, I needed to believe that I could save anybody I wanted as long as I tried hard enough…

Well Sam, it looks like you were right about me this time, because as it turns out, I wasn't strong enough to save her; hell, I wasn't even strong enough to save myself out from underneath this guilt that is continuously pressing crushingly down against my chest…

11:56… I suddenly found myself thinking about Nathan and Jamie… after Nathan had caught me in our bedroom packing an overnight bag, my intentions of remaining at the hospital all day became very clear to him, and of course being the noble guy that he was, he'd agreed with my idea almost instantly, but now that I thought about it, I'd completely forgotten to remind him to put presents underneath the tree in the morning for Jamie…

11:57… I found myself praying to God that Nathan would remember on his own accord, praying that the poor kid wouldn't have to wake up on Christmas morning with nothing waiting for him… not even his own mother.

11:58… I'd been so busy wrapped up with thinking about Jamie, that I'd almost missed the small flurry of motion that I'd suddenly felt from somewhere underneath my own hand… My body darted instinctively upward as I watched my fingers, still gripped firmly around Sam's intensely, trying to decide, in my over-exhausted state of mind, whether or not I'd just simply made the whole thing up…

I waited for something, anything to happen, but when it never did, I found myself delivering a scolding to me from inside of my head, yelling at me for being so stupid as to think that Sam could have possibly moved…

11:59… I leaned back against my chair, the world returning to silence for a couple of seconds again until I felt it again, this time stronger, more powerful than the first time so that there was no mistaking it…

"Sam?" With my eyes wide, I slowly lifted myself to my feet, hovering over the girl and calling down to her as I gripped her hand even tighter within my own. "Sam can you hear me? Come on Sam, open your eyes for me… it's me, it's Haley."

With my free hand, I shook at Sam's shoulders lightly, attempting to help coax her awake as she struggled against the fog unconsciousness in a valiant effort to re-enter back into the world of the living.

"You're okay Sam, you're in the hospital… You're fine, I'm right here with you, come on, let's see those eyes of yours."

I watched as her eye lids fluttered a little and her nails dug into the palms of my hands as she physically began to claw her way back to life… It didn't last long; a couple of second at most, but all I knew, all I cared about was the fact that as the clock struck midnight on Christmas morning, Samantha Davis' confused, terrified eyes stared up and locked directly with my own.

And if I wasn't a believer in miracles before tonight, well I definitely was now.


	44. What Can You Spare?

**Hey everyone, hope you guys all had a lovely holiday. The bad news is I am currently stuck in an airport in Dublin, I was visiting family for Christmas and apparently it snowed about 2 feet in New York City so I can't get back home… The good news is that my delay has resulted in an entire chapter being written in a time span of a few hours! And I thought it was appropriate because it just so happened that the Christmas chapter landed two days after Christmas so that's always nice.**

**Anyway I messed around a little bit with this chapter and tried something kind of new, it's just a bunch of different POV's so they're all pretty short and then I made it so Brooke and Sam's POV's are from the same time period but from different perspectives so hopefully it worked out an didn't come out too bad.**

**So hope you all enjoy, and hopefully I'll be back in the states soon, but if not who knows, I might have another chapter up tomorrow haha.**

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Chapter 44: What Can You Spare?

**Sunday, December 25****th****, 2011**

**JAMIE**

Its Christmas here in Tree Hill today but still, when I woke up this morning so early that not even the sun was up before I was, I was so hot underneath all of my blankets that I was actually sweating…

I guess it didn't really help that much that when I finally did get out of bed, I ran as fast as I could down the entire hallway, making as much noise as I possibly could just so I would wake up my mom and dad because they never let me open any of my Christmas presents until everybody was awake and I definitely didn't think that I could wait any longer… I mean, I've already been waiting an entire year, how much more did they expect out of me, right?

"Momma, daddy; wake up!" I screamed my head off, running so fast around the corner of the hallway into my mom and dad's room that the door bounced off the wall, came back and smacked me so hard in the forehead that I almost fell right down… But still, I barely even noticed; after all, there were presents downstairs, nothing can stop me now.

I took a running start and leapt up into the air so high that I practically looked like I was flying until I landed face first right in the middle of the bed with the hopes that my jump was accurate enough to land me right on top of the both of them so that they would wake up and be forced to take me downstairs where I could open up all my presents…

The plan was perfect, after all I'd spent the entire night before coming up with it, the thing was, when I finally settled down on top of the mattress and detangled myself from all of the sheets, I noticed something weird that not even I could have expected… There was nobody in here.

I lifted myself up on my hands and knees, turning my head in every direction I possibly could just to see if maybe they were somewhere else, but I didn't see them anywhere…

"Momma? Daddy?" My voice was much quieter the second time I called out to them as the excitement of Christmas started to go away just to be replaced with a little bit of worry… My mom and dad are always in bed this early in the morning… I mean, unless daddy has to go somewhere for basketball or something, but I was sure he didn't… not today anyway. What if something was wrong? What if they'd forgotten that today was Christmas? What if they left me all alone?

I slunk off of the bed and back into the hallway, not running anymore, instead just walking really, really slowly as I checked inside every single door upstairs for any sign of my mom or dad, but I didn't see a single one, and in fact, the more I looked around the house, the further I got from finding them, and the more confused I got.

I looked around everywhere I could, but eventually I realized that my parents were definitely nowhere up here so I started down the stairs, walking down the small hallway by the front door straight into the living room subconsciously just because I knew that that was where our Christmas tree, and by default, all of our presents were so maybe that was where my mom and dad was too…

And the second I walked into that room, and realized I had been right to think just that, I felt myself start smiling so wide that my face actually hurt…

My mom and dad had been right here the entire time, waiting for me as they drank their coffee and sat on the couch right next to our giant Christmas tree which had more presents underneath it than I think I'd ever seen in my entire life.

In fact, there were so many presents that I completely forgot all about how worried I'd just been and how weird it was that my mom and dad were awake before me since I was usually the one to wake them up on Christmas morning… Instead, I just shouted as loud as I possibly could in my excitement and sprinted over towards the tree, diving on top of the huge pile of presents and ripping open the first one that I saw.

"Well Merry Christmas to you too Jamie," My mom laughed after she'd said it so I knew she couldn't be too mad at me for running right past her and daddy without so much as saying hi to either one of them.

"Merry Christmas momma," I told her quickly, but I barely looked up because I already had a giant set of Legos and a brand new basketball unwrapped and I couldn't decide which one I wanted to play with more.

"Jamie," My dad's voice was much sterner and I had learned a long time ago that when he started talking to me with that tone in his voice, I better pay attention to what he had to say or else, so I turned around slowly, afraid that I was about to get in trouble or something, but then I saw the look on his face which softened into a smile and I knew that I definitely wasn't about to get yelled at.

"Come here for a minute buddy," He held his arms wide open, silently waiting for me so I accepted his request and jumped up to his lap, falling into his arms where he squeezed me extra tight for a second or two before finally letting me go.

"Alright, go say hi to your mom and then you can get back to all of those presents… It looks like Santa was good to you this year which is weird considering I just went over to tell him how rotten you've been all year." He rubbed his hand through my hair, pressing it down flat as he joked around with me… or at least, I hoped he was joking around with me…

Either way, I bounced off his lap quickly right into my mom's where I went to lean in for a hug but stopped as I noticed something strange…

"You look tired momma." I told her, pausing mid hug so that I could look up at her face as her eyes drooped so that it looked she could barely even hold them open anymore…

"I know buddy, I stayed awake with Sam last night to make sure that Santa stopped by to give her some presents for Christmas too." She smiled down at me gently, rubbing her hands through my hair much softer than what my dad had just done.

"I hope that Santa didn't forget to go visit Sam just because she's in the hospital momma." I told her because secretly I believed that if there was anybody that needed to be given some presents right now it was Sam… I'd bet that some Christmas presents would be all she really needed to make her feel better again.

"He didn't Jamie, don't worry."

"What'd he get her momma?"

"He got her a second chance baby." I looked up at her kind of confused… I wasn't really sure what she meant by that exactly but it sounded pretty weird to me… I don't know, maybe people who were sick like Sam got different kinds of presents for Christmas; maybe instead of getting toys and clothes and books and stuff like that, they just got better again… I hoped that it happened like that anyway.

* * *

**HALEY**

It's Christmas here in Tree Hill today, but given the fact that it's about 65° outside, it's hard to ignore the fact that it feels like a beautiful spring day outside… In fact, I eventually got so hot that I had to open the windows in the kitchen as I washed the dishes of the Christmas breakfast I'd just made for me, Nathan and Jamie for fear that I would actually overheat.

I sighed in exhaustion as I put the final dish in the dishwasher standing up in such a way that my eyes glanced passed the microwave clock casually, forcing me to double take back in my disbelief that it was only eight o'clock in the morning… It didn't feel that way; I mean, between spending the night in the hospital, rushing home just to make sure I'd be home when Jamie woke up at some ridiculous hour of the morning in order to open presents, cooking for two bottomless pits, and not cleaning after them, I felt as if I'd been through a life time's worth or Christmas' in only a matter of about eight hours and it was only now that I was starting to realize just how exhausted I really was.

Of course, sleep wasn't really an option, not at this point anyway. After all, there was still an entire day that still had to be had, and in fact, the more I actually started thinking about my ever-growing to-do-list of the day, the more perfect this moment seemed to finally place the phone call I'd been dying to make ever since around midnight last night…

I'd held back for Brooke's sake, knowing full well that she'd never get the decent night's sleep we all knew she needed with the information that I had to tell her riding on her shoulders, but the strange thing was, the first phone call I made on this fine Christmas morning wasn't to Brooke at all… Instead, I dialed Peyton's number from memory, playing it safe by calling the one friend that I actually knew to have elaborate plans to place a visit to Brooke and Julian early this morning in a last minute effort to make sure the two weren't spending their Christmas morning simply wallowing in their grief…

I sent the call and brought the phone up to my ear, listening to the sound of the dial tone ringing backwards into my skull in a monotone rhythm that hypnotized me into a trance-like state that caused all of my thoughts to whirl and swirl in mosaic-like patterns across my brain in such a way that actually caused me to zone out for a little while there…

There was just so much going on inside of that crammed head of mine right now, and no matter how hard I tried to focus on something else, I just couldn't help but replay the moment where I'd watched Sam's eyes finally flutter open after we'd all spent the past several days sitting stubbornly at her bedside begging her to do just that…

The thing was, there had been a lot of things that I'd put on my Christmas list this year, but I have to say, that was definitely at the damn top.

And the second that I'd seen those muscles so much as quiver I was gone. I'd booked it so fast out of Sam's room that I literally body checked the first nurse I spotted and had barely apologized before I started dragging her down the hall and towards Sam's room, so out of breath with excitement in combination with the fact that I'd just sprinted up the entire length of the hallway that I couldn't even communicate with the poor woman, and was instead left to carry her against her will a couple of feet until we'd finally rounded back into Sam's room and she'd finally understood what I was getting at.

The poor girl was sitting upright, struggling as much as she could in her weakened state against all of the tubes and wires that were currently tying her down to her bed as she displayed the most utmost look of terrified confusion that I'd ever seen on anybody's face…

Eventually, after they had extubated her and had half the staff look over her to conclude that she'd successfully beaten this threat, and assured her that Brooke would be back a little later in the morning, and still couldn't get her to relax enough to keep her from hurting herself, they'd used their second best method of calming her down; giving her a sedative that I was assured would keep her knocked out throughout the night.

In my determination not to break the promise I had made not only to myself, but to Sam as well, I'd sat in a stubborn still throughout the remainder of the night, but as it turned out, the nurse's had been right all along, because in the remaining hours that I'd sat at Sam's side, she didn't move an inch.

But this time was different, this time, it was different, this time, it wasn't that drug-induced, diseased ravaged unconsciousness that I'd seen Sam fall into so many times before, but a peaceful, natural sleep, one that I could respect much more, one that I could appreciate as I struggled not to fall into it myself by counting down the hours until my son would wake up on Christmas morning to a motherless house, the hours until he would run downstairs to a tree that would hopefully have something underneath it for him, the hours until Brooke would walk into her daughter's hospital room with the surprise of a lifetime waiting for her on the other side of the door…

In fact, I counted those passing hours for so long, that eventually, I lost track of the time from just trying to keep up with it so that when the clock struck 4:30 bright and early on Christmas morning, there wasn't much I had been expecting, a fact that was exemplified by the startled fright I received when the first movement I'd seen since Sam woke up jostled at the front door and a figure appeared in the frame that made me jump and realize that around here, you need to learn to expect anything to happen, because I sure as hell wasn't expecting Victoria Davis to arrive in Sam's hospital room at 4:30 on Christmas morning, but there she was…

The ironic thing was that Victoria's initial intentions of her visit to Tree Hill was to see Brooke and Sam… the thing was, I was starting to get the strangest feeling that she'd spent more time with me in these past twenty four hours or so than she'd had with either one of them…

For a few minutes, she just rambled incoherently. She'd told me that she hadn't been expecting anybody to be here at this time of the morning, that this was her last attempt at sanctuary towards her efforts to avoid Brooke, that when the last bar within a twenty mile circumference of Tree Hill, North Carolina closed at four o'clock in the morning, this was the last place she could think to come… The saddest part of it all was that she hadn't even been able to bring herself to have a single drink; the mere idea of putting anything in her system right now enough to send her stomach flip-flopping with an emotionally charged nausea.

I didn't say much, the thing was, I didn't really know what to say. Instead, I just stared intently, watching as I saw something change drastically from behind Victoria's features… The more I stared, the more I was able to see her true age… each groove, each wrinkle each gray hair… For the first time, I saw a person emerge from underneath that stony exterior… and I felt bad for her, really I did.

She looked so broken, so unnaturally haggard underneath her normally flawless complexion, and although I'd only just formally met Victoria Davis a couple of hours ago, I'd suddenly become one of her most favorite people in this entire world as I gave her the best Christmas present that she could have ever possibly received with the announcement that Sam had woken up at some point throughout the night.

At first, she didn't say anything, she didn't move, and for a while, she didn't so much as make any motion to acknowledge the fact that she'd head me at all; and then I saw it; the slightest twitch in her face that softened her features and dropped them in a manner that made her look less like a middle-aged woman that had just spent her entire day in a bar and more like the original Victoria Davis that I had heard so much about.

It was around five, just as the sun started emitting a few random flecks of light without totally emerging from behind the horizon that Victoria asked me for some time alone with Sam, and I agreed instantly; Victoria was with her family, it was time for me to be with mine.

I'd arrived back at the house just in time to pour myself a cup of coffee and watch Jamie as he bound down the stairs with nothing but presents, which, I was pleased to see Nathan had put under the tree, on his mind, and… well, you know the rest of the story, a few hours later and here I am…

"Haley? Haley are you there?" I was finally brought back into a state of conscious thought by the sound of Peyton's voice calling out my name, and it was only then that I remembered that I had been on the phone this entire time.

"Haley?" She called to me one more time, her voice sounding tired, distant, unequivocal with the fact that today was Christmas day… but I had the strangest feeling that I was about to change that, not only for Peyton, but for the rest of us as well.

"Peyton hey, sorry…"

"No problem, what's up?"

"Good news Peyton," I told her, forcing my voice into a tone that was barely above a whisper in a desperate effort to contain my excitement, "Sam's awake."

* * *

**PEYTON**

It's Christmas today in the lovely town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, but all I wanted to do when I woke up this morning was forget that fact… The good news was that when I stepped out onto my front porch with my coffee in hand and my robe around my shoulders, I found that forgetting would be much easier than I initially thought it would be given the fact that there was an unusually high temperature waiting to greet me on the other side of my front door… a heat wave in December that was starting to make it feel like it was summer again.

Lucas and I had both been programmed to wake up before dawn since the birth of our daughter so that by the time we were fully awake, had eaten breakfast, and showered Sawyer with elaborate gifts that she would never remember receiving on this first Christmas of hers, it wasn't even 8:00 in the morning yet.

I was well into my day's to-do-list barely before the sun had even rose, finding myself in my car and driving to Brooke's house early with the intention of simply running in and checking in on her quick before heading back home to prepare for an elaborate Christmas feast scheduled to take place at Haley's house a bit later on in the day.

Speaking of, I was in Brooke's kitchen scrambling about a dozen eggs into a frying pan as Julian and I waited for Brooke to wake up to be taken back to the hospital when Haley called.

My first thought was that she had been calling to tell us to simply forget all about Christmas dinner altogether; that nobody was in the mood and nobody was prepared to sit around a table to act all happy and joyful when there would an empty chair in the spot where Sam should have been sitting.

"Hey Hales," I responded casually, nestling the phone between my ear and my shoulder so that I would be able to hold onto it hands free as I scraped eggs onto an awaiting plate… But Haley never answered…

"Haley? Haley are you there?" I called to her, but still, I got nothing.

"Haley!" I spoke a little bit firmer the third time around, just starting to think that maybe Haley had accidentally ass-dialed me or something, preparing to hang up the phone when finally, Haley spoke.

"Peyton hey, sorry…"

"No problem, what's up?"

"Good news Peyton," My ears perked up the second I'd heard those words come out of Haley's mouth because these days, good news was so hard to come by that the slightest indication that there would be any to have was enough to catch my attention immediately, "Sam's awake."

The shock of the news hit me with the force of a speeding car, and for a brief moment, I felt my body turn off completely as realization of just how huge this news actually was seeped through my veins… In fact, the only reason I think I finally did snap back to attention was because I'd dropped the hot frying pan filled to the brim with Brooke and Julian's breakfast right to the ground, splattering the tile with what was probably the best scrambled eggs I'd ever made in my entire life and creating a clang that echoed throughout the entire house loud enough to positively wake the dead.

"Through my peripherals, I watched Julian shoot up from his seat, rushing to my side in an effort to make sure that I was okay as he grabbed onto my hand, inspecting it thoroughly probably with the idea in mind that I'd burned it or something… In fact, the whole thing would have been really cute if I wasn't too busy thinking about our past history and the fact that we were currently sitting in his current girlfriend's house.

"Are you okay?" He asked me, obviously unable to find any signs of a superficial wound as my eyes widened and my mouth opened in a manner that changed my face so dramatically that Julian was probably afraid that I was dying…

"Oh my God, that's amazing…" I ignored Julian's question completely, waving him off in order to hush him silent as he attempted to eavesdrop on one side of my conversation with Haley as I said my goodbyes with the assurance that we would be over at the hospital as soon as humanly possible.

"What's going on? Who was that? Is everything okay?" Julian asked me an endless slew of questions the second I had hung up the phone and lowered it away from my ear.

"That was Haley she just got back from spending the night with Sam." I spoke just as Julian crouched down next to me in an effort to help me clean the splattered mass of eggs and I watched as his face paled and his eyes snapped into focus with my own, fear burning across his features so I knew instantly that he was assuming the worst.

"Is she okay? Did something happen?" He tried to remain calm but he was wiping a paper towel across the tile floor so hard that it disintegrated in his hand, giving away his cover instantly…

"No, no, it's nothing like that… in fact, it's the exact opposite." A small smirk emerged across my face as I watched Julian's brow arch upward in confusion, displaying that characteristic clueless look on his face that I'd once fallen in love with what seems so long ago now.

"Sam's awake Julian; she woke up this morning."

Our hands lunged simultaneously out from underneath ourselves and towards the overturned frying pan, his hand reaching its destination just as the words fully processed across his brain so that his hand froze, clenched onto the handle right on top of mine where it stiffened and lingered in a squeeze so tight, it started to hurt.

He didn't move, instead, just gawked in disbelief as his wide eyes latched onto mine and his hand continued to hold its death grip over my own.

"You know Julian; now that you're dating Brooke I think that this whole hand holding thing is going to have to stop…" I threw what I thought to be a very well placed joke into the mix, but I don't think Julian even heard it because it was about that time that he shot upwards in his excitement, literally screaming as he pumped his fists in triumph into the air so that it looked as if he'd just made the game winning touchdown of a super bowl game or something…

"What's going on?" The two of us silenced and turned, watching as Brooke staggered through the doorway and into the kitchen with a look of confusion plastered across her face as her head swiveled between the two of us in her search for answers.

Julian and I shot each other a quick glare, communicating and expressing silently the similar plan currently formulating in the back of both of our heads; unspoken, yet perfectly complete in the acknowledgement that there would be a right time to tell Brooke the good news about Sam, but now just wasn't it.

I looked towards Brooke, still standing confused in the entranceway of the kitchen and then to Julian, and then back to Brooke; my eyes catching on the outline of the Christmas tree that Brooke had brought Sam on Wednesday where it remained still propped against the wall of the living room, untouched from when we'd brought it in, and I realized in that moment just how much Brooke needed this, how much we all needed this… Now I was just glad that we'd finally managed to get it.

* * *

**JULIAN**

It's Christmas in Tree Hill today… and I guess by default, the rest of the world too… Except maybe in Oceania or something where it might already be the day after Christmas or… whatever, but the point is, that the overwhelming grief combined with the fact that it was hot enough to go swimming started to make me think that maybe Brooke had forgotten about it altogether…

She was standing in the doorway looking frazzled and confused, clearly fresh from waking up from yet another restless sleep as Peyton and I held onto the one secret that we both knew would instantly change her day for the better but at the same time knowing that now just wasn't the right time to tell her…

"What's going on" She asked the two of us, taking a few steps further into the kitchen as I struggled to contort the most neutral expression on my face that I could possibly muster, recognizing just how difficult that achievement was with the sudden promise of a good day still lingering in the back of my mind.

Peyton and I exchanged quick glances, cocking our eyebrows at each other suspiciously before turning right back to Brooke, shrugging our shoulders simultaneously as we shook our heads towards Brooke in such a way that had she actually been more coherent at the moment, she definitely would have immediately noticed that something was up…

"Nothing… I just wanted to stop by and wish you a Merry Christmas that's all." Peyton put forward her best attempt at a decent lie as Brooke's face blanched and realization dawned in her eyes, confirming the idea that we'd thought all along that she'd simply forgotten about the holiday altogether.

"Wow…" Brooke sighed, pulling her fingers through her mass of tangled hair, "I guess I must have forgotten… I've been so turned around lately." Peyton and I looked to each other once more, this time our expressions turning downwards into a steep frown as we acknowledged how out of it Brooke seemed to be these days… Now I just found myself praying even harder that maybe the news of Sam's awakening might finally straighten her out before it's too late…

"Hey don't worry about it, you've had a lot on your mind lately," I put on my best look of support as I walked over towards Brooke and leaned into her so that I was able to slide my arms underneath her own and pull her body close into mine until I managed to plant my lip on the side of her forehead, lingering only briefly before pulling away so that I could speak to her once again.

"But hey, I got a present for you…" I told her, expecting the announcement to at least boost her mood a little bit… I guess that's why I was so surprised when all she actually did was sigh and avert her gaze towards me to look down at her feet.

"I didn't get you anything." She told me, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment.

"That's okay," I assured her quickly, "This is more like a present for all of us."

I felt her head shift as she tilted her chin upwards from her position against my chest so that she could look right at me, desperation laced in her eyes for answers, sick of being left in the dark after she'd spent the entire past week being blinded by it.

"Listen, how about we head down to the hospital first, I don't want to leave Sam all alone for too long, not today anyway…" I was sneaky in my suggestion, and Brooke didn't seem to catch anything close to a glimpse of unusualness in the suggestion, instead, she just agreed with me, nodding her head eagerly.

"Okay, yeah that sounds good, let me just get dressed real quick… Peyton thanks for stopping by." Brooke thanked her friend as she stepped forward to pull her into a grateful hug, "But it's Sawyer's first Christmas, you should go spend it with her and Luke, don't worry about me, the three of us will be okay."

"Hey B. Davis, listen," Peyton pulled away from Brooke's embrace, holding the woman by the shoulders so that she could lock eyes with her, "You and Sam are my family too you know, and besides, I have all day with Sawyer and Lucas. I'm just gonna stop in and make sure you guys get settled and then I'll leave you alone… Now go get dressed, we'll be waiting for you right here."

I averted my eyes, feeling like I was being almost intrusive in this moment between friends, but it wasn't before I caught Brooke's nod towards Peyton's order followed by her stepping away, brushing quickly past my body as she sauntered out of the kitchen.

"I'll be right back." She made her announcement before disappearing quietly behind her bedroom door, allowing Peyton and I to linger in our silence until we were absolutely certain that Brooke was safely out of earshot.

"It's hard not to just burst out and tell her." Peyton said, letting out a small, shaky laugh as she lowered herself onto a counter stool, watching as I nodded my head in agreement and followed her lead.

"Tell me about it." I sighed, rubbing my hands harshly over my exhausted face, "I just can't wait to see Sam awake again."

Peyton nodded her head eagerly; we'd learned the hard way that there were a lot of things that her and I didn't quite agree with, but this was something that we definitely could not disagree on.

"I just hope that this will mean that Sam will be okay, you know? I mean, if she can make it through this, she can make it through just about anything, right?"

Peyton expressed her concerns out loud, leaving me to simply shake my head slowly as I shrugged my shoulders upwards, trying desperately to express a similar enthusiasm, but the truth was, I was worried myself about what being this sick might mean for Sam, what kind of long-term consequences that I didn't even want to think about right now could result from this unexpected brush with death.

"I sure as hell hope so, Peyton." I said after several silent seconds, trying desperately to sound confident, but unsure whether or not my voice had carried over as well as I had originally intended.

The thought had briefly wavered my enthusiasm, the excruciating fear of what was to come overpowering even the overwhelming joy that I had initially felt upon learning the news that Sam was awake, but not even those thoughts could last… or keep me from literally shaking with excitement as Brooke, Peyton and I entered those familiar hospital doors, carrying through the halls decorated brightly with colorful lights and pine wreaths hanging from the walls to act as a painful reminder towards all of the families forced to spend their Christmas eating their ham and potatoes in an intensive care unit.

Brooke attempted to take the lead, but I took it back from her, eager to keep her from barging into Sam's room, which would subsequently ruin the entire elaborate plan that I had in store for her… I overpowered her easily; my much longer legs cutting her strides in half as I stopped her short right in front of Sam's door, blocking her entrance in an effective barricade formed out of mine and Peyton's bodies.

Brooke arched her eyebrow, taking a couple of steps backwards with a nervous gleam in her eyes as she stared between Peyton and I suspiciously.

"What are you doing?"

"Well… remember when I told you that I had a Christmas present waiting for you?" I asked, beginning the awkward adlib of an introduction in a final attempt to emphasize the epic nature of what I had in store, "Well I'm ready to give it to you."

"Julian…" She sighed, every muscle in her body drooping so that she literally shrunk a few inches as to let me know that now was not the time and place for Christmas gifts…

"Trust me Brooke,"

"Julian… what's going on?" Brooke asked, confusion written all over her voice as Peyton and I continued to stare silently.

Ultimately, Peyton was the first to make the move. Jutting her arm out, she grasped firmly onto the door handle and pushed hard, propping the door open with her foot as to reveal the interior, including Sam, who was sitting straight up in her bed, her eyes open with half-lidded exhaustion and a stereotypical look of annoyance displayed across her face as she was continuously being fussed over by both Dr. Miller and a large team of nurses, all desperate to make sure that she really was okay despite everybody's beliefs of that being impossible…

I begged my threatening tears to remain firmly in their ducts as to not ruin the moment as I turned to Brooke, watching as she took a couple of steps forward before freezing; her eyes wide with disbelief and her mouth dangling open in satisfied shock as it became clearer and clearer to her that her eyes were not in fact, deceiving her.

For a split second, she didn't do anything, just sat in a still shock as she attempted to take in the enormity of it all, attempted to process the fact that she was currently witnessing the impossible, the one thing she'd wanted more than anything else.

I wrapped my arm snuggly across her shoulders, pulling her close into my body so that I could lean in close to her ear and whisper to her quietly,

"Merry Christmas, Brooke Davis."

And with that, I let her go, and in a split second, she was gone; her shaky, unstable legs carrying her into a near sprint across the room and right to Sam's side.

* * *

**BROOKE**

It was Christmas today in Tree Hill, but for a little while there, I'd honestly forgotten all about it… The thing was I was pretty sure that it wasn't possible for something like Christmas to exist in such a desolate place as Tree Hill Memorial Hospital; that the day simply rolled right past this damned building altogether… Hell, the weather sure did a good job of convincing me of that one, making it so hot outside that when I stepped outside of my house to go to my car I was convinced that today was simply God playing some elaborately cruel joke on me… again.

It wasn't until I'd finally arrived there that I realized that Christmas didn't simply pass over this place, in fact, it did the exact opposite; intensified it to a tenfold magnitude that could empower even the most impossible of miracles.

The second Julian opened the door leading into Sam's room, I swear, my heart leapt straight into my throat… the thing was, for the first time in days, I didn't see that as a bad thing…

Sam was pale, she was skinny, and she looked impossibly sick, but she was awake; her eyes were open, and she was sitting up in bed nodding her head slowly in accordance with something that Dr. Miller was telling her.

My eyes glossed over with tears, but finally, they weren't tears of absolute sorrow but tears of something of the exact opposite… I willed them away; the thing was, they blurred my vision so much that I couldn't see Sam, and the state I was in right now, there was nothing more that I wanted to do than just stare at her forever.

I watched as she turned her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and broke out into a harsh cough that jolted my memory in the reminder that there was still a sickness to be had underneath, that there was still a battle to be fought…

The coughs dissipated and her eyes slowly snuck open again so that they locked with mine in a sudden, very unceremonious motion that I envisioned being much more elaborated than what it actually was.

So instead of fireworks ignited out of the ceiling, instead of confetti spewing straight from the sky itself, instead of bands playing, crowds screaming, or anything else that would be large enough to indicate the magnitude of just how good I felt right now, I just froze, and then she just froze, and for a second, we simply stared at each other, taking it all in as a vague voice from somewhere behind me whispered a Merry Christmas to me and a nudge on my shoulder jolted me forward so that I took a step towards Sam… and then another… and then, before I knew it, my feet were moving as quickly forward as they possibly could so that my only method of braking was an uncomfortable pang I felt in my shins as they banged uncomfortably against the side of Sam's bed.

But I'd barely felt it… instead, I plunged forwards, head first down towards Sam and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her so deeply into my shoulder that I could feel every detail of her body against mine…

She stirred groggily in my arms, shifting in an attempt to make herself more comfortable as she hung limply in my arms and struggled to keep her eyes open amidst the haze of drugs and disease.

"Mom?" She croaked harshly, her voice coming out soft and raspy as this simplest of motions sent a painful vibration down her throat that erupted into a harsh cough so severe that I could actually hear the phlegm and saliva as it struggled to release itself from her windpipe.

"Yeah Sam, I'm right here…" I told her, reluctantly letting her go so that she could reposition her body in such a way that could open her disease-rattled lungs a little bit better. "Don't worry okay? I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere…" I assured her, reiterating my point by rand grabbing onto her hand tightly.

"Victoria told me that I got sick, Brooke."

My head swiveled around behind me instinctively, my eyes connecting with Victoria's as she lingered unusually silent in the corner, arms crossed and simply watching the interaction between Sam and I, so quiet that I hadn't even noticed that she was even here up until this point.

We looked eyes, and Victoria's expression didn't change but she offered me a quick nod as to indicate to me that I was doing just fine with Sam at the moment and that I should be focusing my attention on Sam rather than on her…

I returned the nod briefly, but my eyes lingered a little bit as I attempted to identify that look in Victoria's eyes that I don't think I've ever actually seen before… the one of pure matronly concern that actually warmed my heart in an unusual way that I couldn't really recognize…

But I didn't stick around to pinpoint it, instead, I relaxed the muscles in my neck and turned back towards Sam, squeezing her hand a little bit harder in my own in my response, "Yeah honey, you did… On Wednesday you started coughing a lot and then you came down with a really high fever so we brought you into the emergency room. The doctors said that you had pneumonia, but you're okay now… You're going to be okay, alright?"

I watched as Sam closed her eyes gently in response to the news, offering no further acknowledgment other than that… the thing was, I couldn't tell if she was doing it out of the overwhelming nature of what I'd just told her or if she really was just tired…

"Pneumonia, huh… I guess that would explain the whole not being able to breathe thing." She smirked casually but her statement left me with a feeling that went deeper… I felt my muscles tense automatically as my muscles began pumping gallons and gallons of cortisol between my veins and my brain processed the acknowledgment that something was wrong with Sam, that I was about to lose her when I'd really only just gotten her back.

"You're having a hard time breathing?" I asked, looking down at Sam frantically and then right back up to her doctor who was moving way to casually, way too slowly for her to properly respond to this obvious emergency.

"It's okay Brooke, I'm okay." She waved off my concern, shaking her head slowly as Dr. Miller finally responded to my plea for help, glancing down at me casually as I begged her to confirm the fact that what Sam had just told me was in fact the truth and not another elaborate lie she used to try and stem my concern.

"She's doing okay Brooke," She offered me a slight smile, clearly sympathetic towards my concern, "Her numbers are up and looking good… A little bit of discomfort is to be expected after everything that Sam's been through, but she's okay. We've obviously got a fighter on our hands here." She reached down quickly, resting a brief hand on Sam's shoulder, squeezing it gently in the form of a comforting support that lingered for only a few moments before she removed it and went back to her initial job of rearranging all of the various medications hanging above Sam's head.

"Alright, well listen, just let me know if you're in any pain at all okay kiddo… Maybe we'll be able to get you on a little extra pain medication or something…"

"I'm okay Brooke, it's not bad… Besides, I think I'm all maxed out on morphine anyway." Sam attempted to make the quick joke, just trying to get me to relax a little even though I was quite sure that was impossible at the moment…

"Yeah, you're probably right," I forced the joke, determined to convince not only Sam, but myself as well that I was okay, that I was cool, that I was relaxed… "The nurses on this floor love you Sam, I bet they were sneaking you a little extra on the side…"

"It must be my charm." Sam exercised the wit that had been pent up inside of her, just waiting to get out since her unconsciousness and I watched as her face brightened in that smile that I'd been so afraid that I'd never have the chance to see again…

"So I heard that it was Christmas today," Sam told me, and I felt the tears well in my eyes, forcing me to struggle to coordinate wiping them away and nodding my head at the same time.

"Yeah Sam, it's Christmas today." I confirmed, and she nodded quickly in response before producing a heaving cough that sounded as if it had originated from the very base of her lungs themselves as she sucked desperately at the air her doctors still tried to keep flooding into her healing lungs.

"So…" She spluttered, determined to let this brief fit deter her attempt to celebrate this moment that neither of us were so sure we'd ever be able to have again, "What'd you get me?"

* * *

**SAM**

They told me a couple of times that it was Christmas today, the thing was, the sun was shining so brightly into the room, and the window was open so wide, emitting a slow stream of warm air inwards, that I didn't actually believe it until Brooke finally told me…

Come to think of it, I didn't really believe much of anything that they were telling me today, especially when they'd let me know how close I'd been to dying these past few days… too close for comfort to say the least…

I mean, I guess if you want to get technical about these kinds of things, we're all pretty much dying… Growing older and older with each passing second, wishing desperately that we could simply travel backwards instead of ahead, but at the same time knowing full well that that would be impossible…

So yeah, if you wanted to think about it that way, we're all dying… I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'm just a little bit better at it than most others…

And here I was going my entire life thinking that I was never any good anything…

My small bedroom had been packed into a cramped capacity for the past two hours or so since I'd been awake, and to be completely honest with you, this whole thing was starting to get very overwhelming very fast… The doctors coming over to goggle over the kid that survived the impossible, the nurses carrying out their daunting tasks of making sure that I wasn't about to keel over and die in a moment's notice… But finally, after countless unfamiliar faces, and more pokes, prods, and tests than you could ever even imagine, I finally saw the only faces that I'd actually been counting on this entire time; Peyton, Julian, and Brooke, who were all sauntering into my room with matching looks of surprised shock glistening in their eyes as they moved slowly closer towards me…

Of course, as it turned out, me and Brooke's reunion in my post-awakened state turned out to be not nearly as ceremonious as I'd pictured it in those brief flashes that occupied the seconds it had taken Brooke to run to me… Typical, I know… I guess now that I thought about it that way, I shouldn't have even bothered expecting it any other way…

You see, on a day much quieter than this one ended up being, I would have given the world for an opportunity to latch onto Brooke, to let her know just how much it meant to me to be able to see her again… the thing was, by the looks of things, we'd be lucky if we got a minute to so much as say hi to each other… There was so much chaos, so many people running in and out, and that combined with the fact that I just wasn't one to get all mushy in public… well it was looking more and more like that just wouldn't be an option with each passing minute.

And besides, every time I did actually open my mouth to speak, I would feel my lungs physically heaving as it screamed protesting at me so that if felt like somebody was literally pressing a pillow down over my face or something…

So ultimately, I kept quiet, initiating the beginning of a silent stare down as Brooke's legs slowly carried her one step closer to me, and then another step, and then another, and then finally, before I'd even known what was going on, she was sprinting, nose diving straight into me so that for a second, I was afraid that we would collide in a vicious crash…

I felt Brooke's arms enclose around my own and I tried to return the motion but my muscles were still so weak from having not been in se for so long that they just flopped uselessly down to my side, leaving me to settle for the next best thing; nestling my head into Brooke's shoulder where I relaxed my body and closed my exhausted eyes, feeling the comfort as it seeped through my veins, empowering me in an even stronger manner than the plethora of medication vying for space in there could.

"Mom?" I'd spoken quietly without exactly meaning to, and even though the single word sparked painfully down the length of my throat and created a sling of harsh coughs the stung every muscle in my body, I didn't regret it, not for one second.

"Yeah Sam, I'm right here…" Brooke confirmed her presence to me, and even though I could already feel it warm from its position pressed up against my skin, it was nice to have the added assurance.

I coughed rudely into her shoulder for a couple of seconds before I flash of cold air seeped between Brooke and my bodies as she pulled away with a feeling of hesitancy in her motions and attempted to reposition me more upright in a manner that allowed my throat to open wider and my lungs to suck in the slightly increased amount of air that I've seemed to be having such a hard time taking in these days…

"Don't worry okay? I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere."

Brooke's words warmed me right down to my very bones as she reached a confident hand downward and clasped it around my own so that I finally felt as if I could safely relax against my bed and look up at her in an attempt to take in all of the changes that I missed in my absence…

My eyes were still blurred from the foggy tears created in response to my coughing fit, but still, I could see the sadness sunken behind her features, and I immediately recognized the hell that I must have put her through these past few days…

I hated myself for it, I mean, why shouldn't I right? Sure, Brooke had known from the very first day that she took me in that she could have walked away from this entire mess right then and there without a single scratch on her… I mean, everybody else knew that took me in knew that, and none of them seemed to have any trouble just backing out… The thing was, Brooke was the only one who ever really stuck around, and as a result, Brooke was the only one who ever really got so beat up… But even I couldn't have expected a beating that would hurt her this hard, and I think the worst part of it all was that I knew that she never would have gotten the crap kicked out of her like this if it wasn't for me.

"Victoria told me that I got sick, Brooke." I managed to mumble amidst the lingering pain hidden down my throat, trying to emphasize the surprise in the back of my voice that I had felt when I'd woken up from some kind of weird coma thing or whatever only to find Victoria Davis by my side, and better yet, Victoria Davis with tears in her eyes.

I hadn't gotten much out of the story that Victoria had told me, mainly because considering the fact that Victoria had only arrived in Tree Hill yesterday and was still grappling with the idea that I so much as had cancer, let alone the fact that I was dying of it, she didn't have all of the answers herself… But apparently, I had woken up in Tree Hill Memorial Hospital's intensive care unit around midnight this morning with Haley at my side… the thing is, I had absolutely no recollection of it having been so drugged up at the time that it took up until about an hour ago for my mind to clear from its haze long enough to actually be able to string coherent thoughts together let alone lasting memories… Anyway, the hopes were that I'd maybe have better luck with Brooke's version of events this time around…

"Yeah honey, you did…" I felt her hand unconsciously grasp around mine a little bit tighter and I cringed with the acknowledgment that her additional modes of comfort couldn't mean anything good in terms of the news she was about to deliver to me. "On Wednesday you started coughing a lot and then you came down with a really high fever so we brought you into the emergency room. The doctors said that you had pneumonia, but you're okay now… You're going to be okay, alright?"

I leaned further into my pillows, squeezing my eyes shut… I should have known that it would have been something like this; I always was one who just couldn't do things the simple way… Let's just say that it hasn't exactly been my day for… well a couple of ongoing years now… But I'm an optimist, so hell I could always take that as a good thing and realize that if I'd already been waiting for a bright side for a couple of years, then what's a couple more, right?

"Pneumonia, huh…" Christ, maybe if I started praying now, I'd actually be able to save the whole lot of us, "I guess that would explain the whole not being able to breathe thing." I tried to mask the pain currently coursing through every crevice of my body with a joke and a quick smirk that I couldn't manage to hold very long.

It was strange for me to have to concentrate so hard on something that used to come so simple to me as surviving used to… I guess that had a lot of contributing factors to take into consideration, I mean, I used to live my entire life by the saying that when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose, but the thing is now that I've been given everything… well let's just say that that saying doesn't really apply to me anymore… Now I'm just trying to figure out whether that was a good thing or a bad one.

"You're having a hard time breathing?" Brooke asked, concern etching across her face instantaneously so that I almost regretting telling that small fact to her, wishing that I'd just kept my big mouth shut like I usually do.

I watched as Brooke entered panic mode, turning to Dr. Miller who had barely noticed her plea for a confirmation that I was indeed doing just fine as she continued to perform the tedious task she'd been at for hours now of jotting down each and every number displayed across every machine, pump, and medication currently doing its part in saving my life… Seriously though, she's been in the exact same spot for over an hour now… I was starting to feel bad that while I was blissfully unconscious, everybody else had been running around like crazy people just trying to get me on my feet again.

"It's okay Brooke, I'm okay." I lifted my hand slightly up off the bed, just as high as my body would actually allow it to go in order to wave off Brooke's panic before it truly settled in and caught us up in a trap that we'd never be able to get back out of…

"She's doing okay Brooke," Dr. Miller finally turned to confirm that her fears were not warranted, much to my relief, "Her numbers are up and looking good… A little bit of discomfort is to be expected after everything that Sam's been through, but she's okay. We've obviously got a fighter on our hands here."

The doctor finally paused in her continuous work, only briefly however so that she could put a comforting hand down gently on my shoulder causing me to flush red with embarrassment… Sure, you can say that there's a fighter buried somewhere underneath this bundle of skin and bones all you want, but to me, it seemed to go beyond that… To me, you had those days where you felt okay, and then you had those days that you just felt like giving up, and it wasn't how hard your body fought against the disease ravaging every inch of you from the inside out but the people routing for you on the outside that truly did it for you.

Alright, well listen just let me know if you're in any pain at all okay kiddo… Maybe we'll be able to get you on a little extra pain medication or something…" She lowered her voice gradually as her sentence progressed, sneaking in the secret suggestion that was meant for solely my ears and her own amidst the hustle of nurses who were already hanging bags of medication by the truckload over my awaiting head so that I was pretty sure that they wouldn't be able to give me any more pain medication even if they'd wanted to.

"I'm okay Brooke, it's not bad… Besides, I think I'm all maxed out on morphine anyway." In fact, I had so much of it in my veins at the moment that I could practically feel it travelling in a slow moving stream across my body, and I definitely was not digging this weird loopy, light-headed feeling that it was starting to give me… I guess that means I'd make a terrible drug addict… Brooke would be proud.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Brooke forced herself to smile and accept my statement as she put a crooked smile on her face, telling me immediately just how forced this attempt to relax really was. "The nurses on this floor love you Sam, I bet they were sneaking you a little extra on the side…"

"It must be my charm." I hadn't exactly meant for it to be a joke, but Brooke took it as such anyway, her face brightening to a smile that I couldn't help but force onto my own face as well.

"So I heard that it was Christmas today."

Out of all the news that I'd heard today, for some reason, this was the one that struck me the hardest… I don't know, I guess it was just kind of weird that the last thing I really remember was watching Brooke wrestle a tree into our house on a day that definitely was not Christmas, and now… Well, Wednesday seemed like it was mere hours ago, not five days ago, and that giant black period that existed between then and today really weirded me out for some reason.

I watched as tears swelled in Brooke's eyes in response to my question and I tensed, afraid that maybe I'd said something wrong, that maybe the last thing that Brooke wanted was to be reminded that today was Christmas… but then a smile broke out across her face that watered through her tears and I let out a sigh of relief towards the recognition that I hadn't said the wrong thing, instead it seemed that I'd said the thing that was just right.

"Yeah Sam, it's Christmas today." I felt a smile break involuntarily across my face at just about the same time that a heaving cough, equally as involuntary, forced its way up my lungs and straight out my mouth… one of those powerful ones that wracked every muscle of my chest painfully and left me clinging onto the oxygen the doctors had been delivering to me via an uncomfortable clear mask all morning strictly for moments like this one…

But still, I was determined not to let it be ruined… especially not by this.

"So…" I asked between coughs, attempting to emit my voice as loudly and clearly as possible so that Brooke would be able to see past something other than the pain in my face, "What'd you get me?"

The coughing settled around us as Brooke paused for a brief moment, her face processing the idea that I was joking around with her while we were clearly in the midst of what had damn near been a tragedy… But then, after a few seconds, her face broke out into a wide smile that I couldn't help but return, we began laughing in simultaneous motions that harmonized together with each other, and I was reminded of that sole reason as to why I had been right all along in forcing myself to simply keep on breathing throughout all of this, this entire time.


	45. I Know Sometimes

**Hey guys! First off just wanted to say happy new year to you all, hope you had a fun and safe new years. I figured what better way to ring it in then with a new chapter, right? So here it is, hope you enjoy. As always just wanted to thank everyone for reading/even glancing at it/reviewing and all of that fun stuff!**

Chapter 45: I Know Sometimes

**Monday, December 26th, 2011**

**BROOKE**

It didn't take a very long time for the air of Christmas to diminish, only to get pushed out by the return of reality, relentless in its reminder that it wasn't finished with us quite yet.

In fact, the day had barely begun before I was already finding myself wishing that it would just end already.

For all intents and purposes, I was all by myself early on this fine morning; Julian having gone to pick the two of us up some coffee, Victoria back at my house in order to settle herself in for a stay that, as it turned out, would end up being much longer than any of us anticipated on, and Sam actively embarking on her effort to sleep for a solid twenty four hours straight when Dr. Miller sauntered slowly into the room, wearing that characteristic look on her face that I'd grown to know and fear in these past couple of days…

I stood instantly; that look of concern that I had permanently embedded on my face these days prominent as the doctor acknowledged our eyes meeting with a brief grimace.

"What's wrong?" I breathed out, my question slipping out in an airy, unorganized manner in my hurry to get the answer.

"Brooke… I was wondering if it was possible for me to talk to you outside in the hallway for a minute."

I nodded in response to her request; my heart pounding rhythmically as I cautiously pushed myself onto my shaking feet and dragged myself forward.

The distance between the chair I had just been sitting in and the door seemed to lengthen with every step that I took making each tentative movement seem more counter productive than anything… My head swirled nervously as the doctor held the door open for me after I'd finally reached it, patiently allowing me to take my time in walking through it.

That tingle of confused nervousness spread across every nerve fiber in my body so that the fact that I'd been running around and around this horrible feeling all week long now stuck out prominently in the back of my head to the point that it physically began to hurt.

"What's going on?" I didn't even wait to settle myself down before I demanded answers. Subconsciously, I leaned backwards against the wall in my anticipation of hearing the worst, knowing full well that if I was about to get anymore bad news from this woman, it would be this solid slab of concrete acting as the only thing that could possibly keep me standing.

"Brooke, we just got the results of the blood work that we took from Sam last night back…" She offered me absolutely no answers in her explanation, instead remaining as vague as possible, leaving me hanging to the point that my heart felt like it was about to explode right out of my chest with the pressure of the anticipation alone.

"I don't understand… is that… is that a bad thing?" I widened my eyes slightly, feeling my body inadvertently begin to slide down the length of the wall.

"The thing is Brooke…" She sighed and paused, looking for the right words to say in order to break the news to me as gently as possible. "When we started Sam on the intensive course of antibiotics that we are currently using in order to help treat the pneumonia, we were forced to take her off of the Allopurinol that helped prevent the chemotherapy treatments from damaging her kidneys… Now I know that she wasn't receiving any of these cytotoxic drugs during the course of her pneumonia treatments, however her kidneys were still in a weakened state from the intensity of all of the medications she's been on for the past two months now so that the current fear is that the steroids we were using in order to help treat the damage to her lungs may have damaged her kidneys in a manner that has… the potential of developing into something more serious."

My jaw slackened involuntarily, leaving my mouth dangling stupidly as I attempted to process all of the information… I knew that this was bad; I knew that this was serious… I could tell by the tone that the doctor had taken with me when she'd broken the news, the idea that I have since learned being that when Dr. Miller lost her characteristically friendly mannerisms and started getting all technical and well… doctor-y on me, then I knew that it was time to worry…

"I'm sorry Brooke, I know how huge of a milestone it was just to see Sam wake up at all after all of this happened, and I hate to give you news like this right after you'd already been through all of that but… well, we're starting to see evidence in her labs that indicates that Sam is in the beginning stages of kidney failure."

My back fell harshly against my supportive wall panel, proving me correct in my previous assumption that this would become my saving grace of continuously standing upward in the end.

"Wh-" I paused, coughing harshly in order to clear my throat which had suddenly become very dry… "What kinds of signs are you talking about here?" I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to know the answer to this question, but of course, in the long run, I found myself being stupid enough to push my luck when it was already dangling by a very thin thread to begin with.

"Well… the blood that we took yesterday morning and last night after Sam woke up shows an elevated level of both nitrogen and creatine within it, both of which are classic signs… Now, the original plan was simply to keep monitoring these numbers carefully just to see if maybe it was simply a fluke response to all of the medication combinations we've been pumping her full of lately, but…"

She sighed, the briefest of pauses that literally brought my heart to a standstill.

"We found a trace of blood in her urine bag this morning which is… concerning."

I scrunched up my face so that it wrinkled inward, ugly in my willing of my tear ducts not to produce its actual tears, desperate in my desire to not allow this woman to see me cry… not again anyway…

You would think that I would be used to this by now, that I would be better at being able to handle bad news now that it's become the only news that I seemed to ever receive… but I guess we all thought wrong… I guess now the only thing I could be left to do anymore was to simply wish that the next time it happened, hopefully this damn woman would have the sense to point her still-smoking gun straight at my heart instead of just continuously shooting me right in my kneecaps just so she could have the enjoyment of watching me bleed out all over her.

"Brooke… Are you okay?" I wasn't sure how long I was silent for, but I guess it must have been a while because the doctor was eventually forced to reach down and physically wave her hand in front of my face just to regain my attention.

"So what can we do about this?" I asked, ignoring the doctor's question by throwing in one of my own.

She nodded; a simply acknowledgment towards her acceptance of my determination to move forwards with this conversation.

"Well for now, I'm just going to keep monitoring her so that we can be sure that we really do have something that we need to worry about on our hands here before we start taking any drastic measures. So what I'm going to do right now is draw some more blood and keep an eye on her numbers, and I'll schedule her for a few extra tests; probably an ultrasound, an MRI… just to see what we're dealing with. After that we'll just have to take it from there."

I nodded my head, finding a little bit of comfort in the knowledge that if Sam's doctors didn't seem to be in too much of a rush here, then maybe this wasn't as bad as it had originally sounded…

"Okay, so I'm going to go do that blood draw and then hopefully I'll be able to get back to you in a couple of hours with the results."

I nodded my head obediently, following her lead back into Sam's room where she immediately rushed towards all of the monitors and machines while meanwhile I rushed towards Sam herself who was still just as asleep as I'd left her, still laying in the same exact spot she had been in when I'd gone into the hallway.

"How has her fever been this morning?" Dr. Miller asked as she pulled a set of latex gloves over each hand and prepared her tray of sterile vials that she would need in order to collect the samples of Sam's tainted blood.

I knew that she'd asked me the question simply to be polite; I knew that the numbers were everywhere, sticking out right in front of my face, coming from every direction in order to serve as a constant reminder that Sam was just getting sicker… But in an effort to make me feel less worthless than I actually did, she'd asked me instead of simply reading it for herself, and for that I was grateful.

"It's still up there," I sighed in an expression of my concern towards the situation, "The last time I checked it was up to 40.2ºC."

It was kind of funny really… Inside of a hospital, everything is run off of the metric system; kilos here, liters there, Celsius degrees everywhere else… Now every time I watched the weather on TV and they'd give me the temperature outside in Fahrenheit, every time somebody gave me a weight in pounds or a length in inches, I'd just get confused… I guess it was just another prominent reminder of how extremely every aspect of my life had changed.

"Well it seems to have gone down a little… It's at 40.0º even… We're trying to start weaning her off of all of the antibiotics she's been on so a quick spike in her fever is to be expected… We'll just have to keep these ice packs we have underneath her and just hope that they do their job in lowering her core temperature a little bit… And if not… well we'll just have to give her something to help control it, that's all… maybe by tonight if things still haven't changed."

She spoke secondary to the crafty motions of her hands as she moved them skillfully across the port still protruding from Sam's emaciated chest, drawing vial after vial of blood out of her ailing body until I'd been convinced that she was planning on simply taking it all.

"Okay Brooke," She spoke, gathering the vials into a clear plastic hazardous materials waste beg before making the preparing motions to leave the room, "Hopefully this won't take more than a few hours. I'll let you know when the results are in."

I nodded my head in accordance with her announcement, my eyes subconsciously following her body as she walked swiftly from the room, shutting the door gently behind her.

I tried my hardest just to keep busy; I would rearrange things as best as I could into an organized fashion, I would open every curtain, every window, every door in this damn room just to get a little bit of that natural glow back into it, and I would do my damned hardest just to try and keep myself from thinking about just how sick Sam really was… The thing was, every time I did that, a machine would blip out of place, a corner of one of Sam's sheets wound crinkle uncomfortably, or I would find myself to be in need of replacing the ice packs buried underneath Sam's burning hot body, leaving me feeling terribly about my actions every time she would shudder harshly against the intrusive cold.

I was just standing upright in order to pull Sam's blankets a little bit higher above her shoulders when my cell phone went off; an obnoxiously high pitched tone that I cursed the second that I'd heard it for fear that it would wake up Sam.

I heard it, but I couldn't seem to find it as it blared across my skull with every shrill ring emitted, leaving me to rip apart the room I'd just spent all of my time and energy tidying up to find it as I simultaneously snuck casual glances over my shoulder every two seconds or so towards Sam, finding that the noise had ultimately left her undeterred.

I reached down between the cracks of the couch cushion, feeling my hand clasp around my bulky phone just as it stopped ringing…

Breathing heavily and attempting to wipe my hair out of my face which had frazzled amidst the chaos, I paused, took a deep breath, and finally retained a sense of calm that lasted just long enough for me to actually look down and see who had created that brief bought of panic.

People had been trying to call me non-stop for the past twenty four hours or so now as news of Sam's awakening started to spread like wild fire… Mostly it was just Peyton and Haley simply looking to check in, but sometimes it would be Lucas, every once in a while Nathan… even once Millicent called, doing what she does best in making sure that I was doing okay despite being at what was perhaps my most emotionally instable of states.

As it turned out, Haley had been the culprit this time. I hovered my thumb over the 'send' button hesitantly, debating on whether or not I really wanted to call her back… It was nothing personal really, it was just the fact of how overwhelmed I was currently feeling combined with the pressure of being the sole person hoarding the secret that perhaps Sam wasn't doing well as everybody previously thought… well, I'd found all of these incessant thoughts swirling together at the moment, subsequently creating this burning desire to just keep to myself right now…

So I pocketed my phone, at the same time keeping the missed call prominent on the main screen so that I would be reminded to call Haley back a little bit later on when I could actually think straight… And feeling like kind of an ass, I finally allowed myself to sit down, lean me head backwards, and close my eyes for a moment of calm tranquility that lasted about thirty seconds before being interrupted…

"Hey, I'm sorry it took so long, there was only one coffee machine working and the line was huge." Julian spoke instantaneously upon walking through the door as he balanced two huge cups of coffee that he'd ran down the street over an hour ago to get cautiously in his hands.

I shot upwards quickly in my seat, trying not to make it look as if I'd just been attempting sleep so that Julian wouldn't feel too bad as I put the largest smile on my face that I could currently muster, reached forward, and accepted my caffeinated gift gratefully.

"Thanks Julian," I extended my appreciation, leaning forwards into a soft kiss that I knew that I could have positively melted into forever… but apparently Julian felt differently as he pulled away from me prematurely, straightening himself upright before looking down at me with concern prominent in her eyes.

"Hey, are you alright?"

I tensed at his inquiry, knowing full well that I was going to have to do a much better job at controlling my emotions if I was going to stay silent about the conversation I'd just had with Dr. Miller… It wasn't that I wanted to hide all of this from him, it was just that I wasn't ready to talk about it quite yet because I knew that I wouldn't have been able to handle it if I did… later yes, later I would tell Julian, but now… no, definitely not now.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." I displayed my best fake smile, pasting it prominently across my face and directing it upwards towards Julian… Of course, the fact that he didn't say anything in response, combined with the skeptic look he'd given towards my less than truthful answer told me that he just wasn't buying it.

"Are you sure?" He pushed, leading me to the realization that I was going to have to come up with something a little bit better than I had initially planned in order to convince him.

"Yeah, yeah…" I thought quickly on the spot, spewing out the first words that came to mind without truly processing them first so that I could only pray that what I was saying sounded convincing, "Yeah, it's just… I've just been working all morning trying to get Sam's fever down and it isn't really going anywhere… I don't know, I guess I'm just starting to get tired, that's all."

I plastered a convincing look on my face because, well, I really was concerned; I knew that convincing Julian of that fact would be the easy part, the hard part was keeping up with this lie while at the same time trying to convince myself that it was the right thing for me to do.

"Hey, then Brooke, don't stay awake on my account, get some sleep, I'll stay up with Sam." He played the chivalrous card, not even giving me the opportunity to respond before throwing a spare blanket on top of me, practically forcing me down into my seat where I sat very tempted to take him up on his offer.

"Julian, are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." He told me instantly, tucking the blanket underneath my body, probably more in an attempt to keep me from getting up and evading sleep again then anything. "Now listen, just try to get a few hours of sleep okay? I'll take care of Sam, and if I need you for anything I'll wake you up okay?"

"Okay," I mumbled softly, my eyes already sliding closed before Julian could even finish his sentence.

For the second time in less than five minutes, I closed my eyes with the intentions of getting at least a little shut eye over here… And for the second time in less than five minutes, those elaborate plans were shattered in about thirty seconds flat.

"Brooke?" Sam's voice had me standing and on my feet before my brain could even fully process what it was I'd just heard, but slowly, as my eyes began clearing from that cloud of dizziness swarming in front of them as a result of having stood up so quickly, and the image of Sam awake and struggling to sit herself upright in her bed filtered across them, I began to understand.

"Hey Sam, how are you feeling honey?"

I watched her squint up at me; eyes bloodshot and unfocused as they continued to adjust to the surroundings of the conscious world, and I was just about to ask her how she was feeling all over again, getting the impression that she hadn't heard me the first time around when spoke.

"Why's it so cold in here?"

I couldn't help but let out a small laugh at her statement; I may or may not have gotten a little overzealous packing Sam's body with ice this morning for fear that I would require the equivalent of all the ice in Antarctica in order to successfully bring her fever down… But believe it or not, the fact that I'd just given a girl with a 104º fever the chills actually made me feel a little bit better about myself…

"They're trying to start taking you off some of the antibiotics you were on Sam, so you were running a pretty high fever all morning. They started putting some ice packs underneath you in order to try and bring it back down."

"Oh…" Was all she managed to mutter; her words slurred and her voice soft in her weakened state as she struggled, once again, to lift herself upright in her bed, grimacing in pain as she fell right back down again before she'd managed to get too far.

"Do you wanna sit up?" She nodded slowly in response to my question, allowing me to slide my arms underneath hers in order to shift her upright into a seated position.

I tried my hardest in making sure that she was as comfortable as humanly possible, but all I felt was her muscles doing the exact opposite of relaxing; instead, she just tensed underneath me, releasing a relatively quiet, yet still audible hiss of pain that sent me jumping backwards and away from her, acting as if I'd just been physically burned in my terror that I'd hurt her.

"Oh my God, what happened? What did I do? Are you okay?" I asked frantically, taking slow steps back towards her, trying to rectify whatever it was that I'd done now that the initial shock was wearing off.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," She tried waving me off but the grimace displayed across her face just wasn't convincing me, and I watched as she subconsciously reached behind her, rubbing at a particular spot against her lower back, letting out a low groan and squeezing as she squeezed her eyes shut tight.

My shoulders sunk as realization spread across my features, understanding flooding across me towards the fact that it was her deteriorating kidneys producing these flashes of pain that Sam didn't understand… that she couldn't understand just because she had absolutely no idea…

A pang of guilt flushed across my body, leaving me feeling chilled to the very core… Sam had enough to worry about on her plate already; she didn't need this added feature to weigh down her already heavy shoulders any more than they already were.

"Are you okay over here? Do you want me to get you anything? Do you need anything?" I tried to ignore the obvious look of pain in her eyes, silently pleading that she wouldn't think to ask me why it was she was feeling this way just because I knew that there was no way in hell I would ever be able to lie right to her face if she did…

Across the distance of the room, Julian and I locked eyes and I watched as he turned his face in a slight downwards slant, indicating his suspicions of my actions towards me… I thought I had been doing well in hiding the truth; I thought I had done an at least semi-decent job in keeping neutral, but I guess when I was attempting to hood-wink somebody other than the groggy, drugged-up Sam, that feat wasn't as easy.

I broke eye contact with him quickly, instead focusing all of my attention onto Sam as her head slowly shook from side to side.

"No, I'm okay… still a little cold though." She offered me the largest smile that her weakened facial muscles could possibly produce, which, as it turned out, was nothing more than a quick upward turn of the right corner of her lip; an action just affective enough to stimulate me to return the motion and let her know that I'd gotten the hint…

"Ill get you some extra blankets." I offered her a small smile before stepping away from the bed, heading towards the closet in order to grab the large pile of spare blankets stacked on the top shelf.

Julian moved forward instantly, forgetting his suspicions towards me for a moment in order to help me with my load, the two of us moving simultaneously in our motions, fanning the thickest of blankets over Sam before tucking it high over her shoulders, watching as the girl leaned backwards, relaxing against the mattress and closing her eyes, indicating to me that her five daily minutes of lucid consciousness was just about up.

I busied myself in making sure that everything was perfect; that there wasn't a single crevice in her blankets, that her head was perfectly angled against her pillows, that each below-freezing ice pack was pressed firmly against each of her vital pressure points…

In fact, I was so busy concentrating every focus of my attention on making Sam comfortable that I didn't even notice Julian backing unsteadily away from the bed as his body stiffened and he looked wide-eyed towards the main door as a fourth person strolled into the room from behind my back without me even noticing.

"How's she doing?" I jumped slightly at the unexpected voice; turning just as I began to ring out a wash cloth that I'd just dunked into a basin of ice cube laden water in preparation to drape across Sam's forehead.

I turned to investigate the source of the intrusion, but as it turned out, I shouldn't have even bothered because Victoria was at my side so quickly in an effort to help me that I didn't even have to.

I paused, but only for the briefest of seconds as my tired, anguished eyes matched with Victoria's, identical in our facial expressions so that for a split second, we looked identical and I could actually identify with the notion that we shared DNA.

I opened my mouth to speak but our similarities once again struck me so harshly that I couldn't even think straight… This unusual connection that I was currently feeling with Victoria, one that had originated within twenty four hours and barely any words exchanged between us, had left me unaware of even how to think anymore…

Jesus, I was all turned around, and as nice it was to finally embrace the relationship I'd always wanted to have with my mother, it was starting to mess with my head, ruining my effort of striving to achieve any sense of my past normal life now that even the most consistent features of me life were backwards.

"She's alright," I finally found words although they were vague ones, "Her fever spiked this morning so we've been trying to lower it since but she's alright… she's gonna be alright…"

I begged it to be true because I'd learned a long time ago that the more I repeated these words to myself, the more I could believe it too… even if it wasn't true.

"Do you mind if I…?" She didn't finish her sentence but held out her hand towards me, palm facing upward as her index finger bent slightly in an inclination towards the damp towel still resting between my hands.

I nodded, passing it on to her delicately without a single word exchanged between the two of us, watching as she smoothed it precariously across Sam's forehead in a manner that even I couldn't have done better myself… I never thought I would have seen the day.

"Um… I'm just gonna… I'm just gonna go get some coffee or something." My eyes snapped up to Julian, standing awkwardly in the corner, unsure of exactly what it was he should be doing, nervous that he was interrupting a pivotal moment between Victoria and my relationship… I didn't even bother to point out the fact that he still had his untouched cup of coffee clasped firmly in his hands.

"I'll be back in a few, call me if you need anything okay?" I nodded with a quick smile, following him out of the room with my eyes before turning back to Victoria still leaning over Sam, caring for her in a similar manner that I would do myself, officially making her the closest person I had ever trusted in the care of Sam other than myself since we'd been in here.

I never thought I'd see the day… Hell, I never thought that Victoria was even capable of producing actions and emotions equivalent to his one… But I've seen a new side of Victoria in these past few days; and as strange as it was to warm up to at first… well, I think I can get used to living like this…

I felt a weird sort of pressure start to build up inside of my skull; confused by this unusual feeling of relief, just wanting it to increase tenfold, spurred by the belief that if simply watching the help that I was currently receiving from Victoria of all people was enough to make me well on my way towards feeling like a brand new person, well then maybe there was more to be had…

I wanted there to be more, I needed there to be more, I was sick of constantly feeling worthless, confused, and like an all around failure…

"Sam's kidneys are failing." I blurted the words spontaneously so that even I was unprepared for the words that had just come out of my mouth.

A week ago if you were to tell me that I would be spitting my deepest secrets to Victoria Davis, I would have told you that you were crazy… now I was starting to think that maybe it was just me that was the crazy one here.

"What?" She finally looked up at me, her face telling me that she'd asked the question simply to beg me to tell her that she hadn't just hear what she thought she just heard.

"Her doctor came to me this morning… They're starting to see signs that the medication they were using to treat the pneumonia might have messed up her kidneys… They're running some tests, hopefully we'll know what's going on by tomorrow."

"Wow…" I listened as Victoria breathed out her exclamation airily, "This just keeps getting better and better doesn't it?"

I nodded slowly, somberly as I turned my head downward to face the floor.

"You get used to it after a while." I tried to assure her, but the truth was that that was just a damn lie.

"It's going to be okay," Victoria stated firmly with an authoritative nod behind her words after a brief pause, "Samantha is going to be just fine Brooke, and so are you… You're both Davis'… We're naturally designed to be built like rocks."

She tried to smile at me, but I couldn't find it inside of me to return it; instead, I simply nodded my head before hanging it down so low that my chin touched my chest as I begged my racing mind to stop thinking about how little I actually believed her words, how I knew that they just couldn't be true… not when I was feeling myself slipping further and further through the cracks with each passing second.

"I'm sorry," I slipped, continuous in my pattern of telling Victoria all of the things that I had absolutely not been expecting to tell her, "I'm sorry for keeping you in the dark about Sam."

She nodded her acceptance of my apology before pausing hesitantly, awkwardly even as she attempted to formulate just the right words to respond to this less-then-normal conversation that the two of us were currently having… It was just unusual not to want to be tearing at each other's throats for a change.

"I'm sorry too." I don't think I'd ever even heard those words come out of Victoria's mouth before, "For making you ever want to keep me in the dark about Sam."

We locked eyes; glaring through each other for seconds that felt like hours.

"Ugh, can you two be any louder?" I was pretty sure had Sam not woken up and been left to mumble her most groggy, incoherent response, then Victoria and I probably would have kept staring at each other all night long, but as it turned out, she did, and then second it happened, Victoria and I jolted, bumping into each other in our simultaneous efforts to get to Sam's side first.

Ultimately, I was the victorious one; after all, I did have more experience with this kind of thing.

"Hey Sam, I thought you were out cold." I leaned carefully over her but the second the words were out of my mouth, I tensed with fear that had Sam not been as asleep as I'd originally thought when I'd blurted everything about her unknown sickness to Victoria, that maybe it was possible that she'd heard me.

"Yeah, for about thirty seconds," She spoke with the smallest of laughs added to the end of her sentence that allowed me to deduce the conclusion that maybe she hadn't heard me after all, "I couldn't stay asleep with all of this freaking mushiness in the room."

She leaned forward a bit, greeting Victoria in the form of a small nod.

"Samantha," Victoria responded, "How are you feeling?"

"I can't really feel anything," She smirked, shrugging upward towards the clear bag of fluid continuously dripping downward and into Sam's body, "Morphine…"

She ended her small sting of humor with a short, stout laugh that eventually turned into a ragged cough that filled my ears and caused me to turn my eyes instantly upward where I watched Sam sitting up in her bed slightly, trying desperately to clear her air passages from the constraints of disease as her watery eyes turned upward and locked with my own.

"Hey, hey, its okay, you're okay," I leaned forward so that I was able to pat her back gently.

Reaching over, I grabbed onto the small cup of water that we'd kept constantly at Sam's bedside specifically for moments like this one, but the lightness of the plastic glass ultimately lead me to the belief that it was empty, and as a result, completely worthless.

"Sam honey, I'm just gonna go get you some more water okay? I'll be right back." I turned to leave, but with lightning fast reflexes that I didn't even know Sam to be capable of anymore, she reached out and grabbed my hand, preventing me from going even a single step forward.

"Brooke, don't leave me alone okay?"

My heart crumbled to the ground as Sam's weak voice, cracking from underneath blue-tinged lips whispered to me her deepest fears which, in her weakened state, she'd forgotten to hide from me like she usually did.

I allowed a single tear to fall freely down my face because I knew that Sam would never have been able to see it anyway with her eyes as glossy with the haze of drugs as they were.

"Don't worry Sam," I breathed out, reaching down to cup the side of her face within my enclosed palm in an attempt to harness some of my energy into her in exchange for some of her bravery, "I'm right here with you okay, and as long as I am, you'll never be alone."

* * *

**JULIAN**

It was about halfway through my self-proclaimed sleepless night that I'd finally gotten so tired of the clock counting down all of the hours that I could have been sleeping but subsequently was not, that I just got so fed up with it all that I pulled the entire damn thing out of the wall all together… Now that the thing was permanently transfixed on 10:34 p.m., and I was done being pushed around by a mechanical device, I realized that I couldn't even tell anymore if was either really late at night, or else just really early in the morning…

With a sharp inhale, I looked up from the magazine that I had been reading; loose material that I'd found a few hours ago on Sam's bedside table after finally giving up on my first rule of being in the public eye; that which stated that I would never succumb to those gossip mongrels and fall victim to their hounding in my own personal effort to distract myself from falling asleep.

Reaching upwards into an extended stretch, I attempted to clear my eyes, watering from exhaustion as Brooke shuffled slightly in her sleep, peacefully undisturbed from on top of the crammed pull-out cot that the two of us were currently sharing.

I listened for a couple of seconds, straining my ears so that the sounds of Brooke and Sam breathing, synchronized evenly in sleep provided the steady beat I needed to keep me awake all night long… But it wasn't a burden, no; in fact, I would go so far as to call it the exact opposite of that.

Appropriately satisfied that all was currently quiet over here up on the western front, properly sustained by my vigilant watch, I turned back to my magazine which I'd discovered early on, had a date on it so far back that it had been released even before Sam's diagnosis, before Brooke and Sam had even known who each other were even… If you could think back to when that time even existed anymore…

Turning the page, the first thing that struck me was Brooke's gleaming picture inside of a small blurb at the bottom right hand corner where she was accompanied by some guy on her arm that I didn't even recognize, but who still made me burn with jealousy… I mean sure, this had taken place long before Brooke and I had been dating, hell, it had taken place long before Peyton and I had been dating, but that wasn't the point…

Reading the short text underneath the picture, I identified their location to be at some movie premiere in New York City; a huge one from the way I remembered it; one that included limousines lined up and down the blocks and crowds that had been formulating into suffocating packs for days in advance so that they could catch a glimpse of their favorite high-profile celebrity walking down the red carpet…

Brooke was dressed to perfection per usual, looking radiant, successful, positively glowing… But I think that the thing that struck me the most was probably just how young, how innocent she looked.

Subconsciously, I snuck a glance to my right, my eyes focusing on the real person portrayed behind this years-old picture, comparing the two; trying to identify the person that I knew was still buried somewhere deep inside of there…

The shadow of everything who Brooke Davis used to be, of everything she was waiting to accomplish in her life obscured the more detailed of her sleeping features, but still, I could still picture it distinctly… Brooke had been radiant, she had been successful, she had been positively glowing at one point, but now she was doing so in an entirely different matter… I think the most important lesson coming from all of this was that sure, Brooke had been young once and honestly, she still is, the thing is that these days when you look at her, her eyes are so darkened by age that you can barely even tell…

So sure, Brooke had been young once, but she's older now, much older… The thing is it's the type of older that is much different than what you and I would ever think of when we hear that phrase. It's the type of older that doesn't come with years but with the maturity of experience. It's the type of older that results in your being forced to grow up much sooner than nature had originally intended on.

I wondered how different I would look if you held a picture of me that was taken a few years back up to my face right now… I wondered if I would look the same as Brooke did now… I wondered if I could ever be lucky enough to look the same as Brooke…

But still, sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if Brooke's dedication, if her unwavering faith would all be rewarded in the end or if it would all just come toppling worthlessly to the ground… I worried about whether or not she would ever be able to see again or if she would just be permanently blinded by this constant pressure of stress and concern… I was constantly terrified with the fear that I would lose Brooke forever… even with her standing right here next to me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I just hoped that in the long run, all of this pain, all of this suffering would be worth it; for Sam, for Brooke, for me… for everybody really…

I hoped that Sam would be able to get past this nightmare, that Brooke would be able to pull herself out of this haze of depression, that I would be able to keep my sanity in my own attempts to continuously pull everything back together…

In the long run, I guess what I'm trying to say is that hopefully one day maybe we'll be able to go on with our normal lives and pretend as if the past few months hadn't changed them forever…

I'm just not so sure if that will even be possible anymore… The thing is, I know I'm good at looking strong when the weight of the world isn't piled up onto my shoulders, but as that load gets heavier, bits and pieces of my true life are starting to get exposed and I'm mostly just afraid of being caught as the phony that I know I am.

That's probably why sometimes I get to wondering why Brooke has chosen to keep me around for as long as she has… But I need to stop physically berating myself like this as much as I do because every time I get to doing it, I get closer and closer to believing that obnoxious, incessant voice inside my head that just keeps telling me that my continuous presence in Brooke's life is directly related to the fact that she needs a simple, cowardly background character into the mix of things to make herself feel even stronger than she already is.

It was right around this time that I finally realized that I'd been staring around looking at this same exact damned picture in this same exact damned magazine for the past… well I didn't know how many minutes because that clock that I'd all but assaulted a few hours ago was still firmly unplugged and resting face down on the ground… But however many minutes it was, I was quite sure of one thing and one thing only, it was definitely a lot of them…

In fact, the only reason I did get any sort of snap back into reality was because a knock on the door, one that I had definitely not been expecting given the fact that it was so early in the morning the sun was just barely starting to poke through the blinds of this cramped room, shocked me so much that I physically jumped; involuntarily jerking my muscles so that I accidentally gave Brooke a firm kick across her lower back… of course, it didn't matter; it still didn't wake her up.

Looking up, I saw an unfamiliar man dressed in a white lab coat over a fancy looking shirt and tie walking cautiously into Sam's room as he attempted to lock eyes with me in an effort to commit to the standard approach of conversation, but I refused to meet them; instead, I glanced back towards Brooke, just wondering whether or not I should be waking her up right now just for the occasion…

Ultimately, I decided not to; after all, why would I ever want to wake up those tired, over-worked eyes that positively made me melt to the core every time I looked into them? …I mean, at least not in the company of a stranger.

"Hi, I'm sorry to wake you, but I'm Dr. Nguyen. I'm the nephrologist that was sent down here..." He took a couple of additional steps into the room, his hand extended to grasp onto mine, which I accepted with a confused, half-assed handshake... At first, I thought that maybe this man had gotten the wrong room or something, I mean, why the hell else would there be a nephrologist here to look at Sam? But the second I had myself totally convinced that this guy was definitely in the wrong place, he continued talking and dashed all of my hopes of the matter...

"I'm sorry Mr. Davis, Dr. Miller told me that Mrs. Davis is usually awake at this time, I could come back later if that will be easier..." There were so many things wrong with that statement that I didn't even know where to begin...

With my jaw dangling open wide, I attempted to correct every pang of confusion that was currently placing a strangle hold on any idea of conscious thought, the thing was, there were so many that the only thing I really achieved was having them all jumble together at the same time, forcing themselves out of my body in the form of a distinct stutter that not even I could accurately identify the meaning of… this poor guy probably thought that I was a basket case already.

"No, no..." I managed to splutter out, waving my hand to indicate that he hadn't interrupted anything particularly important, "No it's fine... I'm sorry, what did you say your name was again?" I asked in an attempt to see if maybe I'd misheard him when he'd said he introduced himself...

"I'm Dr. Nguyen, Dr. Miller sent me down here to start doing some more tests on Samantha's kidneys... the one's she discussed with Mrs. Davis yesterday morning... I'm afraid that what we found in Samantha's blood samples we drew this morning and this afternoon indicated a continuously high level of creatine and nitrogen in her system so that we are going to have to run some more extensive tests to see exactly what it is that's going on with Sam's kidneys."

I shook my head slowly, goggling at the doctor the entire time as I continued to stutter like an idiot.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that... I didn't know... Wh... what did you just say about... about a problem with Sam's kidneys?" I spluttered out my question stupidly, dropping the magazine off of my lap and down onto the floor before standing from the cot as fast as I possibly could, bringing myself up to full height in a dominant stance so that maybe this guy wouldn't think that I was a complete and total fool.

The second I spoke, I watched his face as it blanched and dropped slightly, afraid that he'd just said the wrong thing and had spilled the beans onto a completely unprepared me in an inadvertently harsh, unconventional manner.

"I'm sorry Mr. Davis," He called me by the wrong name for the second time within about a five minute time period, and once again, I didn't correct him. "Maybe I should come back a little bit later."

"No," I demanded firmly, surprising even myself at the tone that had just come out of my own voice, "What's going on with Sam? What's wrong with her?"

"Well... Dr. Miller told me she came down earlier this morning and talked to Samantha's mother..." He shuffled nervously; clearly he hadn't anticipated that he would be stuck in this situation as I turned to the still-sleeping Brooke, wide-eyed with disbelief that she would ever keep something like that from me... It couldn't be true, I just didn't believe it. "During some of the standard preliminary blood work we performed after Samantha woke up, it was discovered that both her blood urea nitrogen and her blood creatine levels were much higher than normal and after her nurse found traces of blood in her urine bag, we were lead to believe that Samantha was in the beginning stages of renal failure."

My mouth dropped open in shock as I fell back downwards onto the cot, creating a massive jolt of disturbances throughout it that still wasn't strong enough to wake up Brooke.

"We ran some more blood just to be sure that these weren't perhaps simply a temporary reaction to the new medication she's been on, but I'm sorry, it appears to me that Samantha is indeed begging a period of rapid renal decline."

I released the shaky breath I hadn't even noticed I'd been holding this entire time as I rubbed my hand across the top of my short hair so that I could feel every stubble between my finger tips.

"So..." My voice was dry, my mouth so parched that the vibrations of my larynx in a failed effort to speak physically pained me to the point that I was forced to stop talking and swallow a few times, just in an attempt to moisten the linings of my entire oral pathway. "So what can we do about this?"

"Well that's why I'm here," The doctor stated matter-of-factly, "I know it's early, but I want to get Samantha into a series of more extensive tests as soon as possible so that we can properly identify a possible course of treatment. With a case like this, time is of the absolute essence, and that is why I have her scheduled to go and get a cat scan as soon as we possibly can."

I nodded stupidly, my jaw permanently affixed in the open position, my mind barely turned on as time seemed to speed up around me so that I couldn't even concentrate hard enough to process the current scene as I stood in the middle of it all, watching blankly as they had Sam up and out of the room within minutes that felt like seconds.

I couldn't tell you how long I was standing dumbfounded in the middle of that room, but I can tell you this; there was something starkly different about the tone of it all now that there was an entire bed, and an entire person missing from it.

Slowly, I lowered myself down onto the small cot, sitting on the edge where I dug my elbows into my lap and buried my face into my hands, attempting a few hypnotically shaky breaths just to prevent myself from crying.

My head was so packed with emotion... some of which I didn't even know existed before this point; some that I couldn't even particularly identify made me just kind of feel like I was about to… I don't know… explode or something.

From somewhere next to me I felt Brooke twitch and roll over in her sleep and I turned over in order to take a good look at her.

To be completely honest, I couldn't really tell you how I was currently feeling towards Brooke... I mean, a part of me was more pissed off at her then I have ever been in my entire life for keeping something like this from me when I have been spending the entire day thinking that Sam was just fine, thinking that the only reason she appeared to have their extra twinge of sickness to her face this morning was because she was still exhausted from, you know... nearly dying.

But that feeling didn't last... in fact, it was gone just as quickly as it had come as I realized that it wasn't anger that I felt towards Brooke at all... In fact, I felt the exact opposite; I felt bad for making her ever think that she had to keep that all to herself for so long, that she had to carry that weight all on her own.

My raging emotions began dwindling into a neutral calamity, settling in a state of thought that was conscious enough to realize that I needed to wake up Brooke and let her know what was going on because I knew that the way my luck usually worked, Brooke would probably wake up only after I finally fell into a deep pit of sleep, or when I'd decided to step away for just a brief moment or two in order to go to the bathroom or something, find Sam gone, and have nobody around her to offer an explanation leading her into an absolute panic.

I reached over gently, wrapping my hand around her shoulder so that I could deliver her a slight nudge but she didn't even move.

"Brooke?" I called in an elevated whisper, shaking her a little bit more harshly, but still, the only response I got was her reaching over in an attempt to swat my intrusive hand away from her before she just fell back into a state of unconscious stillness.

I paused, quickly recognizing the difficulty that this task had to offer in the deepness of Brooke's sleep.

"Come on Brooke, wake up." I raised the volume of my voice to normal so that in the quiet emptiness of the room, it echoed off of the walls, making it sound as if I'd shouted. Simultaneously, I gave her a firm jolt between her shoulder blades with my balled up fist so that she shot upwards, eyes wide in the shock of her sudden awakening.

"Julian, what..." Her voice faded as she looked up at me with confusion before her head unconsciously shifted a little to the left, right past my shoulder and towards that now empty space that normally contained Sam's bed.

For a split second, her face just sunk into a dropped look of silent confusion before sparking into one of pure panic, and before I knew it, Brooke had shot up from her seat so quickly that it made even me dizzy.

"Where's Sam?" Her voice was unnaturally high pitched, her movements sharp and hectic as she turned in circles, looking as if Sam, and her entire bed could have just moved in order to hide behind the wall or something, like we were playing some sort of sick practical joke on her.

"Julian, where's Sam?" Brooke shouted, her heart pounding so hard that I could literally see her pulse pounding against the veins of her reddening forehead.

"Brooke relax, relax," I attempted to calm her down, approaching cautiously before resting a calming hand on both of her shoulders just in an attempt to get her to stop pacing, "She's fine, Sam's fine, a doctor just came in and they took her up to get a cat scan so that they could get a better look at her kidneys... Brooke, why didn't you tell me?"

I felt her muscles physically relax underneath my hands with the announcement that Sam was okay, but the relief was short lived, because the second I'd let her know that she'd been caught in a lie... or actually, caught in her withholding of the truth, she tensed all over again, averting her eye contact with me as she ducked out form underneath my grasp and sat against the cot, dumping her head face down into her palms where she fell silent, unanswering of my questions.

"Brooke…" I sighed, sinking down into the seat next to her, reaching over to wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her closely into me.

"I couldn't do it Julian," She mumbled, her voice muffled due to the fact that it was pressing tightly against my shoulder, "I guess I just couldn't face it anymore... all this bad news... I think that I just thought that maybe if I didn't talk about it, if I didn't tell anyone, then it would just, I don't know... go away... Shows you what kind of person I am, right?"

She gave me a very forced laugh, finally bringing her face up and away from my body only so that she could pull her fingers through her hair before she turned her head away from me, but not before I caught the tears shining a glossy trail down her cheeks.

"Brooke, don't talk like that," I told her, trying to instill a sense of some self confidence up inside of her before she completely and unfairly tore herself apart, "You're an amazingly strong person Brooke, do you hear me? It's not fair what you and Sam have to go through but trust me, you are one of the strongest people I have ever known... I just wish that I could be as strong as you, Brooke... but you know, that doesn't mean you have to be strong for yourself all of the time, you know that right? You have a lot of people who would kill to take some of that weight off of your shoulders... for at least a little while anyway, okay?"

She finally turned her head up to face me, sniffling as she attempted to wipe the sadness away from her eyes as she nodded her head slowly up at me.

"Does anybody else know?" I finally asked after Brooke didn't respond to my comment... after all, I figured that leaving Brooke to linger in silence in her emotional instability at the moment wouldn't exactly be the best idea I'd ever had.

She shrugged casually towards me before offering a single nod of her head, taking as long as she possibly could without actually speaking.

"Victoria,"

I released a small laugh, trying not to be offended that Brooke told Victoria about Sam before me, but I couldn't blame her too much, I guess.

I racked my head, looking for something to fill this gap of silence, hoping to keep Brooke talking until Sam came back if need be just to keep her mind off of everything that was happening with her right now that we didn't know. But as it turned out, I was spared the need to come up with anything when Brooke's eyes widened and popped about half way out of her head before she leapt up to her feet and made a dashing pass towards the door.

"Brooke!" I got up and followed her, reaching her just before she was able to clasp her hand around the door handle and get lost into the length of the hallway, "Brooke where are you going?"

"I need to find Sam," Brooke insisted, looking for a way around me so that she could embark on her journey, "What if she wakes up while they have her in all of those tests, Julian, she won't know where she is... she won't know where I am, and she's not going to know why all of this stuff is happening to her... I have to find her Julian; I have to find her so that she'll know that she's going to be okay, so that she knows I haven't left her."

Cautiously, I reached out and grabbed onto her hands, pulling her away from the door and guiding her back to the chair in the middle of the room where I sat her down, her shaking legs resulting in a resounding plop that lead me to safely believe that she wasn't getting up again anytime soon.

"She knows Brooke, she knows," I assured her, continuing my firm, yet gentle hands on her lower arms at this point mainly to act as a source of comfort that I knew she so desperately needed about now. "She's going to be okay, she's with people who will take care of her, people who will make sure she knows that you'll be here waiting for her when she's done."

Her breath was shaky as she took a couple steep inhales and pulled her right arm out of my grasp so that she could wipe at the sweat beading off of her brow line.

"So who was this doctor that came in here?" She asked, desperate to try and just instill some normal conversation between this increasing chaos with the hopes that maybe it would ease her frantic mind for at least a little bit anyway...

"Eh, I don't know," I shrugged, "He didn't seem that bad... a little bit strange, but not bad... He kept calling me Mr. Davis." I added at the end after a brief pause, including a small smirk that lifted the corners of my mouth slightly; the slightest of movements managing to clean the air of the room a little bit as the soft undertone of a laugh appeared into Brooke's voice as she leaned back against the chair, laughing behind a steep yawn.

"Good to know he thoroughly completed his research then," She said, closing her eyes slowly, no longer able to hold them open now that the adrenaline of her panicked original awakening was weaning. "Maybe we should tell him."

"We can tell him in the morning." I told her, sitting myself down next to her in the chair as she shifted in order to make a little more room for me.

"Julian, it is the morning." She smiled behind closed eyes, repositioning her body against mine; her head against my shoulder, her body perfectly contorted against my own so that I was more comfortable than I'd been all night long.

"The afternoon then," I yawned.

"When Sam gets back."

"Yeah," I agreed, closing my own eyes and leaning my head against Brooke's, feeling reality tunneling further and further out of me as sleep began to overpower me, "When all three of us are together again."


	46. It Gets Cold In There

**Hello all.. Just wanted to thank you all real quick for being patient with these chapters going up, the last couple have taken a while just because I'm trying to sort out the next (and final!) part of this story and start piecing everything together which is surprisingly taking a lot longer than I'd previously anticipated but the good news is I have the basic outline of the rest of the story planned out and I also finally decided on an ending which is exciting. **

**So I'm gonna go ahead and guestimate there will probably be 10 – 15 chapters plus an epilogue in the final part not including the four chapters left in this part (including this one) so that's just to give you a little heads up on what's to come. **

**Anyway, this chapter is just to kind of clarify and explain a couple of things. Sorry if some of the medical stuff is off the kidneys are definitely not my strong suite so god only knows why I chose to incorporate them into this story lol. **

**

* * *

**Chapter 46: It Gets Cold in There

**Tuesday, December 27****th****, 2011**

**SAM**

A couple of days ago, I woke up on Christmas morning wondering how the hell I'd gotten from laying on Brooke's couch in the middle of her living room to laying on a hospital bed in the middle of the intensive care unit of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital four days ahead of the last time I'd actually remembered anything happening…

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'm still feeling pretty tired, a little bit weak, and definitely sicker than anything I had ever felt before in my entire life, and trust me, at this point, that's really saying something, but despite all of that, there's only one feeling that's currently overwhelming all the rest, and that's the notion of unwavering gratefulness towards the fact that I'm still alive…

Anyway, those are the bright and cheery thoughts that were currently running through my head on this beautiful Tuesday morning that I was spending sitting completely motionless, still, and just a tad bit claustrophobic inside of a giant cat scan tube that has been holding me hostage for a little over an hour now so that I could get tests done on… well, I didn't really know what.

This was starting to get a little strange… all of it, I mean… Things just have seemed really different lately… really wrong; I guess would be a better way to describe it.

Everything around me is just starting to feel really… well, real… too real if you asked me… I mean, before all of this happened, I never really understood all of the doctors and the nurses when they told me that I had a disease that could potentially kill me, but now I did, and for the first time, I have become nothing but totally afraid about the possibility of that scenario.

I've been feeling very caged in lately, very trapped, and I was completely terrified of the plausibility that the

last thing that I might ever do in this life would be tied down… stuck amidst all of these stupid tubes and wires and people telling me that I wasn't strong enough to do what I wanted to yet…

"Sam are you okay in there?"

Sometimes I forget that it's not wise to let your emotions get the better of you when you're stuck in the hospital, because eventually it gets to the point that all of your doctors learn how to read you like a book without even really trying… A short spike in the heart monitor every time your heart races with fear… Those subtle changes in the brain scans that occur as your mind begins to wander and allows for the fear to take over…

Talk about Big Brother, right?

"I'm fine," My voice quavered slightly but I doubted that the tiny microphones, precariously located throughout the small tube as to permit continuous contact with the outside world, would pick up on the subtle change that could have otherwise exposed my lie for what it really was.

I allowed my eyes to close, relaxing against the uncomfortable plastic headrest as I swallowed hard and willed my heart to slow itself down… The good news was that it eventually did; of course, that didn't stop me from being terrified… In fact, these days, it seemed like there was nothing out there that could ever possibly could…

I can't do this anymore. I can't sit in this bed; I can't confine myself to these same solid white walls with these same people and these same routines… I just can't.

The fact that I'd spent most of my morning being shuffled from test to test has given me two things; plenty of alone time and room to think… It's a deadly combination that is; loneliness and an open mind… Jesus, that could probably kill me faster than whatever it is going on inside of my body can…

I guess I'm still just pretty shaken up about what happened to me a few days ago, but now that my coherence is slowly starting to slip back across the barrier of a drugged up stupor and I'm starting to realize how close to dying I really had been, it's just getting worse instead of getting any better.

If you're looking for a way to describe it, I guess I'd probably use the phrase "hazard of the trade"… I mean, with the way I'd been living since pretty much the moment I was born, it always gave me this notion that I would just be one of those people that died young, the thing was, that never really bothered me until right now… What I mean is… I don't mean to say that I hadn't had a good feeling about getting myself through this in the beginning, and don't get me wrong, a part of that feeling is still there, but now the thing that's slowly eating away at me is that lingering chance… the subtle reminder…

I never imagined having a formal funeral for myself… actually, come to think of it; I never really imagined having a funeral for myself at all. After all, funerals were for people who had loved ones in their lives that would actually attend, and before Brooke, I never really that, and after Brooke… well, I guess I just never really thought about it anymore.

But still, even with Brooke in my life, I'm still not really attracted to that whole notion of giant, cathedral sized churches full to the brim with people and flower arrangements and lit candles and incense. I didn't want a priest to preach an uplifting homily about how meaningful my life was and about how much I would be missed, I didn't want a choir harmonizing perfectly in the background while a giant organ laid down the foundation of a beautiful hymn, I didn't want sobbing guests crooning over a coffin while they lit candles in the back of the church… I guess that just wasn't really my style… and I'm starting to think that maybe it's time that I actually told this to somebody.

But I'm torn you see; first and foremost, this isn't exactly something you can just bring up in the midst of casual conversation, and second, well, I'm afraid that doing so would mean that I have accepted the chances that this could kill me because the only thing I'm more afraid of than falling asleep one night and never waking up again is actually accepting the fact that that might actually happen…

In fact, these days I'm starting to think that the only thing I actually am ready for is to not be ready for anything at all.

"Okay Sam, you're almost done in there okay? You're doing great, just a few more minutes."

Miguel has been my CT technician all morning long, and for the past hour, he's been telling me the exact same thing, but here I was one hour later, still right here, stuck inside of this little tube and about two seconds away from stabbing my eyeballs out due to the fact that I was starting to believe that that much physical pain could be the only thing that might distract me from the emotional.

It was barely noon but I've been at this all day, flung through the ringer of more tests than I think I've ever had in my entire life combined… An MRI at the ass crack of dawn, an ultra sound just as the sun was starting to rise, blood draw after blood draw to occupy most of my morning… hell, they even took my damn piss to go off and be tested… and here I was now, sitting in this tightly cramped tube so small that my arms were pressing uncomfortably against the hard plastic sides just hoping that Miguel was actually telling me the truth this time when he said that this would all be over soon…

I won't pretend like I wasn't starting to get a little suspicious over here… I mean, I'm not stupid but I think all of these doctors and nurses are trying to bank on the fact that I am in order to keep shuffling me from test to test pretending that all of this was just a routine procedure for people like me… But if they were doing that I guess it would have been smarter not to give me so much time to think about it, because it didn't take me very long to come up with my theory when there was nothing else I had to be doing, and now that it was a firmly established notion in the back of my head, it wasn't going away any time soon.

"Okay Sam, you're all done in there." Miguel's microphone-enhanced voice echoed through my ears and in another second, there was a small jolt and the platform that had been straining my back for the past 73 minutes (yes, I counted), automatically slid me back outside and into the open world so that I could finally breathe a little bit easier again…

By the time I was back inside of my own room, I noticed two things; for starters, I had a killer headache from all of this thinking I've been doing all morning, and for closers, Brooke and Julian were already in the doorway and waiting for me before they'd barely even wheeled me inside… Now I just couldn't tell if they'd just heard me come down the hall or something, or if they'd been waiting in that exact same spot the entire time… to be completely honest with you, neither would surprise me.

But I also noticed something else, far after I was back in my own bed and everybody else had gone, just as Brooke and Julian continued to pamper me and shuffle around me to make sure that I didn't need anything, that I didn't want anything, and yeah, I felt bad thinking it, and no, I sure as hell wasn't going to say anything about it, but I was suddenly feeling just as, if not more cramped in here than I had been when I'd been confined to a miniscule tube for over an hour…

I felt badly pushing them away when all they wanted to do was help, but the only thing I truly needed right now was some room to breathe, so I denied all of their requests to service for me and made it quite clear with my body language and stringent lack of communication that I neither wanted nor needed anything from either of them, but still, Brooke was hesitant to step more than an arm's length away from me for fear that she wouldn't be able to get to me fast enough should a time come when I actually did need her assistance, and I guess for that, after what I'd just put her through, I couldn't really blame her…

She tried her hardest to be sneaky as she took quick, casual glances at me every couple of seconds and even though it kind of annoyed me at first, I still pretended as if I didn't notice simply in an effort to satisfy her need to have her eyes on me at all times… Of course, every once in a while, we'd find ourselves accidentally locking eyes, but I would always be the first to pull my glare away, and then she would follow, and after a while, the both of us got quite good at pretending as if it had never actually happened to begin with… But still, I couldn't help but notice that look in her face; the one that sunk deep down into her very eyes that told me that the reason she was doing all of this was because she knew something that I didn't… something that couldn't have been good, no matter how many different ways I tried to look at it.

I guess that in theory, I should have already known that much… I mean, I could feel it, I could sense it; my body was screaming at me straight down to the center of my bones… something was wrong and things weren't going well… they weren't going well at all.

But still, I chose to contort my face into the most convincing look of blissful naivety that I could possibly muster with the hopes that Brooke would be able to buy it, praying to God that even if she did know something that I didn't, that she would at least still be able to sound convincing every time she told me that everything was going to be alright just to keep me with at least some sense of ease…

I'd just made the mistake of forcing my body to relax, telling myself that I'd have time to worry later, and in fact, I'd barely gotten myself settled down before Dr. Miller was back in my doorway, ruining every ounce of calm I'd managed to achieve in the five minutes since I'd been back in my own room in a split second flat…

I was so nervous that she was here to tell me that they made a mistake that they had more tests to run, that they had to take me back out of this room when all I really wanted to do was sleep that I physically tensed up all over again… Of course, her actual intentions were much worse, and I realized that the second she opened her mouth and asked Brooke and Julian if she could speak to them in the hallway to talk and private… well, that was never a good thing.

Everything about their mysterious conversation screamed at me that I wasn't supposed to hear it… Throughout the entirety of the brief time period that Dr. Miller was actually in my room, she refused to meet my eyes, and after she'd successfully gotten Brooke and Julian to follow her outside into the hall, she closed the door behind her, creating a firm barricade between myself and them…

Lately, I couldn't help but think that she was trying to avoid me on purpose, but I could blame her really… she was just as afraid as I was; afraid that she'd gotten too attached, too into it, and now it was impossible to continue establishing any sort of relationship with me now that she was much less convinced that she could actually save my life than she had been in the beginning of this all…

The trio disappeared behind the door and the second they did, I sighed heavily and audibly, closing my eyes as I leaned my head heavily against my pillow, trying desperately to grapple with the idea that maybe this could possibly be worse than even I initially thought…

Closing my eyes, I tried desperately to concentrate on the pattern of my breathing, but the harder I thought about it, the faster, and subsequently, louder it came out, until suddenly, the softest of noises nearly stopped it completely.

It was the smallest of clickings, the softest whoosh, and it snapped my eyes open, bringing my attention over towards the main door as it swung open the slightest bit on its own accord… I don't know, maybe a brush of wind created by a swiftly walking nurse or maybe just a pure act of… I don't know somebody who knew that I was sick of being left in the dark about what was going on with me all the time and just wanted to hear what was going on.

I strained my neck harshly, desperate to catch a glimpse of the hallway through the small crack in the door, stretching my body to the point that I was damn near falling out of this bed altogether when I finally caught a quick glimpse of Brooke as her body swayed back and forth slightly against the way until she shifted a little to her right and I was blinded once again…

But my loss of vision was made up for instantly as my ears turned on double time, and small fragments of Dr. Miller's hushed words to Brooke and Julian filled them generously…

I couldn't catch the entirety of the conversation; only a few miniscule bits and pieces of it but trust me, what I did hear was good enough to let me know that I was better off not hearing at all…

I'd managed to hear the words "acute" "kidney" and "failure" being thrown around a couple of times, but I didn't manage to hear enough to tell me what that was exactly… I mean sure, I could piece two and two together to an extent, but all I truly knew for sure was that apparently, whatever exactly acute kidney failure was, judging by all of the tests they'd but me through, they had confirmed the fact that I was in it…

The doctor's voice was low and laced with concern throughout the entirety of the time that she spoke all about how this new-found dilemma could interfere with my course of chemotherapy, about how it could eventually send me into multiple organ failure, about how it could ultimately kill me…

I felt myself begin to breathe very heavily as my hands began to shake slightly from their place inside of my Indian-crossed lap… I shoved my hands between my knees in an attempt to stifle them, but they were shaking so hard, the only thing that motion achieved was sending vibrations straight up the length of my legs and through my entire body as a whole… I willed my breath sounds to diminish, the main reason being I couldn't hear Dr. Miller talk as she began to rattle off her advanced treatment plan to Brooke and Julian, through the noise…

The thing was, by the time I'd calmed myself down long enough to actually hear anything, Dr. Miller wasn't even speaking anymore… No, instead it was Brooke; and with her voice shaking and full of a tone of emotion that wasn't exactly making me feel any better about the situation, I heard her, clear as a bell, ask the doctor what would happen if said treatment plan wasn't enough…

With a sharp inhale, I turned my head away… This was one answer that I definitely did not want to hear.

So with my mouth hanging open and my eyes squinted to the point that I could barely see in an effort to prevent myself from procuring tears, I attempted to wrap my head around everything I'd just heard, staring at the wall in front of me for a long time until I finally heard the door swing open a little bit wider followed by a pair of footsteps approaching me to tell me that Julian and Brooke were back…

I didn't want to look at them and I begged my body to comply with what my mind was telling me. The thing was I didn't want to hear their explanations, their apologies, their excuses… I didn't want to hear any of it…

But of course, my neck betrayed absolutely everything that I didn't want to happen, turning itself on its own accord towards the duo as my eyes subconsciously slanted, indicative of my quest for answers from them.

"You'd think the doctors around here would have learned by now that if they want to use the whole 'talking in the hallway' method to keep us from hearing what they have to say, they need to do something about the fact that these walls are made out of paper."

It was meant to be a joke, but in my heightened state of alertness, my words came out a little bit harsher than even I'd initially anticipated… Brooke didn't say anything, mainly because she didn't know what to say, Julian didn't say anything because he didn't believe it to be his place to do so, and I… well I was just sitting here, no further from achieving answers than I had been before I said anything.

My eyes locked with Brooke's as I attempted to use telepathy to gain the answers, but I was having a difficult time maintaining eye contact when all her facial muscles seemed to want to do was contort in a way to express to me how sorry she was that I had to find out this way…

I tried to communicate with her silently that I didn't blame her, because really I didn't… I didn't blame anybody really; I mean how could I, right?

I wanted to tell her this, I needed to tell her this because I couldn't stand to see that look of guilt so prominent across her face when she never even did anything wrong to begin with, the thing was, when I opened my mouth to say it, those weren't the words that came out of my mouth… Instead, my unconscious mind spoke the exact opposite; something that I'd been thinking about all morning, but also definitely something that I had not meant to say to anybody ever.

"I don't want to have a funeral in a church."

This morning, I had been so concerned with relaying my final wishes to somebody, anybody that the fact that my words actually made me feel worse than I did before took me by surprise… Now it was just a matter of trying to decide if it was this that shocked me more, or if it was my physical admittance…

Brooke and Julian's jaws dropped instantaneously; the only reaction they could procure due to the unexpectedness of my statement, and I can tell you this much, it definitely didn't help…

I put the smallest of awkward smiles on my faces before shrugging slightly and turning away… I didn't mean to put them in a position such as this, really I didn't, but the way I was starting to figure it, at the rate that they were being handed out to me, I was starting to believe that all of my blessings should have been gift wrapped before they were delivered to me just to remind me that I should have savored them, because the way things were looking these days, I was starting to think as if maybe I had finally used my last one up completely.

* * *

**BROOKE**

From the second that Sam's doctor came into her room with the announcement that she would like to speak with me and Julian outside in the hallway in private, I knew that whatever she had to say, it wasn't going to be good…

But of course, I'd obliged to her request anyway, following her from the room where she led us a couple of feet away from the door but only after closing it behind her; an action that made my heart lurch with the awareness of a physical separation between Sam and I that I couldn't handle right now…

There as a man standing in the cross way of the hall that separated the rooms designated for the teenaged patients of the sixth floor from the rooms designated for the younger kids, the ones who's faces broke your hearts every time you saw them…

He was leaning casually against the wall, a tired gleam in his eyes and his shirt and tie distinctly ruffled so that I was under the impression that he'd probably been here all night long… if not longer.

I had no idea who this man was, and at first glance, I thought that maybe he was just another stranger lingering in the hallway, but when Julian approached him instinctively, reaching out to shake his hand with a smile that made it look like they were old friends, I immediately concluded that this must have been the doctor that Julian had met last night…

"Mrs. Davis," He released himself from Julian's grasp before turning to me in a polite greeting, outstretching his hand and allowing me to grab onto it in a manner that was slightly awkward considering he was a solid couple of inches shorter than me… "My name is Dr. Nguyen I am going to be Samantha's primary nephrologist for this case… I spoke with Mr. Davis last night, I'm sure he mentioned…"

I turned up to Julian who met my gaze, the both of us trying desperately to conceal the hint of a laugh behind our faces which would have just come off as totally inappropriate given the situation we were currently in.

Last night, I seem to remember Julian describing this man as "weird" when I asked him what he felt of Sam's new doctor, and right away I was starting to see where he was coming from… But I begged myself not to get carried away by this first impression, a task that turned out to be insurmountably difficult given the fact that I couldn't help but judge every flaw in a person who had just been put in charge of saving my daughter's life…

"Brooke, I'm sorry to have to tell you this…" Dr. Miller's words brought me back into reality, wiping any lingering remnants of a smile off of my face while simultaneously reminding me of how much I've been hearing her say the words 'I'm sorry' before updating me on Sam's condition these days… "Dr. Nguyen and his team of nephrologists have been studying the results of the tests that we've been running on Sam all morning… We've had the opportunity o discuss the results together and judging on everything that we've seen, it looks to us as if Sam's kidney function might be diminishing faster than we had initially anticipated."

Julian and I turned to face me and I met his match as we gave each other quick glances of nervous confusion that might as well have had a permanent place on our faces at this point but showed no other outward signs of emotion… after all, we were so used to getting bad news lately that we'd become experts at disguising how we truly felt on the outside…

The stare lasted no longer than half of a second, and ultimately, it became Julian that turned away from me first as he began moving his head between the two doctors in the search for answers while simultaneously wiping his mouth with his left hand in a slow, nervous expression, leaving his fingers to curl into a fist which he allowed to linger underneath his chin in a look of deep concentration that I managed to match as I too turned back towards the only two people in this entire world who would actually be able to give us some of the answers that we were looking for.

"Based on the test results, we have come to the conclusion that Samantha's current symptoms are being produced as a result of something called acute renal failure."

I stared blankly at Dr. Nguyen as he spoke, wordless in hoping that maybe I'd misheard him against that slight hint of an accent behind his voice that otherwise procured perfect English while knowing full well that I had not.

"The problem with this disease is that Samantha's kidneys can no longer filter any of the waste products out of her blood like they normally do, which would explain why we are seeing high levels of creatininine and urea in her lab work… Another concern is that there has been continuous evidence of blood being produced in her urine bag which tells us that her kidneys are now also letting in red blood cells which may indicate an even higher level of kidney dysfunction than what we initially thought."

This Dr. Nguyen guy was speaking with words I didn't understand in a tone that was starting to make me feel stupid just because I didn't get the vital information he was currently spewing out to me as if it had been the simplest information in the entire world…

"So what does that mean?" Julian asked the question for me, stepping up when he knew I couldn't just like he always did.

"It means that there's a strong possibility that Sam's kidneys might have been in trouble since way before she was actually treated for the pneumonia… There's also a possibility that instead of physically causing it, the steroid treatments used might have actually just made the situation progress faster."

My heart came to an absolute halt. I felt as if somebody had just dunked me face first into a bathtub full of ice water… Slowly, the information began to process, and as soon as my heart started pumping again, I felt my blood carry a fresh wave of guilt across my veins until finally it had sunk into every crevice of my body…

If this had been going on for as long as they were saying it could have been then I should have seen it… I should have opened my damn eyes and noticed… Maybe then I would have been able to fix it, maybe I would have been able to make it so that Sam would never have to have dealt with all of this pain in the first place…

"If this problem could have been there all along than why wasn't caught before?" Julian spoke in a professional tone, but there was a sting of heat behind his voice at the more sensible reasoning that an error in labs or sheer laziness could have resulted in this escalated problem rather than me not being vigilant enough…

"You have to understand that the largest issue in targeting and successfully treating kidney disease is that the symptoms remain relatively silent in its beginning stages and often times they aren't even detected in the lab work or in any other tests until there is substantial dysfunction… The important thing is that now that it has been detected, we want to start bringing Sam's kidneys back to a normal level of functioning while hopefully preventing them from progressing into a state of complete renal loss which would obviously be a much more substantial problem than what we already have now…"

"And how do we do that exactly?" I asked as my head tore fiercely between the two doctors, waiting for either of them to speak up.

"Brooke, Dr. Nguyen and I have sat down together and we've outlined our biggest goals and our biggest concerns regarding how to formulate out Sam's treatment plan… First and foremost we discussed the fact that now that Sam's kidneys are of our main concern, her chemotherapy treatments will come secondary to that of her renal therapy… It's possible that we may have to limit the amount of chemotherapy she can receive in her next round in order to prevent more damage from occurring so we structured a less intense dosage for her to begin within the next few weeks… Of course, considering the fact that she is on what will be one of her last rounds of chemotherapy, it will be very unlikely that this will prove to be problematic in the course of her treatment for the actual leukemia…"

"Okay," My voice rang out obnoxiously as I nodded my head in response to Dr. Miller's first plan of attack, not really knowing exactly what it meant, but at the same time, reading off of the minimal amount of concern in her voice and feeling eased just by that, "What else is there?"

"Well… another thing we wanted to discuss with you was the timing of the treatments… The problem with the physical presence of symptoms of renal failure in chemotherapy patients is that it is often the first sign of a much larger problem that tends to accumulate much faster than it would in otherwise healthy patients and that problem usually manifest itself in multiple organ failure."

"Oh…" It was the only thing I could manage to say, mainly because my jaw just didn't seem to want to shut in a manner that would help me form otherwise comprehensive words…

"Brooke listen, I know how it sounds but by starting her on a very ordered course of treatment right away, it's more likely that her kidneys will be able to reverse the damage done to them on their own accord before physically organ failure actually sets in… We have already planned to start treatment as soon as possible… today even, if that's alright with you."

I nodded fiercely; of course it was alright with me to start Sam on a treatment that would save her life right away… Hell, it would also be alright with me if they could figure out a way to blast this damn disease out of her body by the end of the day, but I guess we'll just have to take it one step at a time with that one…

"What… what does this treatment include exactly?" I realized after I'd consented to it that I didn't even know exactly what I was consenting to…

"Well, are first approach will be focused strictly on medicinal methods," My head turned back to Dr. Nguyen as he began speaking so that I noticed a small twinge forming in the back of my head from being forced to go back and forth so many times… "The goal is to attempt to prevent any excess accumulation of fluids and wastes in her blood while simultaneously just trying to allow her kidneys to heal themselves… She'll take two different pills three to four times a day each; Lasix, which is a diuretic, and Kionex which will help prevent dangerous potassium build up… then we will also be giving her an IV drip of Sodium Chloride for just a couple of hours every day or two just to help replace any electrolyte loss… that in combination with a strict new diet should hopefully work and I have high hopes, Mrs. Davis, that this treatment alone will be satisfactory in its efforts to reverse the problem."

He had a confident smile displayed prominently across his face as he nodded down at me… or up at me or… whatever, but despite all of that, I couldn't help but feel exactly the same way that I had felt the day that Sam was initially diagnosed… I had a bizarre sense of déjà vu filtering through every cell in my body… me sitting in the hallway of Tree Hill Memorial's oncology unit being lectured on a disease I didn't know heads or tails about and a list of medications that I needed a damn catalogue to keep track of… I remembered thinking then that I could really use a pencil or something in order to write all of this down and keep track of it and I definitely thought the same thing now.

But I also remembered believing Dr. Miller the last time when she told me that she believed that the initial treatment options would be enough to cure Sam and look where we all were now… so forgive me for being a little bit skeptical the second time around.

"What if it isn't?"

I knew that I was torturing myself simply by even thinking about the question let alone asking it, but I needed the answer… I needed it like freaking oxygen at this point.

"I'm sorry?" Dr. Nguyen inclined his question in my direction, asking me to repeat myself most likely because he was so certain that he'd heard me wrong… I guess he just wasn't quite used to me and my pessimistic view on life quite yet…

"If it doesn't work Brooke, Sam's treatment will be much more involved and the condition much more difficult to treat," Dr. Miller took over in answering the question for me because she was more experienced; she knew the answer I was looking for, she knew what I wanted to hear. "She'd be put on the list to receive a kidney transplant and we'd have to start her on dialysis… The problem with dialysis is that it's sort of a Catch 22 for somebody like Sam because it will give her a much greater risk of developing an infection and it might also impede on her chemotherapy options all together which would place her at a much larger risk of relapse… a condition that would almost undoubtedly be fatal with Sam's current condition…"

I think that part of the reason why I loved Dr. Miller so much was because of her bluntness, because of her desire to keep nothing from me… It made me feel less stupid, less worthless, and for some reason, it made me feel stronger… I guess the other part of the equation was just based off her unwavering attempts to keep Sam alive by any means necessary… a feat that would send anybody straight to the top of the list of people on my good side…

The two doctors waited for me to say something but I was completely speechless, and judging by the sound of his silence, so was Julian… And so began that small, awkward, extended silence that told everybody in this conversation that we were through, which is a good thing because I really didn't think that I could handle any more bad news coming from my direction at the moment…

"Okay, so I'm gonna go head down to the pharmacy real quick and place an order for those prescriptions and then we'll get Sam started on them as soon as they're ready…"

I tried to reply but my mouth was so dry that the only true noise that came out of my mouth was some low, high pitched screeching noise that sounded more like a dead cat than anything so instead, I just nodded my head; the stiffest of motions that I think I'd ever made in my entire life…

And with a quick, soft hand squeeze around my shoulder, Dr. Miller was off in the other direction, the other doctor barely looking back up at us in acknowledgment of his departure before he followed her in the same direction, staggering a couple of steps behind her as they made their way up the hallway before splitting in separate directions at the fork at the end of the hall.

I watched the empty hallway for a couple of lingering seconds, just trying to figure out whether or not I liked this new doctor when Julian put a hand down on my shoulder, forcing my eyes away and onto him.

"Are you okay?"

I just shook my head slowly, waving my hands out of sheer exasperation before I reached up to rub my eyes with them, willing my body to remove any ounce of the experience I'd just seen out of them… I hadn't even noticed that my eyes were closed until Julian grabbed me by the wrists and lowered my arms simultaneously to our sides, the unexpected touch jolting me up and painfully aware once again.

"It's gonna be okay you know," He told me gently, and at first, I made the motion to nod and agree with him, because even if I didn't believe it, I wanted Julian to think that I did… but I couldn't even accomplish that; the thing was, in that slightest of head tilts, the smallest of motions to my right, my gaze passed through the top of his shoulder, focusing on the small crack of Sam's open doorway where my sight focused straight onto the girl who was glaring determinedly at the wall; her muscles tensed and her chin fixed defiantly downward to the point that it touched her chin… I knew in an instant that she'd just heard every word that had been exchanged between me, Julian, and her two doctors…

So instead of answering Julian, I just pushed right past him, rushing as quickly as I possibly could towards the open door, ignoring Julian's calls for me to come back as I walked into the room… But then I was struck with realization; the idea that I had absolutely no clue what I was going to say to Sam once I confronted her… I stopped my movements so abruptly that Julian, who I hadn't even realized had been following me, crashed right into my back.

By the way Sam's muscles tensed in response to the sudden intrusion, I knew that she knew of my presence, but still, she wouldn't look at me, and out of everything that I'd just heard outside in that hallway, out of all of this new information, out of all of these new possibilities, I think that's what ultimately hurt me the most.

I kept a safe distance away from Sam, determined not to penetrate her personal space as much as I may have wanted to as I watched her neck muscles bulge and practically twitch in a manner that told me that she was straining herself just to force her head to turn and look at me… But eventually, we locked eyes; hers begging mine for the answers that I knew had already been unceremoniously implanted half formulated deep inside of that head of hears…

"You'd think the doctors around here would have learned by now that if they want to use the whole 'talking in the hallway' method to keep us from hearing what they have to say, they need to do something about the fact that these walls are made out of paper."

I cringed slightly at the tone in her voice, but I deserved every anger-punctuated syllable she spoke, so I took it like I knew I should…

I didn't say anything, I couldn't say anything… There was absolutely nothing that I could do right now that would make up for everything I'd kept from Sam, for the way that she had to find out…

The silence filtered around us, raising high above us so that after a while, I felt as if I'd have to stand on my tip toes and gasp for air just so I could catch onto a single fragment of oxygen.

For several seconds she just stared at me, and for several seconds I just tried to stare back as I simultaneously struggled to do something about the emptiness currently infiltrating my lungs; and then, right when I'd been completely convinced that I was about to pass out from total lack of air, Sam opened her mouth and spoke a single sentence… and after that, I was even more surprised when my instant death didn't actually happen…

"I don't want to have a funeral in a church."

She might as well have just gotten out of bed and roundhouse kicked me directly in the chest as hard as she could… it probably would have at least hurt a lot less anyway…

"Sam…" Tears welled underneath my eyes instantaneously as my mind stumbled blindly in the search for a way to respond to that comment without babbling like an idiot… But I guess it was already too late for that…

"What?" She cut me off, sparing me the need to say anything else which, in a way, was kind of a good thing, because I was coming up empty where I stood, "I'm dying Brooke, aren't I? Isn't that how this whole kidney failure thing works, because I'm not positive, but based on what I heard you know, through the doorway, it is?"

I nodded slowly, accepting her current outburst because she deserved the opportunity to deliver it and I deserved the opportunity to take it… I knew that she needed somebody to blame for whatever it was she was feeling at the moment and I knew that that was what I was here to do; it was my job to take the pain off of Sam when she couldn't deal with doing it herself…

Pushing my luck, I sat myself down at the end of Sam's bed, waiting hesitantly for a few seconds just to see if she would object, but knowing that when she never did, I had made the right move.

"Dr. Miller came in to talk to me yesterday while you were asleep." I rested a comforting hand on her knee, pleased when I felt her lean into my touch rather than pull away like I feared she would, "She said that they weren't sure exactly what was going on but it looked like something pretty serious was on with your kidneys."

I waited for her to make her own input, but when she didn't say anything, I knew that she would be standing determined to keep her silence until I'd given her the entire story, and I took that as my signal to just keep on talking.

"I should have told you Sam, I know I should have but… but you're still recovering from this whole pneumonia thing, and you were still so sick, Sam… I wanted you to concentrate on one thing at a time and I thought that maybe if I kept this to myself and if you didn't know… then maybe I'd be able to fix it for you," I sighed, shaking my head in shame out of how stupid that idea sounded when I actually said it out loud. "It was stupid Sam… I know that it was stupid."

"It's not stupid Brooke…" She spoke confidently, in a tone that I was proud of as an overwhelming sense of comfort passed through me in response to her support, and I couldn't pretend as if it wasn't nice to have it confirmed to you that maybe you didn't screw things up as badly as originally thought… even if the person confirming it to you is your teenage daughter.

"Thanks Sam," I flashed her a smile, one that she didn't quite return in full although the small nod that she gave me in response was the only thing I really needed…

"So what happens next?"

"They're gonna start you on a bunch of new medications," I told her, using my vaguest of explanations because I didn't quite have the details sorted out myself, "They said that what they're hoping is that those will be enough to make your kidneys just kind of… heal themselves or something…"

"What if it doesn't work?" She mirrored the exact same question that I'd first thought of when I'd heard that same hint of nervous unknowingness behind Sam's doctors' voices as Sam was currently hearing in mine…

"They'll start you on dialysis…"

"What if that doesn't work either?" She grilled me relentlessly, her determination to continue hearing option after option telling me that she was ready to tackle every obstacle thrown in her direction head on, but at the same time, proving to me just how nervous she was towards the possible limitations of success.

Ashamed at my lack of knowledge stemming from my inability to procure an actual answer for her, I looked downwards towards my feet, still dangling off the edge of Sam's bed as a single tear stung at the corner of my eye as I shook my head slowly from side to side.

"I don't know Sam… I just don't know."

I felt the mattress shift underneath me slightly, indicative of the motions of Sam's body as she allowed her muscles to go completely limp with the hopelessness of my statement… I refused to look at her, terrified that if I did, I would catch her at the exact moment that that light flickered out of her eyes, telling me just how damn close we all were to giving up hope all together…

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked her like an idiot in my last lame attempt to do something that would make this situation right… Of course, I wasn't particularly surprised when she simply shook her head no towards my request.

"Not really," She sighed, shrugging her shoulders gently upwards, "I'm just kind of tired… I think… I think I'm just gonna take a nap or something for a little while, okay?"

"Okay…" I breathed out my approval of her request, not quite believing her or her sudden desire to sleep the afternoon away but at the same time, knowing that I was in absolutely no position to push her…

Instead, I just watched submissively as she simply rolled over in her bed, ceasing in her movement only when her back was completely turned to me… the thing was, her muscles were way too stiff, her breathing was much too uneven to have me totally convinced that Sam was actually asleep…

It was a long time before I was completely certain that Sam was fast asleep… After her back started rising up and down evenly, after her body started vibrating with the shudder of her soft snoring, and especially after she let out the tiniest of grumbles of pain, one that she would have tried much harder to hide from me in a more awake state than she did when she was sleeping…

The noise sparked a little jolt in my attention which had otherwise been slowly diminishing into a day-dream-like state procured as a result from sitting in a lounge chair all day with nothing but your thoughts to occupy you…

With a sharp inhale, I stood to my feet, approaching Sam as quietly as possible as I began my desperate attempt to make her a little bit more comfortable; untangling her limbs from the various tubes snaking in and out of her body, repositioning her head evenly under the pillows, pulling the white sheets that nearly matched her pale skin to the exact shade high above her shuddering shoulders…

"What do I do here Sammy?"

I'd whispered without meaning to, my voice suddenly taking on a mind of its own as it whispered down gently towards the sleeping girl in front of me, suddenly much more confident now that it had the knowledge that she couldn't hear a word of it…

"I know I'm supposed to have all of the answers for you kid, but I'm at a dead end and I'm scared Sam… I guess I just don't know what to do…"

Recognizing how stupid I must have sounded at the moment just sitting in this giant empty hospital room talking to myself, I sunk back down into my seat and buried my face into my hands trying to will a solution, an instant cure into my head…

I had been so un-expectant of an actual response from Sam that I didn't even look up when I heard her bed sheets ruffle as she shifted to turn her body towards me, and when she actually spoke, with a tired tone and through closed eyes, I literally jumped out of my chair…

"We'll think of something, Brooke…"

And with that, she rolled back over, fell back into a sleep just as deep as she'd been in before she'd said anything, and for the rest of the night, she didn't say a single damn word.


	47. When My Legs No Longer Carry

**Alright guys, so here's another quick little chapter trying to clear some stuff up. To all you guys who are looking for some Brulian action, I'm starting in the next chapter a story line that will pretty much progress into the end of the story in a way that I'm pretty sure you'll all enjoy so I'm just gonna torture you with the need to wait for just a little bit longer so sorry about that.**

Chapter 47: When My Legs No Longer Carry

**Wednesday, December 28****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I've gotten so used to starting my days completely content and relieved with nothing more than a half-assed few hours of sleep that at 7:00 this morning, when the sun was blearing obnoxiously brightly into my eyes through the adjacent gaps in the blinds, reflecting the image of Sam, fast asleep and tangled up in the machines that were keeping her alive, shadowing my vision of Julian, fast asleep and tangled up in the bed sheets that he'd pulled off of me in his own fitful sleep about two hours ago now, and Victoria walked into the room, looking more like she was going to a business meeting than a hospital room, I did a very good job at successfully convincing her that I had been awake for hours after a completely satisfying and refreshing night's sleep…

"Brooke," She nodded curtly towards me… My head snapped up instantly, my first impression being that something was wrong because I hadn't heard that tone come out of her mouth since Christmas Eve when she was screaming at me for not telling her that Sam had been sick with cancer for the past two months…

I took a quick step back, attempting to shake the sudden shock and come up with an appropriate rebuttal, the thing was, I was still so new to this whole getting along with Victoria thing that I wasn't quite sure how to go about doing that, of course, I only got as far as opening my mouth in order to ask her what was up when my mouth starting quivering so hard, stammering with only semi-formulated words that Victoria caught the opportunity to cut me off, speaking again before I had any opportunity to actually do so.

"How's Samantha?"

"Fine," I blurted my words rather abruptly… too abruptly if you asked me, but that was only because my brain was still trying to think of something to say in response to her initial welcome.

"Well did the doctor come in to talk to you?"

"Yeah…" I wasn't being obnoxiously vague on purpose but I was confused and I was really bad at processing thoughts amidst confusion.

"And?" She pushed; her voice singing obnoxiously through my ears as she her eyes bulged out of her head in her quest for answers.

"And she's in kidney failure Victoria! What more do you want from me?" I shouted harshly but that was only really because I was frustrated by how little I really did know, and this unexpected rudeness coming from Victoria out of the blue wasn't exactly helping matters much…

I rolled my eyes away from the look of neutral stone displayed across her face, trying my hardest not to feel guilty about yelling at her, about not wanting to give her any more details beyond that… But I'd kept her in the dark once before, and as it turned out, that ended up being one of the biggest mistakes I'd probably ever made throughout the course of this whole thing, and that reminder alone was enough to get me start talking to her again…

"They're starting her on a bunch of medications," I sighed out an explanation which came out much gentler than anything I'd told her earlier… "They're uh… they're saying that the hopes are that that alone will work and make her better again." I finished, looking to the floor, rubbing my hands through my hair as I attempted to offer her an explanation that didn't make me sound like a complete idiot.

"And what if that doesn't work?"

I could only look up at her desperately; after all, it wasn't exactly a confidence booster that me, Julian, Sam, and even Victoria had all had the same initial reaction towards hearing the doctor's whole 'shoot for the best' method of treating Sam.

I didn't give Victoria an answer; I couldn't talk about it again, I couldn't hear it again, so instead, we merely locked eyes; that look of concerned silence on my face being enough to tell Victoria exactly what she needed to know.

"I thought you said that she was fine?"

"At the moment she is." I spit out, rising to me feet and indicating harshly towards the still-sleeping girl as she shifted slightly in her unconsciousness in response to the increasing volume of my voice.

"You call that fine?" She asked me and I dropped my jaw out of the pure shock of the harshness of her words as I let out a sigh of exasperation; a silent plea for her to tell me what the hell was going on with her before I continued stammering blindly like a moron amidst her one-sided argument between the two of us.

"Okay, what the hell is going on?"

Victoria didn't answer me right away; instead, she simply walked across the room and sat down in an empty chair that was directly across from me so that the only thing separating the two of us was Sam fast asleep in her bed.

"I was sorting through your mail today to see if you needed me to bring you anything…" She started and I raised an eyebrow; this was already starting to sound suspicious… "I found these."

For a brief moment, she dug through her oversized purse, and I watched as she raised a small cluster of envelopes up to eyelevel so that I could see them, but still, I couldn't quite make out what they were in detail.

"So you're mad at me for getting mail?" I asked, the sarcasm in my voice probably doing absolutely nothing to make this situation any better.

"No," She replied curtly, tossing the envelopes across Sam's prone form so that they flew gracefully through the air before landing right on target neatly in my lap.

I looked down; my eyes scanning across three envelopes face up and emblazoning the words 'Tree Hill Memorial Hospital Billing Department' stamped across the front so that I knew in an instant exactly what this was.

"Oh…"

I voiced my understanding of the subject vaguely and Victoria's eyes widened up at me… Clearly, she had been expecting a much more involved reaction.

"Oh?" Victoria replied, "Brooke, there's a bunch of bills in your house from this hospital that add up to nearly $100,000 from all of Sam's chemotherapy sessions and from when you had to take her into the ER the other day… You haven't even gotten one for her stay in the ICU yet… They're saying that she's uninsured… What the hell are you thinking keeping this child uninsured with everything that's been going on with her, Brooke?"

I looked upward at Victoria; a shocked expression displayed prominently across me face, unable to believe that Victoria was actually blaming me for the fact that my insurance policy, which, might I add, she'd chosen to represent our company, had chosen not to insure Sam despite my best efforts for it to happen.

"What, you think that this is my fault?" I hadn't meant to raise my voice, mainly because I didn't want to wake up Sam and Julian, but of course I had little to no control over this situation because when somebody attacked my abilities as a parent, I took it very personally, especially when that attack was coming from Victoria Davis who wasn't exactly mother of the year over here…

"You're her mother Brooke; it's your responsibility to take care of her!"

I stood up; I needed to leave this room right now before I lost my cool completely… Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined getting parenting tips from my mother let alone letting them actually get into my head.

"I know that you think that this is simply a matter of paying a few thousand dollars to these people a couple of times a week Brooke but it is more than that. Sam needs to be covered; she needs to be protected in case something comes up where either you or your bank account isn't able to help her!"

"I will always be able to help her!" I turned back towards Victoria, a mere footstep away from the door in response to Victoria's words which, for some reason, stung me worse than any of the other horrible things that she'd ever said to me before… "And for your information Victoria, I am trying my damned hardest to do something about this. They dropped her like a cold turkey from her government insurance the second that my adoption of her was made official and now my insurance won't pick her up because of a damned preexisting condition… They're putting her face up for review but I've been waiting… nobody's called yet."

"Who's your insurance carrier?" Victoria asked me, standing up sharply, raising her bag high over her shoulders so that I immediately got a little bit suspicious of her intentions.

"You picked the policy Victoria, shouldn't you know these things?"

"Brooke," She snapped, and I rolled my eyes with the recognition that now was not the time or the place for sarcasm, "Who is your insurance carrier?"

"Horizon,"

"Give me your insurance card." She demanded, jutting her palm out in search for an instant gratification to be granted with little or no explanation, something that I absolutely did not plan on obliging to…

"What? Why?"

"Just give it to me." She re-emphasized the motion of her hand, moving sharply as to express the fact that I didn't really have any say in the matter whatsoever… So I lowered my defensive stance and slunk over towards my purse on the corner table, digging through my wallet for a couple of minutes before finally finding the appropriate slip of plastic and placing it into Victoria's outstretched palm.

"Victoria what are you gonna do?" I asked just as she pushed right past me, practically body checking me without a single additional word on the matter as she made her move to walk out the door.

"I'm going over to that insurance company and I'm going to give them a piece of my mind that's where I'm going."

I was just about to open my mouth in protest, just about to tell Victoria not to even bother, that I've already been there and tried that, but ultimately, it was a small voice whispering out from behind me that caught my attention and distracted me before I had the opportunity to mutter a single syllable.

"What's with all the yelling?"

Sam's voice was groggy; a combination of just coming fresh out of sleep along with all of these new drugs that her body was still trying its damned hardest to get used to…

Victoria and I locked eyes, and I watched as she hesitated briefly in the doorway, torn between the desire to go over to that damned insurance company and rip it to shreds and the desire to stay behind with Sam and assure her that everything was going to be okay.

"Nothing Samantha," Ultimately she fell into that lingering familial instinct I'd always known had been deep down there somewhere, stepping back inside of the room just enough so that Sam could make out her image as she spoke to her, "I'm sorry that we woke you up, just go back to sleep."

"What's going on?" Sam asked, completely ignoring Victoria's command with a tone of nervous confusion in her voice as she slowly lifted herself into a more upright position against her bed.

"Nothing Sam… I've just got some stuff to take care of okay? I'll be back in a little while." Victoria told Sam, and without another word, she turned her back out the door and was gone; disappearing down the hallway before Sam even knew what hit her.

"What was that about?" She asked, turning to me with a dumbstruck look prominent across her face as she began to wonder what the hell she'd just woken up to… But the only thing that I could do was stare, matching her expression with a shrug of my shoulders as I slowly shook my head from side to side…

"I have absolutely no idea…" I exhaled steeply in an effort to truly convince her that I really did have absolutely no clue… "But I think that Victoria might have just tried to lecture me about being a good parent…"

"Victoria?" I nodded slowly in confirmation of her question, watching as her face slid into a confused expression that made her look exactly how I was currently feeling…

"Wait a minute… rewind," Sam waved her hands spastically through the air in an effort to keep up with this conversation, so confusing in its simplicity that it physically hurt. "Victoria… as in your mother Victoria… as in the one who's won like the world's worst mother award for the past… like thirty years in a row Victoria?"

I flashed her a quick glare; the thing was, the only part of that comment that I'd heard was the one in which she called me thirty years old…

"First of all, I'm not thirty, second of all… yes, that Victoria."

"Are you sure we're talking about the same Victoria here?"

"To be honest, I'm not so sure… I don't know, maybe she was kidnapped by aliens or something… Or maybe she was an evil twin all along and she's had her other half kidnapped and locked in a basement this whole time and she finally escaped…"

The look that Sam was currently giving to me was completely priceless, the sad part was I was only half joking when I revealed my theories.

"I don't know," I finally told her, completely serious, "I guess I'm still getting used to this whole Victoria being nice to me thing."

"You know, I'm starting to think that it's just because I'm around now. She definitely likes me so much more."

"You know, I think you're right… I would have definitely adopted a smart ass duplicate of Victoria with cancer a lot sooner if I'd known that that's all I had to do to get Victoria to be nice to me…"

I smirked down at her, and at the same exact time, her expression met mine, a slew of frustrations that had been accumulating for a solid two months now, finally broken by probably one of the most inappropriate and offensive jokes either of us could have possibly come up with at the moment as a loud snort of laughter erupted from both of our mouths at the same exact time, leading to a stream of uncontrollable giggles so powerful it made my abs hurt and my eyes tear.

Over in the corner Julian released a powerful snore, so loud it echoed off of every wall of the room before he rolled over in sleep onto his stomach, so close to the edge of the bed that he nearly fall off the whole thing all together.

For a couple of seconds, Sam and I just stared at each other, the linger of an amused smile displayed prominently across our faces as we waited in silence for Julian to wake up, but when he didn't, when instead, he just lay peacefully and silently back asleep on his cot, well, it just made us laugh even harder.

It was a single moment between the two of us, one that only lasted for a couple short seconds even though it could have been hours in its significance… It was a well deserved grace period, one in which there was nothing, only us… There was no sickness, there was no intrusion, and there was definitely no lingering threat of death filtering that heavy tension that we were so used to these days thick across the tops of our heads…

These moments of lucid joy, well they were so rare these days that it was easy to allow myself to slip right through their deceptive cracks, it was easy to let me lose myself within them, it was easy to pretend as if I had just fallen through a magical time portal straight back into my past life which seemed so distant now that I barely remembered that there was even a point in which it ever existed…

It was a dangerous thing to do, and I knew that because I'd done it before, and obviously, I sure as hell was going to do it again… The problem is that when you go ahead and allow yourself to be overcome with those memories, it just makes it that much harder to re-enter the real world when something comes up to remind you that the life you used to lead was long gone… and it sure as hell wasn't about to come back anytime soon…

And trust me on this one, that reminder will always come back, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

This time, it came in the form of a short, young nurse, innocent enough at first glance, but with something much deeper inside of her than what you initially saw; a fact I recognized instantly as her intentions, presenting themselves in the form of a small tray of pills she was balancing carefully between each hand appeared in my face.

The laugher died down to silence in an instant so that had you not been in the room to experience it first hand, you probably would have never believed that it even happened to begin with…

"Hey Sam, I'm sorry to interrupt you over here but I've got a couple of pills for you to take…"

The smile vanished from her face so quickly, that for a second, I had to think about whether or not it had even actually been there in the first place.

Wordlessly, she outstretched her hands and accepted the small Dixie cup full to the brim with a various assortment of medications, all different shapes and sizes in one hand, and a small glass of water in the other one.

She downed the contents of the cup in its entirety in two seconds flat, swallowing whole before taking a few tentative sips out of her water cup, just to humor her nurse who always got pissed at her for her ability to swallow pills whole without the assistance of water, claiming that it was bad for her stomach lining or something like that… But let's face it, that concept made me nervous too because at this point, Sam didn't exactly have any more organs whose functions she could lose…

"How are you feeling today, Sam?" The nurse asked when Sam's mouth was safely empty again, but that didn't seem to matter, because the girl merely shrugged; so talkative a minute ago, now at a total loss for words.

"Okay I guess…" She looked somber, angry at the fact that she couldn't go more than five minutes without being reminded of where she was or why she was there…

"Well the swelling in your legs and feet went down a little bit already, that's a good sign. It means the medication that you're on is already working." The nurse flashed Sam a confident smile but the poor kid just couldn't find it in her heart to return it with any more than about half of the enthusiasm that her nurse was currently showing.

"Hey, keep your head up alright? I'll be back to check up on you a little bit later." And with the softest of touches down onto Sam's shoulder, she followed Sam's nod of consent out of the room, leaving me to merely whisper the softest of "thank you's" towards her that I wasn't even sure that she heard…

"Hey… are you alright?" I asked her only after the door was safely shut behind the nurse and a silence lengthy enough to ruin the mood that had lightened our hearts so before her visit filtered permanently through the air.

"Yeah," She huffed, sinking down low in her seat, jabbing at the TV switch harshly, flipping it on in an effort to silently indicate me that her desire to speak had just been completely shattered by a five foot tall nurse and a couple of pills, "Yeah I'm just fine…"

I looked down towards Sam, watching as she stared determinedly upwards at the TV screen even though the concerned look in her face and that glossed over expression in her eyes told me that she wasn't actually watching…

There was a sudden flash; I blinked, and in that quickest of movements, Sam's face contorted into a look of sudden pain as a silent gasp, which was never actually emitted in her determination to allow the moment to simply pass over my eyes passed across her features.

And although I'd just barely caught that particular movement, there was no way in hell I could ever miss the motion of her hand, slow and hesitant as she reached behind her to rub that same spot in her lower back that's been ailing her for days now… Her kidneys, struggling painfully to do the work they could no longer do in order to keep Sam alive…

She risked a brief glance towards my general direction, attempting to see if I'd caught the motion while simultaneously trying to make herself not look too suspicious…

The second our eyes locked, I pulled my glare away, trying to give her some leeway in her lack of desire to express how much pain she actually was in to me, but simultaneously letting her know silently that I had indeed seen it…

But instead of doing anything about it, I just stared at the wall, sitting there quietly as I breathed deeply in and out just praying… Praying that Sam could beat this, praying that she would be able to make it through this week, this year, the rest of her well-deserved extended lifetime…

It was the only thing that I could think to do… I couldn't make predictions anymore, I couldn't make expectations anymore… they just hurt too badly every time they weren't met…

Yes, a long time ago, I had learned the hard way that I indeed could not expect anything pertaining to the progress of Sam's recovery… the thing was, when there were no expectations, it was much easier for me to tell myself that Sam was beating them all no matter what happened along the way.

* * *

**SAM**

I hated everything about my screwed up sleeping pattern plain and simple.

Screwy drugs and a killer disease can do some pretty funny things to you and your ability to sleep… For example, you can be wide awake, laughing and talking with your mother at 7:00 in the morning and passed out cold, unable to keep your eyes open any longer by 7:30, just like what happened to me today… You can be drugged into a stupor and out for the count for hours at a time, or maybe even more… You can be asleep all day; you can be up all night, or maybe even the exact opposite of that on the days that were better than always…

The funny thing is, the only consistent pattern that I ever seemed to notice with my sleeping abilities was that most of the time that I was awake was during the time that all the other people around me were peacefully asleep.

Now I can't actually call this a complaint… You see, even though some days it may get a little bit dull, just like everything else in my life seems to be doing these days I guess, most of the time, I actually prefer it this way.

And tonight… well tonight was just one of those days where I actually enjoyed just sitting up throughout the wee hours of the morning, eyes closed against the darkness of my room with my headphones clasped firmly against each of my ears blasting some acoustic ballad through them… the loudest thing that the otherwise silent room could possibly handle at this moment…

Even through the half-volumed music, I managed to make out a soft groan filter from beyond my homemade headphone barrier and into my ears, the noise ultimately forcing me to sneak my eyes open and sit up slightly in my bed where I scanned the room for the source of the noise for mere seconds before easily locating it…

I pulled a single headphone out of my right ear, looking upwards towards Brooke as she simply rolled over in her sleep; the book resting firmly against her lap slipping off and slamming firmly shut against the ground as her movements shifted the lamp light blasting over her head so that it silhouetted over the half of her face that was turned away from me.

I couldn't help the small laugh that unconsciously escaped my lips as I turned away from Brooke with a shake of the head and plugged the headphone back into my ear, lying flat down on my back, my body stretched as far as my cramped muscles would allow and my arms bent at the elbow so that my hands were clamped firmly behind my head.

It was funny really; even when Brooke was asleep, drool formulating in a small puddle underneath the corner of her open mouth and soft snores escaping from the base of her throat from the way that the positioning of her head clogged her breathing passages, a strange calm still managed to wash over me every time I turned my head slightly to my left and caught a glimpse of her.

You see, with Brooke around, it was a lot easier for me to allow myself to believe that everything would be okay. With Brooke around, I could honestly believe that she could emit this magical ability to fix all of the things that I could not.

Ultimately, it was a soft tap against my shoulder that literally made me jump straight out of my skin… My eyes shot open, my hands instinctively reaching upwards to rip the headphones out of my ears in an effort to be in tune with all of my senses, my motions so harsh that my ears actually twinged in pain and left a residual ringing deep inside of my brain that lingered incessantly, and I shot upwards in my bed so abruptly that I smacked my forehead hard against somebody else's…

Reaching up, I rubbed at the aching spot in the center of my head, the harsh stinging radiating across my face as the smallest of bumps began instantly forming underneath my fingers in a deep bruise that was obviously forming as we spoke…

My vision cleared slowly, my eyes focusing on the perpetrator; a hand blocking her face, also rubbing at her pained forehead in a similar manner as myself, but still, the red hair unceremoniously fanned across her blocked features allowed me to identify exactly who it was…

"Sam I'm sorry, are you okay?"

I laughed through the continuously lingering pain, still rubbing at my still-paining forehead as I nodded my head slowly… As sick as it sounds and as weird as you may think that I am for saying this, I was more than okay, in fact, getting smacked upright across the forehead was the closest I'd felt to good in a very, very long time.

Just think about it this way for a second; finally, a pain that I didn't mind being in so much, a pain that I knew would eventually go away unlike the others that seemed to be plaguing me incessantly these days, a pain that reminded me that I still indeed was only human, despite all of the constant events popping up around me that has been forcing me to think that maybe I was something much less than that…

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I waved her off, wiping a quick hand once more over my head once more as the searing pain slowly faded into nothing more than a dull throb.

"Ah… I'm sorry Sam, that one is definitely gonna leave a mark on you… Actually," She leaned in close to me, her eyes awkwardly focusing in on the black and blue bull's eye that I could practically feel forming right smack in the center of my forehead, "It already has…"

"Yeah, I heard a rumor that I was prone to bruising… or something like that…"

"Yeah, and I'm prone to having a hard head," She laughed, leaning back at a more comfortable distance away from my face only after she was completely satisfied that she hadn't just fractured my skull with her own or something like that, "Sorry you had to learn that fact first hand…"

"Eh, it's alright, I've had worse…" I shrugged my shoulders, leaning back against the mattress as she nodded in response to my comment… But it was a sadder sort of nod, a nod that told me in an instant that our conversation was about to take a rapid, depressed spiral downward… a turn towards the serious despite the fact that I would have much rather that it not…

"Yeah, that's kind of what I came here to talk to you about…"

"You came here to talk to me in the middle of the night to talk to me about how hard your head is?" I asked, my voice laced with a tone half full with sarcasm and half full with hopefulness that that indeed was what she'd come down here to talk to me about… The thing was, I'd rather we not ruin a perfectly legitimate conversation with the reminder of the fact that I was dying… again.

"No, I came in here to give you your medication," She told me matter-of-factly, handing me that painfully familiar Dixie cup full of pills, watching me intently just to be sure that I swallowed all of them, "I came in here in the middle of the night to ask you how you were holding up with all of this stuff that's been going on."

"I'm okay," I stated simply, shrugging my shoulders… I hadn't meant to sound rude, I hadn't meant to leave her in the dark during her search to simply find out if my emotional stability was holding up, I just wasn't really in the mood to talk feelings with my doctor at one o'clock in the morning…

But the raise of her eyebrows and that characteristic look on her face that I knew so well told me that she wasn't buying a word of it, so I just rolled my eyes, more to myself than anybody else really, and attempted a second, more believable approach with my answer…

"I mean… it's a lot, but I think it'll settle down eventually… once I start getting better again…"

My own words jolted something deep inside of me, but I have to say, what really got me the most was Dr. Miler's silence in response to my speaking of an eventual improvement of my health… I looked up just in time to watch her smile sadly down towards me.

"Am… am I gonna get better again, Dr. Miller?"

She nodded her head slowly down towards me, appreciative of the question as she took a deep breath and

sat down at the end of my bed in an indication that she was willing to stay here as long as I was willing to keep asking questions.

"I'm gonna do everything that I can to make sure that you do Sam."

I suddenly felt as if I'd been slapped across the face… I mean, of course I knew of the possibilities, it was just hard to hear them from the one person who was most equipped to prevent them from happening.

"What will it be like," I asked before I had time to stop myself from saying it, "You know… if I don't?"

She coughed slightly; an awkward sort of noise that escaped from the base of her throat and lingered in her effort to buy a couple of more seconds to think of just how she could answer that question.

"It depends," She finally spoke, a soft honesty behind her voice that somehow made her answer easier to hear, "If your kidney function continues to decline and your body just keeps accumulating wastes well… it won't take very long for an infection to develop… And with your immune system the way it is, eventually that infection will get into your blood… You'll have a high fever, your blood pressure will start to lower, you'll probably have some trouble breathing… After a few days you'll start getting confused… a little bit disoriented… So when that happens, we'll start you up on a cocktail of antibiotics, maybe some steroid treatments, oxygen therapy but once that infection gets into your blood, the only thing that we'll really be able to do is make you comfortable…"

I nodded my head slowly, the smallest of nervous smirks emerging across my face in my last attempt effort to hide just how hard my heart was currently beating underneath my skin.

"And what does that involve?" I spoke with a single laugh, so forced in my desire to tell myself that the answer to my question would have no effect on me whatsoever that it got lost in thin air before it was able to reach either of our ears.

"Well… after your blood pressure falls low enough and you enter a state of septic shock, you'll be placed in a drug-induced coma so we can sustain you on the ventilator for as long as we need until… Until eventually, your organs will slowly start shutting down one by one…"

I took a deep, shaky breath, looking away from my doctor, so confused as to how I should be reacting to that information that my face contorted into a painfully unsure expression that shadowed my face hideously in a way that I wouldn't want anybody to see ever…

"Sam I know that this is a lot…"

"What if it's not my kidneys that.,. you know… kill me?" I cut her off mid-sentence, desperate for more, begging for her to continue along with this crazy, yet still somehow comforting guidebook of expectancy into my potential future, "What if it's the cancer… or some other crazy thing that we don't even know about yet?"

"It's hard to say Sam," She emphasized, trying to push the notion that it was impossible to give me a detailed description of the possibility when we were all just so uncertain…

"It can be another infection like what happened when you came down with the pneumonia… Or sometimes, now that we're giving you a less intense dose of chemotherapy to prevent damaging your kidneys even more… well, you're at a much more increased risk of relapsing and at this point if the cancer returns, well… it will be much more difficult to treat this time around… It will progress faster than we'll be able to treat it and as your blood counts continue to drop, well, there are a million different possibilities… It could be your platelets… they'll drop so low that your blood won't be able to clot anymore and you'll begin hemorrhaging internally until eventually you'll bleed out… Or as your red blood cell count keeps dropping, and the anemia gets more and more severe well… anything can happen really… First your organs won't get enough oxygen so they will slowly start to die and after that, it will lead to something like maybe a stroke… or a heart attack that will either be severe enough to cause death instantly or it will completely disable you for a few days… maybe even a few weeks until eventually the shock will set in…"

She faded away until her voice was nothing more than a mere echo and my eyes widened fearfully as I tried to decide which option seemed better to succumb to, but to be completely honest here, none of them actually sounded particularly pleasant…

"I know it's a lot Sam, and I know that it's hard to hear, but nothing is guaranteed with any of this… You've proven to me that you can beat the odds before, I know that you can do it again, okay?"

I nodded, but for some reason, hearing her display such confidence towards me wasn't what I needed to hear… Instead, what I needed was for somebody to let me know that I would have their support if I didn't make it… I needed to know that I would have somebody at my side straight until the bitter end just in case that was what it came down to…

I guess what I'm trying to say here was that everybody was so busy telling me that I was going to live that they'd left me terrified of the fact that they would just completely abandon me in case I didn't…

And as if she'd just positively read my very mind, Dr. Miller finally spoke the words that I'd been dying to hear since the day I'd been diagnosed…

"Listen Sam… no matter how any of this goes, and no matter happens to you, I can tell you this much… If it eventually comes to any of those points, I promise you that I will do absolutely everything in my power to make sure that you stay as comfortable as possible, okay?"

I flashed her a quick glance upwards, allowing our eyes to lock in an expression of thanks for a simple moment before I finally pulled away, too embarrassed about the questions I'd just asked her to keep staring for too long without feeling like too much of a fool…

"Thanks," I told her, carefully avoiding her eyes as I spoke, "You know… for being honest with me… I haven't exactly been getting a lot of that these days…"

"You're welcome Sam," She nodded towards me, placing her hand down on my knee where she allowed it to linger for only the briefest of moments before she pushed upward, using it as leverage to bring herself up into a standing position, "But I know that we both know that we'll our hardest to keep any of that from ever happening, okay?"

I tilted my chin upward, finally finding the confidence inside of me to look at her, watching as she lingered in the doorway for a single moment before turning back into the hallway without a single word otherwise.

I stared blankly at the empty doorway for several minutes, my mouth wide open and a look of confusion splayed prominently across my face as I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened here…

To my right, Brooke released an extra loud snore through her sleep, and in my heightened state of a zoned out stupor, the sudden noise made me jump slightly and spin with a sudden, sharp inhale of breath that sent a wave of pain straight across my chest from those still painful, lingering traces of disease that remained prominent across the base of each of my lungs.

I moved quickly, pressing my flattened palm firmly against my chest in an effort to compress the pain back into whatever hidden space it had just come from but the only thing that I managed to achieve was sending an even sharper, searing pain deep within my lower back where I knew that my currently failing kidneys were housed as they grew more and more worthless with each passing second…

I released a loud, clearly audible gasp of pain, panting so heavily that I could literally see the winds created by my heaving breaths rippling waves into the sheets covering my lap.

I raised a hand over my mouth, pressing down firmly in a desperate effort to shut myself up as the pain slowly began to subside and I found enough strength inside of my muscles to tilt my chin upwards and towards Brooke, just trying to make sure that my sudden outburst hadn't woken her…

To my great relief, she remained blissfully asleep in the corner, and I released a steady exhale as my muscles relaxed instinctively and my body contorted into a more comfortable position against my bed.

I groaned loudly, wiping both of my palms over my face and around the smooth surface of my head, suddenly not even caring anymore whether or not I woke Brooke up in the process…

I could feel the sweat slowly beading across my forehead as the heat of frustration slowly rose from my feet into my very skull, the moisture making my fingers slick until the feeling literally started to make me queasy and I couldn't take it anymore, instead just slamming my hands downward, my palms slapping against the mattress so forcefully that it physically stung.

My eyes opened subconsciously, once again focusing immediately on Brooke, who, other than sliding a little bit lower in her seat, her body slinking down in her relaxed sleep, hadn't moved once since Dr. Miller entered the room… But I preferred it that way really, the last thing that I wanted to do right now was to wake her up and have her swoon over me just because I felt a little flash of pain… I wasn't in the mood… actually, I was never in the mood to discuss what was going on with me… whatever the hell it was that was going on with me…

I felt bad for Brooke, bad that she'd barely left my side once since I'd been awake… and I guess, now that I thought about it, probably even way before that…

And now with Victoria being a surprising duplicate of Brooke in her worried hovering, and Julian being just as bad, well it seemed as if the only time I was ever actually able to get any privacy around here was when I was asleep… which I guess had a lot to do with the reason that I was asleep so often these days…

Sometimes I really would sleep, other times I would just pretend, but most of the time, I just couldn't really deal with what real life was like when I was awake, so I would just lie awake in bed, some nights later than others, in the hopes that maybe if she thought I was peacefully asleep, Brooke would actually take a couple hours break of having to take care of me… but of course, that rarely worked no matter how many times I tried…

The good news was that I must have become a pretty good actor or something, because every time I pretended to sleep, Brooke believed me, and I knew that because right after she put me to bed with the promise that she'd be here when I woke up and that everything would be just fine, I could still hear her as she stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning right alongside me, crying to hard that eventually it put her right to sleep…

And as if her tears were like imaginary sheep, I'd count each one of them until they too put me right to sleep, right next to her; both of us equally as sound, equally as restless, and equally as hoping that maybe the next day would bring something better for us than all the others had.


	48. And the Warm Wind Chills My Bones

**Hey, hey so here's the next chapter for you all! Just wanted to say that I know this chapter may seem a little rough for all of you Brulian fans but don't you worry, it's a long plot line and it will develop so I promise you I'm not as cruel as you may think I am later!**

* * *

Chapter 48: And the Warm Wind Chills My Bones

**Thursday, December 29****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

My ass was starting to go numb from sitting down in this damn chair for so long.

I've been uncomfortably seated in the solid hardwood chair around my dining room table for the past four hours or so now, trying desperately to sort through a pile of bills so thick in their staggering numbers that I couldn't even see the actual surface of the table anymore… The main problem regarding this situation however was that I didn't seem to be making any progress… No matter how long I sat here digging through envelopes, and bank statements, and ruthless collection agencies' reminders that I've barely paid a single bill since November, the pile never seemed to want to go down… In fact, I've been staring at it so long that in my mind, hazy with exhaustion, it only seemed to be getting larger.

I sighed heavily, ripping the reading glasses I required in order to read the elusive fine print at the bottom of each page off of my face and throwing them so harshly against the table that they skidded dramatically straight off the edge where they landed on the floor with a crack…

I didn't even seem to care; my head was pounding angrily as a result of staring at my computer screen for so long combined with the incessant noise of Julian snoring in front of the blaring TV, so loud that the noise travelled to my ears all the way from the living room…

In a final attempt to get at least a little bit of peace and quiet over here as I desperately attempted to sort my life back together, I unplugged my laptop from the constraints of the wall charger and grabbed a random handful of pills, collecting those that were closest to me before I moved into the kitchen, setting myself up on the less cluttered, more private, and much more quiet countertop.

I gathered up the first bill of a thousand; a two week old hospital bill that I never quite got around to dealing with beyond simply glancing at the ridiculously enormous price printed in big, bolded numbers straight across the front…

I contemplated it for a second, looking down in deep thought as it triggered the memory of the message Victoria had relayed to me yesterday after she'd returned from her battle against the insurance company…

* * *

_I had been so convinced that Victoria would be gone all day in her efforts to wage war against our health insurance company that when she walked back into Sam's hospital room nearly two hours to the exact minute since she'd left it, I had to say that I was shocked…_

_ I'd been laying down in the empty spare bed next to Sam's at the time, wrapped up inside of Julian's arms with my head leaning against his shoulder and tilted upward uncomfortably in an effort to catch a few brief glimpses of the TV that I'd only been watching half-assed for the past forty five minutes or so when she arrived._

_ In fact, I had been so surprised by the unexpectedness of her return, combined with the sudden realization that I had yet to explain to Julian exactly what it was she had been doing in her absence to begin with, that for a few seconds there, I didn't even move… Instead, I just stared, locking eyes with Victoria as my brain shut off temporarily in the nervous confusion of what exactly it was I should be doing right now combined with the fear of what it was Victoria was about to tell me…_

_ "Victoria what…" Julian started, but I ended up being the one to cut him off silently, pushing off of his knee, using it as leverage so that I could re-gain my stand on solid ground, never breaking my eye contact with Victoria as I slowly walked closer to her._

_ There was a prominent, satisfied smile written clear across her face, but still, she was a hard person to accurately analyze… From the way I saw it, there were two options; either she'd completed her mission of getting Sam insured or else she'd failed, but killed each and every one of the employees that worked there, marking it as a success of principle in her mind so that it didn't even matter that she hadn't succeeded in the initial task at hand…_

_ "What happened?" I finally built up enough courage to ask the question after the silence between us became way too much for me to handle anymore…_

_ "You won't have to worry about Samantha's coverage anymore Brooke." _

_ She spoke simply, choosing not to elaborate any further as she pushed past me and made the move to walk closer towards Sam, still fast asleep in her bed._

_ "Wait a minute… What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I stopped her mid-stride with the rude accusation behind my voice, demanding the answers that she was apparently very reluctant to give me, leading to my becoming very hesitant towards the methods of how she'd managed to achieve this sudden success._

_ "It means that I took care of it Brooke. Sam is insured under your plan now, you'll be getting an updated insurance card in the mail in a few days." _

_ "Is everybody that works there still alive?" I couldn't help but ask the question, completely serious in my inquiry as I gaped towards my mother, almost afraid to hear the answer._

_ "Of course Brooke, don't be so dramatic." She stated simply, the grin on her face offering me little to no comfort towards the idea that Victoria had potentially gone to extreme measures… whatever those extreme measures may be, to achieve what she wanted… just like she always does…_

_ "And Brooke, listen to me," She pushed forward towards the next topic of conversation, eager to get away from all of my questions in order to focus on the task at hand, "I don't want you to worry about any of Sam's hospital bills anymore, I'm going to take care of them."_

_ "I can't ask you to do that mom…"_

_ "You're not asking me," She cut me off with a silencing hand that she sliced upwards in front of my face and a firm shake of her head, "You should be proud of yourself for sacrificing so much and for doing so well with taking care of Sam… Just let me do something to help you for a change."_

_ Tears filtered underneath the brims of my eyes as my mouth slowly slackened into the open position as a result of the utter shock I was currently feeling towards what had just come out of Victoria, of all people's mouth. _

_ And before I even knew what it was my body was doing, my body fell forward, wrapping tightly around Victoria's upper arms so that my mother's body tensed briefly underneath the unexpected nature of my sudden, unexpected assault before finally relaxing with the realization of the genuineness of the moment, allowing her to return the embrace back onto me._

_ "What the hell…?" _

_ A sudden noise that came from somewhere behind my back forced me to pull away from Victoria and turn, watching from over my shoulder as Sam slowly sat herself up in bed, rubbing her eyes with a confused look displayed prominently across her face as she struggled to decide whether or not what she was currently seeing was real…_

_ "What are you… there's no way… wait…" She struggled to form a comprehensive sentence, spluttering stupidly for a moment before she finally paused, collected herself, and spit out a single comment, "Jesus… Am I dead?"_

_

* * *

_

I stared down at the $5,394 hospital bill prone between my hands as I thought of the offer that Victoria had extended to me yesterday; that underlying idea that she was now willing to take into her own hands, the residual $100,000 plus debt that had accumulated amidst treatment after treatment, and emergency room visits, and that one near death experience…

I still hadn't decided whether or not I was going to accept Victoria's offer… Sure it was generous, hell it was probably the single most generous thing that Victoria had ever done in her entire life… And maybe she did owe it to me, maybe she did owe it to Sam, but the thing was, there was something about accepting that much money… not just from Victoria but from anybody really… it felt like a setback in the independence that I'd struggled so hard to achieve in these past years, a setback in everything that I'd ever worked for, everything I'd tried to instill in my attempt to become a better role model to Sam…

Continuously indecisive, I ultimately just laid the bill aside, ultimately reasoning with myself by accepting the fact that I would just deal with this later, so with my temper rising at yet another unsuccessful attempt to deal with my staggering debt, I focused on a new bill; the electric, displayed prominently across my computer screen, waiting for me to insert my credit card submissively and finally pay it… about a month after it was actually due…

Using the index finger of each hand, I typed with an accurate precision the number as I read it off of the tiny rectangular card, double checked that it was correct, hit the submit box below, and then…

_We're sorry this credit card has been declined. Please try another card or call our offices for assistance._

I raised an annoyed eyebrow down towards the computer screen in front of me… I swear to God, this entire freaking world must have been out to get me today…

Taking a deep breath, I begged myself not to get too frustrated, begged myself not to let this get to me as I felt a vein in the center of my forehead pulse rhythmically alongside my racing heartbeat and rising blood pressure…

My face grew red, flushed with emotion and my mouth opened in a silent scream as my body built up with the anger I was currently feeling towards the mechanical computer screen in front of me…

Of course my credit card had been declined, in fact, the more I thought about it, the stupider it seemed to me that I had thought it would have worked in the first place… after all, I'd spent the past two weeks or so making ridiculous charges onto it… $5000 here, $15,000 there, maybe on a particular day we'd go up to $20… the suspicious part was that it all went to the same place; Tree Hill Memorial Hospital's lovely billing department…

And of course, I'd barely thought twice about doing it, after all, I had much more important things currently on my plate to deal with to worry about charging a couple thousand dollars onto my credit card and the potential backlash that those actions could cause… Jesus, the people at the bank probably thought that I was a drug addict or something, hoarding prescription pills and morphine out of the pharmacy so that finally, they'd gotten so worried that I'd OD that they just deactivated my card completely…

I could have taken the sensible way out of this current predicament… I could have simply walked into my bedroom, reached into my wallet, withdrawn my second credit card, and paid this one month overdue electric bill so that the poor company wouldn't have to act on the threat they'd sent me in the mail the other day about shutting off my electricity… But of course, I didn't do that.

Instead, I allowed my emotions to get the better of me, and with my triumphant pride raging through my veins and a terrifying grunt of upheaval, I stood to my feet, swiped my arms frantically across the messy counter top, and scattered all of its contents onto the floor at my feet…

I watched as things seemed to move in slow motion as bills, warnings, and notices of my rapidly declining credit score littered the floor before they were crushed by my falling laptop which fell gracefully through the air before landing with a loud crash harshly against the floor…

I raged relentlessly; screaming words incomprehensible to even me as I threw anything within an arms length of me clear across the room.

My mind had shut off completely, my actions were no longer of my own control, and the only thought that I could currently focus on at all was this obscure memory of this thing that people used to tell me all the time when I was living in New York…

During my companies rapid motions into success, I got a sort of reputation of sorts amongst the fashion mongrels of the world; they used to tell me that it was as if I was made of glass; porcelain, pristine, solid but breakable… At the time, I never knew whether I should be taking that as a complement or not because to be completely honest, I never really understood exactly what meant… Until today that is… because as it turned out, they'd all been right all along; I was exactly like glass, and when I broke apart and shattered against the ground below, I wished absolutely no one in the place that I was currently in.

"Brooke what happened are you okay?"

Julian's voice cut sharply across my foggy thoughts and I watched as he darted into the kitchen with a worried expression displayed prominently across his face only to discover just what was really going on here… whatever that was… leading him to take a hesitant step backwards; an instinctual act of self protection as he feared the escalating rabidity of my outburst…

"I'm fine!" I shouted at him for no particular reason other than the fact that I wanted to express the fact that I really wasn't in the mood to talk right now, and just to emphasize that point, I abandoned the mess I had created on the floor, no longer caring about the consequences of what leaving both it, and its important contents unattended to could do to me, and I pushed past Julian and out into the open hallway, practically body checking the poor guy on the way out in my determination to make sure that my efforts would be met with success…

"Brooke! Brooke hang on!" He followed me out, just like I knew he would because he is after all that kind of guy, and he caught up to me easily, grabbing onto my shoulder in a desperate final attempt effort to get me to stop walking and just look at him or something so that he could talk to me.

I shrugged out of his loose grasp easily, refusing to stop moving only until I reached the front door, where I paused briefly only so that I could grab my jacket and my car keys, each conveniently hanging on a hook besides the door exactly for moments like this.

"Brooke, where are you going?" He pummeled me with question after question, each of which I ignored more than the last just so I didn't have to face the look of disappointed confusion in his voice as I ripped open the front door and stepped out into the fresh air, stumbling only slightly as a blast of cold wind hit me square in the face like a solid punch.

"Brooke!" Julian followed me relentlessly, making it clear to me that he wasn't about to allow me to escape as easily as I would have liked.

"I just need some air for a second Julian." I shot the briefest of explanations over my shoulder, hoping that that would be enough to get him off my back while simultaneously knowing full well that it wouldn't… So I stalked walking faster… I was power-walking, I was jogging, I was just short of sprinting, darting to my car, praying that I would be able to reach this safe haven before Julian caught up to me and physically dragged me back inside of the house.

"Brooke, you're upset you shouldn't be driving… At least let me drive you, come on, we can talk about this. What's going on Brooke?"

I didn't pause to process his words, knowing full well that I had to focus all of my concentration on my speed, knowing full well that I was going to have to continue moving much faster than I ever normally would have in order to escape his dominating pace; but still, I reached my car easily, stepping inside of it and slamming the door shut behind me so hard that the entire frame rattled around me.

I watched as Julian approached closer and closer, lunching for the door handle at the exact same time that I slammed my palm downwards against the protruding lock along the bottom of the driver's seat window, pushing it downwards so that it would be impossible for him to get inside.

"Brooke!" He knocked harshly against the window, jiggling threateningly at the handle in his effort to get to me, but now that there was a solid piece of steel and a thick plate of glass separating us, I knew that there was no way in hell he was going to succeed in his task any time soon.

"Brooke come on, let me in… Just talk to me Brooke please!"

"I'm sorry Julian… I just need a minute alone okay? I need some space… I'll be back later; don't wait up for me, alright?"

"Brooke, come on… at least let me come with you… please!" Tears stung at my eyes as I forced them away from Julian's, turning my head back and forth slowly as I turned the keys from within the ignition so that the car jolted with the firing up of the engine.

I pulled the car into reverse, backing up slowly just to be sure that I wouldn't run his damn toes over in the process before I finally got into the street and tore down the entire length of the road without a single look behind me, knowing full well that it would just be too painful to watch Julian lingering in the sidewalk watching as I drove off and away from him…

I couldn't help but wonder how horrible you could be to the one person that you claimed to love more than anything else in the entire world while still being able to look yourself square in the eyes through the reflection of a rearview mirror… I wondered how close a human being could get to an almost total wreck while still being able to walk away from it all completely intact, because with absolutely no plan in mind and a theoretically infinite amount of time on my hands, I had a feeling that I was going to find out those answers first hand tonight…

I took the side streets, avoiding people, avoiding traffic just to decrease my risk of killing myself, or worse, someone else which I knew was already sky high in the current frenzy that I was in.

Throughout the entire journey, I stopped only once, pausing at a train signal that cut across the more desolate part of Tree Hill that was surrounded by no more than a patch of woods and a couple factories as it blinked an angry shade of red at me and lowered its gates across the rumbling tracks…

A freight train, identical cars passing one after the other in a blurry whirlwind that lasted ten minutes easily, just long enough for me to get lost in the vision of this world flying by around me while meanwhile my body was trapped at an ultimately standstill in the driver's seat of a gas guzzling SUV the entire time…

But eventually my moment of out of body euphoria ended; but when it did, when that train passed and the gates lifted, they revealed to me from behind it that familiar neon sign across the street, and I knew in an instant that this whole thing had been a sign after all because I had been right to assume that my subconscious mind would be satisfactory in taking me to where I needed to go…

I was hesitant to enter a place as familiar to me as Tric in the current state of mind that I was in… I was terrified of running head first into someone that I knew, terrified to see Chase, or Haley, or Peyton, or anybody with even vaguely recognizable features really… but as it turned out, me fears weren't justified.

The club was full in its pre-New Years Eve Thursday night rush mostly with a bunch of college kids home for break; those freshly 21 year old amateurs that were trying to get a few more years of fun in before the real life began settling in around them.

The bartender was an unfamiliar face, a reminder that in my months since the last time I'd stepped foot in this place, business had indeed carried on as usual while meanwhile, my own life had been grinded to a complete standstill amidst all the commotion.

"What will it be?"

I settled myself into a barstool and was instantly recognized by the bartender as a sad, sorry soul in desperate need of a little relief in the form of the liquid cure.

"Jameson please," He flashed me a quick look of uncertainty… I guess I didn't look much like a whiskey kind of person, and to be completely honest with you, he was right; I wasn't.

I hated the taste of whisky; literally I would rather drink a pint of mud than have even the smallest glass of the stuff, but it just seemed like whisky was that drink that you always saw all of those hopeless low lives order in the movies and on TV and stuff so I thought it was appropriate…

So ultimately, I'd settled on the Jameson, Jim Bean being too stereotypical redneck and Jack Daniels just being way too cliché… besides I don't think I could ever sufficiently drown out my pain with a drink named after my daughter's boyfriend…

Praising myself for the well-thought out precision of my ultimate decision, I watched as the bartender slid the half full tumbler towards me, allowing me to grab at it and lift it slowly to eye level, cradling the gentle glass between my hands, just staring at the whooshing contents for a moment before finally, I pinched my nose shut, ready to eliminate as much sense of the taste of this disgusting brew as I could, and gulped the entire glass down all in one shot.

I guess that the only good news I had to offer you here was that after a couple more shots like those, I finally became so numb that I didn't even care what it tasted like anymore…

I can't tell you how long it was that I sat at this bar, and I can't tell you exactly how many drinks it was that I had, but I can tell you this much, whatever those numbers added up to, they were starting to get pretty high... And just when I was one drink away from crossing that line of being so drunk and so alone that I couldn't even find it in me to sit up in my stool anymore, a familiar figure danced across my hazy vision.

"Do you have any idea how many things there are in this place that can kill you right now?"

Peyton sat herself down in the stool directly next to me, her body blurring painfully so that three different images of her danced in front of my eyes for a couple of seconds before finally settling into one distinct form.

I could only squint painfully up at her, unable to process exactly what it was that she had just said to me amidst my current stupor…

"Never mind," She responded to my silence, taking it as all the answer that she needed, "It looks like you've already learned that one for yourself."

I looked down, away from Peyton and towards my own hands, folded gently along the empty glass in front of me, not knowing what it was I should say, not even knowing if I was currently even capable of producing comprehensible words at the moment…

"What are you doing here Brooke?"

Her question filtered surprisingly clearly through my ears and I felt a quick flash of spontaneous sobriety pass through my veins as if Peyton had just doused me with a bucket of ice cold water.

"I'm singing a song Peyton," That moment of sobriety passed quickly as my inaudible words slurred over and my head spun and danced as I once again turned to face her, "It's about trying to look like you're still a good person on the outside while on the inside, you're starting to realize that you can't quite hide the fact that you're slowly starting to give up anymore… Do you think your record company will hire me Peyton?"

I asked the question with half genuineness behind my voice as I let out a laugh that vanished the second that I felt Peyton's hand grasp firmly around my arm so that she could pull me up and onto my feet; an action that caused my stomach to perform uncomfortable summersaults within itself.

"Come on," She told me firmly, pulling me away from the bar, "We're leaving."

She literally dragged me towards the door, not really caring that I was stumbling over my own two feet as my head began to spin heavily, succumbing to the vicious orbit of the earth, currently spinning about a hundred times faster than the speed it usually did…

The entire ride home felt like a dream; you know, when certain things flash more distinctly in your memory while others are just wiped out completely…

On an average day, the drive to Tric can last a solid fifteen minutes, maybe even twenty, but today it seemed as if I was in the car for less than thirty seconds before I was staggering back through my own front door with Peyton supporting me firmly against her hip.

But the second that I passed that barrier separating the outside world from the comfort of my own home, it all came back to me clear as a bell; a memory… no, a lingering moment that still hung thickly in the air from earlier today, back to a time where I may have had less alcohol diluting my brain, but still had all of these uncertain, unclear thoughts lingering deep inside of my brain.

I couldn't escape this feeling. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, it seemed like it was going to stay this way forever… This had been a last resort, my final plan of escape and not even that had worked… And trust me; I'd tried pretty damn hard…

I stopped dead still in my tracks, feeling as Peyton tugged particularly hard on my arm as I jerked her to a complete halt, ceasing in my allowance of her to guide me obediently towards the couch…

I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, I could only stand here in the middle of my living room, scared stiff with the recognition of the fact that I have never truly recognized the meaning of what it meant to be at rock bottom until this very moment.

* * *

**PEYTON**

I'd almost forgotten just how comfortable Brooke's living room furniture could be until tonight… But as I sat in the small room, flipping through TV channels so that the bright screen reflected against the dark room and the raised volume seeped meaninglessly through my ears, I was reminded… mainly because that was the only thing that I could currently allow my brain to focus on at the moment…

You see, I had to concentrate on the comfort of this here lounge chair because as Brooke snored unceremoniously in her haze of drunken sleep, and I sat up, unable to join her in the land of oblivion due to the overwhelming worry about not only her, but for all of us, it seemed to be the only thing about this room that was still actually comfortable at all…

It was only a few hours ago now, but still, the circumstances that lead me into the bizarre predicament that I had currently found myself in seemed like it could have happened in another lifetime…

Earlier this evening, after Brooke apparently stormed unexpectedly out of her house in an unknown rage whose origins were buried deep within whatever conscious part of Brooke's brain that hasn't been consumed by alcohol, Julian had called me frantic and nearly in tears with a tone behind his voice that I had never heard before in my years of knowing him, and he had asked me for one thing and one thing only; to help him find Brooke.

He didn't know what had happened, he didn't know where she currently was or where she planned on going, but he knew one thing; he was scared, and for me, that was all I needed to be scared myself too.

We assembled a calvary and split up into separate cars; Julian, me, Lucas and Nathan while meanwhile Haley stayed behind to watch the kids, begging for an update as soon as we heard anything, but for a long time, there was no update to be had, nothing to be heard… we couldn't seem to find Brooke Davis anywhere, no matter how hard we looked.

I guess in retrospect, the fact that none of us had thought of Tric earlier was pretty stupid of us… I mean, the idea had crossed my mind, of course, but at first thought, I'd thought it to be impossible… A place with a deep personal and emotional connection to us all, Brooke would never go in there by herself and in such a fragile state where she would inevitably only make things worse… It was only later that I realized just how wrong I was, that actually, that would probably be the exact reason as to why that would be the first place for her to run to.

Unfortunately for both me, and for Brooke's sensitive blood alcohol content, I had been right… Of course, by the time I'd figured that one out, it had already been too late…

Getting Brooke home and settled comfortably onto the couch so that she could sleep this night off turned out to be more of an ordeal than even I'd expected, but we'd managed somehow, and it was only after I knew that Brooke was safely asleep for the night that I finished worrying about her for the time being and allowed a new sense of worry to settle into my body…

I know we've had our moments, but I was suddenly feeling a very powerful, very strange sense of concern towards Julian; one that grew more and more intense with every throbbing pulse of my heart as it shuddered with a disruptive force and shot straight up into the center of my forehead.

His selfless treatment of Brooke and Sam throughout any and every single problem that they had ever gone through since his arrival in Tree Hill had lead to his gaining of my undying trust, and my ultimate respect, and although it had taken me a long time to get to this point, he'd proven to me very quickly his dedication for my best friend, and really, that's the only thing I ever needed.

But despite all of this, it didn't change the fact that since he'd called me in a panic, begging for my help with Brooke, I hadn't heard a single word from him… Naturally, my first instinct the second that I had found Brooke and got her home safely was that I should call Julian and let him know where we were, but I got nothing… he didn't answer a single one of my phone calls, text messages, voice mails… and I couldn't help but start worrying that I was going to have to haul my ass back over towards Tric and wrestle yet another obliterated member of this family out of there before the night was over…

"Peyton?"

I heard my name and turned so suddenly that my head spun… I was surprised to hear Brooke's voice, especially considering the fact that I hadn't expected so see much of her until at least the early afternoon… I was even more surprised to hear that her voice was slightly less slurred and more coherent than it had been the last time that we had spoke…

"Hey," I greeted her, stepping up from my seat and approaching with caution, "I didn't think that I'd be seeing you up until at least… I don't know, maybe three days from now or something…"

"Peyton?" She ignored my attempt at a joke completely, and instead, just repeated her initial inquiry up towards me, sitting up slightly against the couch as she reached up and rubbed her clenched fist over her swimming eyes.

"What is it Brooke?"

"The room is spinning."

"Oh," My face blanched with realization as I shot to my feet, rushing towards Brooke's side so quickly, I made it in two solid steps, "Come on Brooke, let's get you into the bathroom…"

I struggled to carry her as she collapsed into a dead weight between my arms… I mean, Brooke wasn't exactly heavy, but at the same time, I wasn't no Captain America here either… Okay, let's be completely honest with each other here… I had the muscle mass of a toad.

Through my hands, clamped firmly around her middle in my effort to carry her, I could feel her muscles as they began to contract dangerously in time with her gag reflex and I automatically began to move faster.

We made it just in time… I had barely opened the bathroom door before Brooke was ripping herself out of my arms and throwing her body so violently against the toilet that I couldn't even tell whether or not she'd rushed there herself or if she'd simply just fell… But either way, the second her knees touched the tile floor, her face fell forward, buried between the barricade of the toilet seat, and the painful sound of her stomach contents escaping upward and out of her mouth, straight into the awaiting toilet below filled my ears, making me cringe with unease.

"Wow…" I finally breathed out, only after a significant pause between her episodes allowed me to escape a single sound out amidst all the noise, "I haven't had to do this in a while…"

"Ugh…" Was all she responded back to me with, her voice drawn and exaggerated as I took the first few, tentative steps towards her and rubbed her back gently just to let her know that I didn't mean anything negative by my comment, and that no matter what stupid thing Brooke ever chose to do, I would be by her side to get her through it all…"

"What the hell were you thinking Brooke?" I breathed out my words, not really anticipating on her hearing me, especially considering she'd just ducked her head back deep down into the soiled toilet, too busy spewing up yet another round of pure alcohol to truly really concentrate on anything outside of her own little world of a porcelain throne.

"I don't know…" She surprised me when she came up with a response just a few minutes after I'd asked, lifting her head away from the toilet and spitting and spluttering stray stands of vomit into the water below as she spoke, "I guess that I just wanted somebody to tell me that everything was going to be alright for a change… and when nobody did…"

I exhaled steeply, my face turning downward into a grimace as I rubbed a hand gently across her upper back in continuous circles as she coughed, gagged, and finally threw up once again…

"I know it feels bad right now Brooke," I told her, my voice coming rhythmically with the motions of my hand as confidence built steadily behind my voice with every syllable at my attempt to inject some self assurance into Brooke's crippled body, "But you have to believe me when I tell you that it's gonna get better."

"Soon?" She lifted her body as high upward as her heavy heart would allow her to and I felt my own heart crack painfully at how broken, how childlike Brooke's eyes appeared to be in this moment as they glistened tearfully upward with desperation prominent across them.

"Soon Brooke,"

"How soon?"

"I don't know…" My voice cracked at my admittance towards just how little of the truth I could express towards Brooke, leaving the poor woman to have her unknown future hanging relentlessly over her head, pouring the rain down on top of her in this never ending storm…

"I think I'm done Peyton," She told me after a few more minutes, after her rounds of vomiting became more of a series of dry heaves that eventually faded into nothing more than a few deep, strategic breaths, accessorized with shaky limbs and a sweaty forehead that left her clutching at the cool wall next to her like a makeshift air conditioner.

"Okay Brooke, do you wanna go back to the couch?"

She waved off my inquiry with a quick motion of the hand and a shake of her head that sent her grimacing when she was painfully reminded of the fact that her head was currently throbbing with pain.

"I'm sorry Peyton…" She changed the route of our conversation, starting a new one in order to emphasize the fact that she wasn't quite ready to move just yet, and with a firm shake of my own head, I sunk my body down the wall until I fell into a seated position next to Brooke and pulled her into my body until her head was comfortably resting against my shoulder.

"Don't be sorry Brooke, we've all had our days…" I felt her head shift against my shoulder and I looked down just in time to watch her flash a suspicious look up towards me behind her pale features.

"Oh come on," I spoke nostalgically in an attempt to jolt her memory, "How many times did we slip flasks onto the cheerleading bus before a game in high school? Vodka, tequila… oh, and remember that one game with the Jagermeister when we…"

"Stop," Brooke cut my memories off shot, waving a hand up in order to silence me as her eyes closed and she groaned in pain, "I never want to hear the word alcohol or any of its associated terms ever again."

"Okay, okay… Brooke, I'm sorry… I guess what I'm trying to say is that it takes one to know one, but still Brooke… I'm starting to think that you've got it bad."

She sighed steeply, leaning her head backwards against the tile wall in an effort to have a solid structure support her through her pure embarrassment.

"I guess that I thought that with everything blowing up around me that maybe I could at least kill some of the pain for a little while anyway…"

"Even if you died trying/" I asked her with a small smirk, but still… I was kind of serious…

"Even if I died trying." She nodded.

"Well that's one way to live I guess…" I stared downwards towards my hands, not really knowing where else to look as I meshed my fingers together, "Not that that's a recommendation or anything, okay? Please don't go making this a habit?"

"Don't worry," Brooke spoke with the faintest trace of a laugh behind her voice, which I was more than glad to hear, "After the night that I'm having, this will never happen again, trust m…" She stopped speaking suddenly; cut off with abruptness as her face blanched, her cheeks puffed out, and she turned her head right back into the awaiting toilet with an unexpected residual round of vomit catching her off guard and hitting her with a sudden force that she definitely hadn't expected.

This day… or, excuse me, these last few hours I should say, have already been so long that by the time I'd finally gotten Brooke out of the bathroom and into her own bed, leaving her to comfortably… or at the very least, safely fall back asleep, I was surprised to see that it was barely even midnight…

I walked towards Brooke's living room, making myself comfortable against the couch with the thought in mind that as long as I was gonna be here all night anyway, I might as well make myself at home, right?

Besides, it was about time that somebody stayed up at Brooke's bedside worrying about her for a change instead of it being the other way around like it always was…

I was just flipping through every single TV channel that Brooke's TV had to offer me for about the 5,000th time that night alone when the sound of the front door opening and closing again caused me to jump up to my feet so quickly that I'd practically made it from the couch to the door in a single bound.

Julian looked like a nervous wreck plain and simple. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were sunken in and bloodshot; a result of the lethal combination of exhaustion and worry.

"Peyton…" He practically ran towards me, his feet shuffling nervously as he fidgeted with his hands in an effort to force himself to concentrate on anything other than his missing girlfriend, which, judging by the look on his face, he had no idea had actually been found… "Peyton, I still can't find her… I tried everywhere but I didn't see her and I called her phone a million times but she didn't answer, and then my phone died because I called her so much and…"

"Julian, Julian…" I reached out, grabbing onto his shoulders in an effort to silence him before he freaking stroked out or something right here on the spot… "She's fine; I found her a few hours ago okay? I tried to call you but… well I guess your phone died… Don't worry, she's alright."

I could feel Julian's powerful muscles relax underneath my fingers as his shoulders sunk down and color began rushing rapidly back into his features as the amount of cortisol flooding through his veins diminished in order to actually leave some room for blood to flow through them again.

"Where was she?"

I sighed, an indication to him that my answer to that question wasn't a good one… Of course, I wasn't really expecting him to believe that I really had anything good to say anyway…

"Come here," I motioned for him to follow me, guiding him by the hand down the hallway where Brooke's bedroom door stuck out into the hallway in its open position.

I pulled him into the doorway, our bodies lingering so that our extended shadows obscured Brooke's form as she slept in what looked like a horrifically uncomfortable position with her limbs outstretched and fanned all around her and her head hanging half off the bed in a manner that would definitely leave her with one hell of a stiff neck in the morning.

"I found her at Tric…" I didn't dive into explicit details right away on purpose, instead, I gave him a couple brief moments of silence so that he could try and use what I gave him to figure out the rest of the story on his own so that maybe it wouldn't hurt so bad when I actually told him. "She was at the bar Julian and she was… Well, she was pretty gone."

I watched as Julian sunk his body unceremoniously down the doorframe, indicating to me that my well planned tactic of pausing in order to lessen the blow had done absolutely nothing to help… In fact, I was starting to think that maybe it had only made things worse.

"You have to talk to her Julian…" I told him when he didn't respond to me, "I know how strong she looks on the outside but Julian… she's falling apart."

"I know she is." Julian practically yelled without a single ounce of hesitation behind his voice, his features blurring with a mosaic of confusion, and anger, and exhaustion all at the same time so that in that moment, he didn't even look like himself.

"I've seen it Peyton… Ever since I came back from L.A. she's just not the same anymore… And I can't even figure out anything to say to her to make it better… What the hell can I say to her?"

"Julian…" I turned to face him, shocked at his admittance, his expression of defeat to the point that it actually made all of this even harder than it already was. "Julian you know Brooke almost more than I do, and trust me, that's saying a lot… Plus, I know that Brooke loves you more than she does anyone else on this planet, and I also know that that goes the same for you… You'll think of something, but when you talk to her you just have to make sure that it comes from the heart, okay?"

He nodded, his eyes continuously lingering on Brooke as I began to see the wheels already churning behind his eyes as he attempted to formulate a game plan.

"Alright listen," I changed my tone, speaking in a much gentler fashion now that I was certain he had gotten the point that I was trying to convey to him, "Brooke is probably gonna be out cold for the night and I know for a fact that she is gonna have one hell of a morning, so we might as well get comfortable… I've got a pretty nice set up on the couch if you wanna join."

He nodded, continuous in his silence amidst his reluctance to leave Brooke's side for too long out of fear that she'd simply disappear into thin air in his absence… Of course, his fears were justified, but he turned despite himself, dragging his feet behind me and into the living room where he immediately threw himself onto the couch adjacent from the one that I had already set up for myself.

I sunk down alongside of him, not allowing my eyes to leave his sinking form once as he leaned forwards so far that his face practically touched his knees, assuming an awkward fetal position as he buried his face deep into his hands and allowed his back to simply begin heaving; up and down and up and down so that I knew in an instant that without warning, Julian Baker had just began to cry.

I didn't say anything; instead, I just gave him his moment, knowing full well that sometimes you just needed somebody to be there to listen to you silently for a little while and at this point, that's exactly what Julian needed…

As predicted, he eventually managed to come back around to a semi-state of coherency on his own accord not to long later, lifting his head upwards in order to meet mine, unashamed of the tears that stung along the corners of his eyes or the fact that he had allowed his handsome features to become distorted by anguish.

"Do you think she'll ever be okay again Peyton?"

His question left me stunned so that I froze unconvincingly, debating with myself exactly what the right answer to that question was… of course, I wasn't sure that there really as one…

"I don't know Julian," I told him in honesty, finally ripping my eyes away from him, "I just don't know…"


	49. I Just Reach for Mother Mary

**Hey everybody, sorry this chapter came a little bit late me and my severe ADD kept getting distracted but anyway, here it is and I hope you enjoy! And of course as always thank you to all of you reading and reviewing and continuing to be awesome.  
**

Chapter 49: I Just Reach for Mother Mary

**Friday, December 30****th****, 2011**

**BROOKE**

I wasn't positive but I was pretty sure that I got hit by a fucking bus last night.

For a while there, that was the only explanation that I could possibly think of as to why I woke up this morning with absolutely no memory of the night before with my head pounding and my body feeling as though I had knives stabbed across every crevice of my skin.

I sat up sharply in my bed, regretting that decision instantly as a solid wall of white danced in front of my eyes so that I couldn't see anything and literally, for a second or two there, I thought I might be dead…

But thankfully, that wall of white eventually faded into more distinguishable features as the familiar scenery of my empty bedroom gradually filtered into my eyes.

Even more slowly, the miniscule details of my previous night's adventures began seeping back through my mind; never the full picture, but still, enough bits and pieces that made me want to reach up and smack myself across the face for ever being so stupid… Of course, the way I was feeling right now definitely could be considered punishment enough…

I groaned loudly, but the noise in combination with the constant vibrations the noise caused in the back of my throat hurt my head even more so I just threw myself back down against the bed, pressed my pillow firmly against my head, and struggled to take decent sized breaths as I simultaneously tried to comprehend what a moron I'd been for doing what I'd done last night…

Of course, I had a history of trying to run away from my past so I don't know why exactly my actions were surprising me so much…

The first time had been right after I'd broken up with Lucas, the first time I'd abandoned Peyton as my best friend where I retreated straight across the country with the logic in mind that I would be better off spending the summer with my dead-beat parents rather than the people that really actually cared about me…

The second time was right after I'd decided that I could no longer keep up with the burden that my company had left upon me or the pressures produced by all of the loneliness it had caused when I left the fortune, when I abandoned the fame, and when I retreated back to the only place that I could ever truly call my home…

The most recent time had been yesterday when I'd gotten so overwhelmed that I could no longer even deal with that home, when I tried to end all of my weight of real life by completely eliminating it all together… at least for a little while that is…

It was a long time before I'd found enough strength inside of me to get myself up and out of my bed… It was an even longer time before I was functional enough to get my ass dressed and ready to get back to the hospital where I prayed Sam wouldn't notice that anything and everything about me was slightly abnormal today compared to the others…

I straightened myself up as much as I possibly could from the pull-down vanity mirror hanging above the passenger seat in my car that I had assumed Julian and Peyton had picked up for me from Tric earlier in the morning… Of course, there was no way that I would ever know considering Julian and I barely even talked the entirety of the ride to hospital… The thing was, I didn't know what to say but neither did he.

And suddenly, even though it was only a few hours earlier that I'd vowed off alcohol for the rest of my life, and even though it was barely 12:00 in the afternoon, this awkward car ride was making me feel as if I really, really needed a drink to get me through it…

"So…" Julian spoke with a tone of airiness to his voice as he determinedly kept his hands clasped at the precarious 10 and 2 positions on the steering wheel with his eyes beaming unblinkingly out the windshield, permanently attached to the image of the traffic in front of us although the dazed over expression in his face made me think that he wasn't actually paying attention as much as he should have been considering he was currently driving the two of us down Tree Hill's main intersection. "How are you feeling?"

His voice was hollow, a trending feature of our relationship these days as he attempted to tread into uncharted waters; wading across me as if I were about to break at any moment…

Julian and I needed to talk, that much was obvious; we needed to face the fact that I was falling slowly down a path that I definitely didn't want to be down, we needed to confront the obvious in that Julian and I were struggling to communicate the way we used to… The problem was neither of us really knew how to do that.

I opened my mouth, silently attempting to configure my mind to speak everything I'd just thought, but almost immediately, my words were lost, slipping into a meaningless croak that not even I could make out… I was having a tough time bringing myself to speak these days; there just seemed to be something clutching at my insides, dragging not only my voice, but my entire body down with it…

I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever feel normal ever again… I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever know what it felt like to be sane ever again.

I thought about telling all of this to Julian, I thought about simply opening my mouth and pouring my heart, my soul, everything straight out of it and onto his shoulders and then afterwards, he would pull over to the side of the road, lift me up into his arms, and hold me as I wept, promising me that everything was going to turn out just fine.

The biggest problem was that when I opened my mouth to do just that, only two words actually came out…

"I'm okay."

I was running out of options; keeping it all in, progressing with this lie of stability, it just wasn't working anymore, and I'm pretty sure that my most recent episode has finally exposed me for the phony that I really was…

I was running low on faith, praying to God for help despite the constant disappointment he seemed to be giving me… I knew for a fact that that would never be enough, I knew that the only thing that could truly ever pull me out of this funk I'd found myself in was to be loved and to have somebody love me in return but how could I even get that when I was losing every person that I had ever grabbed onto…

I don't know, maybe all of this was my own fault, maybe I have to start learning how to believe in myself again before I can expect anybody else to.

And with that thought in mind, Julian simply nodded his head in his response, mumbling the slightest of "uh-huh's" in time with the motions of his head before he fell silent again, turning his full concentration back towards the windshield where he drove on, silent for the remainder of the trip until finally, ten minutes that felt like it could have been ten hours later, we pulled into the parking lot of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital.

The trip from the parking garage all the way up to the sixth floor was significantly awkward considering my relentless determination and constant awareness of being at least a solid ten paces in front of Julian the entire time… Hell, we didn't even take the same elevator up to Sam's room together but of course, just because the world hated me so much, we'd still managed to somehow arrive at our destinations simultaneously; our respected carts arriving directly alongside each other.

I stopped moving only once throughout the entire journey, coming to an involuntary halt just as I turned the corner of the hallway leading into Sam's room only to find a flustered commotion currently occurring right outside of her door.

My stomach, still particularly sensitive from my previous night's excursions dropped threateningly so that I'd literally almost lost all of its contents right here in the middle of this very hallway…

In fact, I'd stopped moving so suddenly right in my tracks that it threw Julian off so unexpectedly that he was unable to catch himself and crashed straight into my back, jolting me forward slightly…

Ten seconds ago I probably would have cared… Hell, ten seconds ago I probably would have actually noticed more than I really did.

He mumbled an apology that I barely heard because by the time the words were completely out of his mouth, I'd taken off into a full sprint, hauling ass straight down the length of the hallway and towards Sam's room where doctors and nurses were cycling in and out continuously, leading me to believe that something had gone terribly wrong…

The first thing that I actually noticed was the image of Victoria lingering inside of the doorway, her arms crossed and a neutral expression displayed across her face so that I couldn't actually read it…

"Victoria!" I'd been so relieved just to see this familiar face lingering across this sea of strangers that I literally screamed her name so that Victoria jumped slightly, shocked out of her concentration by the sound of me addressing her frantically, "Victoria what's going on?"

I arrived at the door, panting and out of breath while Julian came to a slowing halt besides me, her face contorting into a panicked look simply because my face was contorted into a panic look as I struggled to look past the massive amounts of people piled into Sam's room in order to see for myself just what the hell had happened in my absence.

"They're moving her," Victoria offered her explanation at the exact same time that one of the nurses shifted slightly to her right so that I was finally able to make out the image of Sam being shifted onto a transport stretcher by a small group of orderlies.

She looked no worse for the wear despite my previous fears that she was positively dying, so I let my guard down, I let my muscles relax, and I let the notion that Sam was just fine, for now that is, seep through my body and bring my blood pressure down to a more acceptable level…

"Dr. Miller came in this morning to let us know that she was cleared to be moved out of the ICU. They're bringing her back to the normal inpatient rooms across the hall right now…"

As if on cue, Dr. Miller looked up from her position at Sam's bedside, responding to her name being called as she spotted my presence within the doorway, acknowledging it with a soft smile as to let me know that everything was alright here…

But I couldn't bring myself to return it. The thing was, in my heightened sense of adrenaline-fueled panic still lingering from my previous fears that something had gone seriously wrong in my absence, I couldn't help but wonder if this was the right move, if Sam was really ready, if she was really stable enough to receive the treatment she would receive outside of the safety of intensive care.

The doctor seemed to have read my mind; her face turned downwards in response to my unenthusiastic greeting as she stepped away from Sam and towards where I was obstructing the doorway obnoxiously in my quest for some answers.

"Brooke are you okay?"

It was the first thing that she asked me and at first, I thought that maybe her initial reaction was in response to my look of utter horror towards the idea that Sam was being moved before she was ready, but I quickly learned that I was wrong, that her inquiry was actually geared towards the massive hangover still visibly plaguing every crevice of my body when she told me this:

"You're looking a little pale; maybe you should go see a doctor."

I waved her off, knowing full well that no doctor in their right mind was ever going to be able to cure the ailment that I felt deep down inside, way beyond any diagnostic surface of my body.

"I'm fine, I'm fine… Are you moving Sam out of the ICU today?" I changed the course of the conversation quickly, neither particularly wanting to go into detail about why it was exactly that I was looking a little pale today while simultaneously just really wanting her to go ahead and convince me that it really was the best idea to put Sam back into a normal unit.

"Yup, we're going to move her back across the hallway and into the inpatient units today." She nodded her head, speaking enthusiastically as if she was trying to force some of her excitement onto me.

"Are you sure she'll be okay going back into a normal unit already?" I refused to accept the doctor's assurance as a satisfying convincing factor, determined to be positively, if not beyond positively sure that she'd already looked at the situation from all angles and had considered every possibility of the potential consequences that may arise from conducting this movement prematurely.

The thing was, and I never would admit this out loud, I knew that I was already in a fragile state, and I was terrified that being forced to watch one more episode with Sam like the one that had initially put us all into this position to begin with would actually kill me, so forgive me for having to be absolutely sure that we could safely assume that none of my fears would actually happen… not only for me, but for Sam as well.

"Her fever has been gone completely for two days now Brooke. Her blood work from yesterday showed no evidence that the infection is still in her system and her chest x-ray came up clean… Now that tone her treatment for the infection down to just a few extra doses of antibiotics, we can focus completely on her kidneys which is something that we can do just as easily outside of the intensive care unit as we can inside… I mean, of course she will be monitored extra carefully for the next couple of weeks but Brooke, she's getting better… this is a very good sign, especially considering where we were at this time just week…"

I didn't answer; I couldn't answer, there was absolutely no evidence to support my lingering fear that despite everybody telling me that this was some of the best news that I could possibly be receiving today, I still couldn't contain that maternal instinct seeping through every one of my pores screaming at me that it was the worst.

"Listen, I've got some more good news," She continued, easily recognizing the fact I clearly needed some more convincing than what she had already given to me, "I've been talking with Dr. Nguyen and he's cleared Sam to continue her chemotherapy treatments alongside all of the new medications that she's taking for her kidneys."

She called that good news?

I wasn't so sure; to me, god news would be that Sam didn't have to worry about her chemotherapy treatments interfering with her treatments to fix her failing kidneys at all… Good news would be that she was magically cured, that she would in fact never be required to have anymore treatments at all ever again.

"We just have to wait for her blood counts to even out a little bit first. Between her just finishing her last round of chemo about two weeks ago combined with the infection that she's still recovering from, her immune system has definitely been through the loop lately… So for now, what we're going to do is simply keep an eye on her blood work, and as soon as it raises to a more stable level, we'll be able to start her on her next round of chemotherapy, and hopefully, we'll be able to sufficiently manage the combination of her chemotherapy and kidney treatments."

There was that word again; the one that positively made my skin crawl within itself… 'hopefully'.

In the past few months, I have learned to become conditionally trained to cringe every time I heard her speak the word because I've also learned that what Dr. Miller was often time hopeful about would rarely to ever actually happen, often times with positively devastating results.

All of this information, this confusion, this worry, well it was starting to make my head spin, and considering I'd just spent the past several hours working hard to get my head to stop spinning, I wasn't quite prepared to allow myself to fall back into old habits quite yet.

So I blocked out the remainder of what she said, completely ignoring her words even though I knew full well that that was probably not only a very stupid, but a very dangerous thing to do as well…

But I just couldn't help it; I couldn't change the fact that I looked straight through Dr. Miller's eyes as she spoke to me, the fact that I could barely acknowledge that her lips were even moving… but ultimately, I couldn't help the movement of my eyes as they lingered conspicuously on Sam's body as the girl independently got herself settled into the mobile gurney that would take her out of this self-described "prison like" intensive care unit with a smile on her face that shined over her features so brightly that it could have been seen from a mile away if that rain cloud hovering over my own head hadn't been lingering in the crossfire to intercept it.

I wish I could share her feelings, I wish that I could express my happiness towards her so that she could feed off of my own positive energy and fuel hers, so rare these days, for at least a little while longer while she still could…

But every time I attempted to mirror that look on Sam's features across my own the only thing that would emerge was an ugly grimace that I reflected over towards her… an expression that probably just made things much more worse off than anything.

Sam's head swiveled to the right, her eyes locking with mine so that my stomach dropped in a manner that had absolutely nothing to do with the massive amounts of alcohol that I'd consumed yesterday and everything to do with the fact that I had a very, very bad feeling about this… just like I had a tendency to have a bad feeling about just about everything these days.

She studied my expression for a couple more seconds before finally, not even the strongest of positive emotions coursing through her body could withstand the oppressive power of the even stronger feelings of fear teeming through my own.

Her brows furrowed in her worry for me as her eyes silently asked me for an explanation as to what the hell was the matter with me…

But that answer was far too complex for me to communicate via the silent connection between our eyes, however strong that bond may be, hell, I was starting to think that the answer was far too complex for me to communicate verbally either…

So I pulled my eyes away from her own, I pretended that I didn't notice the lengthy eye contact that had just occurred between the two of us, and I prayed to God that everybody around me was right when they told me time and time again that it was going to be okay; everything would turn out just fine in the end.

* * *

**JULIAN**

Before today, I never quite realized how elaborate the process of moving somebody from the intensive care unit straight down the damn hallway was but I did now, because two hours after Brooke had had a mild panic attack upon watching Sam get put through the initial preparations of her transportations, we were finally just getting settled into the new room, feeling particularly cramped and very congested given the fact that our space had been cut in half by the presence of a second patient who had already been designated the curtained off area closest to the door…

I don't know, they didn't seem all that bad so far I guess but, and I wasn't completely sure about this one quite yet, I had the strangest feeling that they didn't speak a damn word of English which did tend to make things slightly awkward every time we were forced to walk past them every time we wanted to get in and out of the room…

Let's just put it this way; there were limited options for making friends with them… Of course, given the way that Sam's last roommate situation panned out, that might have actually been for the best…

At the moment, Brooke and I were seated side by side, crammed firmly in the space between the wall and Sam's bed as I half-assed struggled to sort through the large pile of mail that dated back to about three weeks ago that I'd barely even glanced at before this moment.

I established an elaborate pattern very quickly; I'd shuffle through an envelope or two, my eyes barely skimming across the return address in the top left hand corner before I would turn my attention away from the mail, sneaking a glance upwards towards Brooke, watching her for several seconds as she tapped her toes relentlessly, her eyes darting quickly back and forth between Sam and the scarf she was knitting rapidly on her lap just to pass the time.

"What?"

I hadn't realized the fact that my eyes were lingering longer and longer across her features with every interval that I would pause to stare at her until finally she called me out on it completely… Well at least we were getting somewhere, after all, this was the first time she'd spoken to me since before when she asked me to get up and move out of her way so that she could squeeze out of her corner to go to the bathroom an hour ago…

"Nothing," I shook my head, once again ruining a perfect opportunity to tell her just how worried I was of her, how much I wished that she would just open up and talk to me instead of turning to something drastic as she had done last night.

An involuntary shudder flooded across my body as my blood seemed to have been suddenly replaced with pure ice water as I thought back to the potential of what could have happened last night if Peyton hadn't found her when she did… of what could still happen if I didn't just man up and talk to her about it instead of allowing her to get up and do it all over again.

With that thought in mind, I turned back towards Brooke, opening my mouth, ready to tell her everything I had just been thinking about but the thing was, just as quickly as the motivation struck me, it was gone again.

I thought about Sam and what might happen if she heard me talk to Brooke about the excursions of last night that the girl probably still and hopefully never would ever learn about. I thought about the complete strangers standing right across the thin curtain barrier and how I didn't want their first impression of us to be that we were a bunch of alcoholic nut cases, and finally, I thought of Brooke who knew just as well as I did that there was a time and place for everything and this was just not it.

So I turned away; silent and seething for being this cowardly, for being this person that Brooke didn't deserve as such a prominent figure in her life…

I tried to change the direction of my thought processing, focusing all of my attention downward on my mail as best as I could even though that lingering thought of Brooke stuck in the back of my mind just didn't seem to want to leave.

My eyes glanced across the various envelopes; a bill here, some junk mail there… Hell, I'd even managed to catch a paycheck receipt or two, but despite everything, only one thing actually managed to catch my eye; the first familiar return address that I'd seen all day…

When I was eighteen years old, just a naïve freshman at UCLA with unrealistic goals and a viciously skewed expectation of the future, I had this roommate who seemed to be positively identical to me in his motivations…

His name was Jason Floyd but everybody called him Pink and we were gonna make it big together; a team that would eventually be recognized as the next Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas… Well, obviously that didn't work out and although I continued to travel down the bottomless path of big time movie production with little luck, he stayed behind in L.A. and decided to focus on independent filmmaking… If I was lucky I would see him once every few years at Sundance or something…

Curious, I opened the letter, its contents spilling across my lap as I recognized the familiar outline of an invitation of some sorts.

I picked it up carefully alongside the small R.S.V.P. card attached and skimmed my eyes over the contents quickly.

He'd been working on a movie across the southern Carolina landscape for the past two years or so now; a documentary in which he's been trying to make some weird political statement that nobody's ever heard of by interviewing the deepest and most extreme of the trailer park hicks that he could find down here and now, his movie was finally premiering; a New Years Eve movie party up in Fayetteville; a city that couldn't have been more than two hours away even though these days, even though these days, two hours might as well have been two days in terms of distance.

I considered the invitation for a hot second, turning it over and over again between my hands as I wondered what it would be like to actually be able to go, to actually be able to fall back into that life that I used to live so long ago now… Hell, I would give anything to have an opportunity to spend my time at movie premiers and high profile events rather than spending it stuck inside of a hospital room… but we all know that that really just wasn't an option these days.

"What's that?" I'd been so shocked by the sudden presence of a noise filtering across the room that I jumped, spilling the contents of my letter all across the floor as I looked up to see Sam staring at me questioningly as Brooke and Victoria tilted their heads up with slow interest.

"Um… it's an invitation," I explained, casually ducking down to pick up the various pieces of paper, flashing the colorful stationary up towards her so that she could catch a glimpse of the flashy writing silhouetted against a sparkling background so that not even I was quite sure whether or not I was being invited to a movie premiere or a bachelorette party at Chippendales.

"To what?" Sam pushed me beyond my desperate attempts to speak as little as I actually had to.

"A movie premiere in Fayetteville tomorrow night… I don't know… it's nothing, I probably won't even end up going…" I rambled, my voice subconsciously expressing how much I truly desired to attend although I knew for a fact how impossible that actually would have been.

"What? Why wouldn't you go that's like probably one of the coolest things ever. Nobody ever invites me to movie premiers… But I understand, I guess things like that are just way too low-key for big time movie producer Julian Baker." She joked around with me, pulling my leg just because that was the type of person that she was… Either way it worked successfully in putting a smile on my face despite all of the tension that was continuously filtering between our tightly crammed quarters at the moment.

"Yeah well you know me; I only accept invitations to big budget movie premiers… The independent scene was so last year." I returned her motion to joke around with me gratefully, but just as quickly, I found myself sneaking a glance back over my shoulder and towards Brooke, afraid that she would take the expression of my lightened heart offensively just because hers was so heavy at the moment… But if I was surprised when Sam spoke up before, it was nothing compared to the shock I felt when Brooke popped in to express her views on the matter as well.

"I think it's a good idea Julian… You should really go."

My eyes widened gradually with each progressing second as her words continuously processed across my mind.

A sudden confidence swelled across my heart, the idea of having a genuine support system filling my head like a helium balloon, and then, before I even knew what I was saying, I found myself pushing my luck beyond anything I'd ever imagined possible a couple of minutes ago as I lifted my chin, gave Brooke my best puppy dog eyes, and cracked my voice awkwardly in the extension of my own invitation towards her.

"You know, it said that I could bring a date if I wanted to, and you know… I was just thinking that maybe, if you wanted to… I don't know, get away for a night or something you could… well… go with me maybe?" I sounded like a twelve year old boy trying to ask the girl he'd been watching from afar since elementary school out to the sock hop or something, and judging by the look on Brooke's face in response to my question, she was thinking the exact same thing.

"Julian…" She sighed in her response with a slight shake of her head so that I knew what the answer was before she'd even said it. "I'd love to, really I would but… I can't go all the way up to Fayetteville… I can't be that far away from Sam for an entire night…"

Sam and I snuck suspicious glances at each other as the girl's face dropped so quickly that I'd barely even caught the transition.

"Yeah… yeah, you're right… It was a stupid thing to ask, I'm sorry Brooke…" I submitted easily, but meanwhile, Sam didn't seem as eager to take the easy way out as I was… Just add this to the ever-growing list of reasons why I'm not good enough for either of them…

"Well I think you should go." Sam piped in, plastering an expression of fake cheeriness across her features just to try and emphasize to Brooke how much she really did mean it while simultaneously trying not to show Brooke how disappointed she was that Brooke had tried hiding herself behind Sam's disease once again… "No really Brooke it's a good idea, I mean, you're always putting stuff off for me but I'll be fine here… I mean, look at me, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, and I've got everybody looking out for me 24/7… You should take the night off Brooke, seriously…"

"I can stay with her tomorrow Brooke," Even Victoria was piping in on the manner, recognizing the fact that Brooke would never budge unless she knew for a solid fact that Sam would have a constant babysitter.

My confidence in the matter grew exponentially as I filtered my head quickly between Sam and Victoria, watching as they talked alongside each other, bombarding Brooke with all of this advice on what she should do and trying to make all of these plans for her…

But then I finally looked up at Brooke, and my previously cheery mood dropped right alongside my heart.

Brooke's eyes were literally rolling around within their sockets alongside the motion of her head as she tried to keep up with the whirlwind of information currently being thrown at her from all directions. Her head was spinning in time with all of the voices surrounding her, and after a couple of seconds, something finally seemed to just snap inside of her and she realized that she had had enough of it all.

"I'm not going!" She practically screamed, the tone of finality in her voice forcing Sam, Victoria and I to shoot into a silent attentiveness… hell, I think I even heard the echo of abruptly halted voices come from behind the other side of the curtain where a second poor, unsuspecting family was trying to make home, "Go around and do whatever the hell it is that you need to do Julian, but I have Sam to think about here okay? I can't just go running around to parties all across the state and leave her here! Not for that long, not when I'm that far away!"

I gulped firmly, turning my eyes away from Brooke, no longer able to take the fire-like glow in her face, so bright that it physically burned me…

Instead, I simply chose to lock eyes with Sam, watching as her face fell and expressed the exact same thing that I had been thinking this entire time… She was worried about Brooke, I was worried about Brooke, hell, it seemed at this point that the only person here that wasn't worried about Brooke was Brooke herself… The thing was, I knew that if I didn't step in and interfere with this pattern of destruction that she had found herself falling into soon, then Brooke might find herself in a place that not even we would be able to pull her out of ever again.

* * *

Silent drives home seemed to be so normal for Brooke and I these days that I wasn't even that surprised that, as I drove Brooke home later on that night, the only thing that occupied our time between the spaces of unspoken words was the metronome of my trucks windshield wipers as they rotated back and forth and back and forth across the glass, clearing it from the rain pounding down so hard, I was almost afraid that my windshield would actually crack.

Since that last outburst of Brooke's that had occurred in Sam's hospital room no more than a few hours ago now, she hadn't spoke a single word towards me directly… in fact, now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure if she'd even so much as looked at me…

The only reason that we had even ended up driving in the same car together was because Brooke had indirectly expressed her desire to leave to get a few things at home taken care of to Victoria, hinting toward the fact that I should be the one to fulfill that desire…

And that's how I got here; squinting between the few clear spaces between rain as it splattered down endlessly, forcing me to drive no more than ten miles per hour the entire way home for fear that moving any faster would result in my crashing my damn car into a tree or something ridiculous, subsequently making my current situation even worse than it already was…

But every once in a while I would find a free opportunity; when I paused at a traffic light, or a stop sign or something like that, to sneak a glance or two over at Brooke, and every time I did that, I'd just find her in the same exact position she was in the last time I'd checked; her elbows resting firmly against the window sill, her chin nuzzled gently in her palm as she stared intently out of the passenger's side window, determined to avoid all eye contact with me while getting the pleasure of watching the world pass by right before her very eyes.

I was afraid that she'd been focusing a little bit too much on that… the world's continuous motion, flying right by the lot of us while meanwhile, she was remaining firmly fixed in place, refusing to go along with it… I was afraid that her avoidance of the future would just eat away at her mind after a while, just like I knew it could do to even the strongest of men who had found themselves in a position similar to Brooke's… But most importantly, I was afraid that it would just continue to drift us further and further apart, more so than it already had I mean, until finally, I would be completely out of arms reach from her and one of us, or even both, would drown under the pressure.

At the beginning of all of this, I thought I identified a more established pattern, I thought that maybe as Brooke and I banded together throughout the continuous progress that Sam was making through this sickness, and as we supported her during harsh treatments and devastating bouts of illness, that maybe our makeshift, unconventional family was actually getting closer and closer to each other…

For a little while there, I thought that maybe there could actually be some good that came out of all of this hell, that while maybe, instead of getting bogged down by all of the negatives, we could find at least one overwhelming positive that could override everything else and make things at least seem better…

It seemed farfetched, I know, but the true miracle of it all was that after a little while, I actually managed to find that positive…

Brooke, Sam and I, well we were becoming a real family… everybody could see it, everybody could feel it… And then, after Brooke had finally made her adoption of Sam official, achieving the dream she'd been hanging onto for over a year now, I felt something good, I felt as if I could finally start the family that I always wanted, I felt as if I was one step closer to starting this life that I've always wanted to live.

And I'd gotten so close… I swear to God, I was one freaking step away from getting my foot completely through that door, but then something happened…

Instead of following that pattern we'd grown so accustomed to in watching Sam get better and better with each passing day, one day, something just changed completely, and instead of getting better, Sam had suddenly taken a rapid downward plunge that none of us saw coming, that none of us were ready for, and the next thing we all knew, the fact that Sam had been dying this whole time reached down and slapped us all across the face so hard that I could still, even now a couple of weeks later, feel the harsh sting it had left across my cheek.

And as Sam progressively continued to get sicker and sicker, well so did Brooke… Of course, it wasn't in a way that you and I would normally think of as being sick…

I couldn't confront Brooke about it, I didn't know how to… I couldn't think of a single way that I could plead with Brooke to get help without her thinking that I believed her to be weak, or afraid… She couldn't just go to a hospital, she couldn't just take a couple of medications and magically get better again, no, Brooke was sick in a way that was much beyond me, a way that I didn't know much about, a way that scared the shit out of me… a fear that was getting worse and worse with each passing day…

Her story was tragic; one of the saddest stories that I have possibly ever heard before in my entire life, cleverly disguised in the shape of the single most beautiful women that this world has ever seen… Hell, the movie would have been poetic and if the mere thought of that didn't make me positively sick to my stomach; I probably would have actually considered it…

When I pulled into the driveway, Brooke climbed out of my truck so quickly that I'd barely even rolled to a complete stop before she was hauling herself back up the pathway into her house.

But acting with a complete opposite mannerism in my movements, I instead lingered slowly, taking my time as I stepped out of the driver's seat, not really caring about the rain pelting down on top of me with every extra second that I took to get inside, soaking me straight down to the very bone.

It wasn't until she had managed to successfully make it all the way to the front door before she paused in order to dig through her purse for her house keys and realized that I wasn't actually following her, that my legs had seemingly stopped working altogether somewhere between the walk from the driveway to the front porch.

"What's wrong?" Her words shocked me exponentially, and maybe it was the fact that I hadn't been expecting her to actually express any ounce of concern for me that lead me to blurt the one thing out of my own mouth that I'd been expecting even less…

"Am I good enough for you?" The words slipped, lubricated by the rain drops plummeting down my frozen face before landing in my eyes, blurring over the image of Brooke who paused to eye me with confusion as she struggled with the idea of whether or not she'd just heard me correctly.

"What?" She asked, stepping back out from underneath the safety that the porch roof had to offer and back into the rain.

"Am I good enough for you Brooke?" I repeated my question par to her request, watching nervously as her face scrunched into a look that told me that she was currently thinking very hard about her answer.

"Julian, what… where… Of course you are Julian…" She told me, sounding as if she was very confused as to where my initial inquiry had derived from, "Why would you ever think that you aren't?" Her face screwed up thoughtfully, wrinkling around her eyes but still, I couldn't tell whether or not she was crying due to all of the rain.

"I can't make up any excuses for everything I've screwed up before Brooke,"

Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn that it was actually raining even harder against my face than it was before…

"But I'm here for you now… I know what it's like Brooke… I know how it feels to leave somewhere empty handed and all alone but you have to know that you don't have to do that anymore… You're not alone in any of this Brooke Davis, so you don't have to keep on acting like you are!"

My chest was heaving with emotion and I paused, just so that I could actually take a decent sized breath. Meanwhile, ahead of me, Brooke was simply staring on with defiance in her eyes, the distance between us measurable by however long the path between her driveway and front door were… But finally, I was the one to let out an audible sigh of defeat, dropping my features alongside the tone of my voice in pure anguish.

"I'm just afraid that by the time I get to you there won't be anything left Brooke."

"Julian…"

"No wait!" I cut her off before she could actually say anything, afraid that if she shot me down right here and now, I would be too upset to carry on saying what I knew I needed to get out… "Brooke, if I have to bold and underline all of the plans that I have for us all of which last for the rest of our lives just to prove to you t hat I'm not going anywhere than I will… I want to be here Brooke, I want to be with you, I want to be with Sam… but that needs to go both ways…"

"I've changed Julian," She spoke slowly and quietly, her simple statement opening up a silent question in her desire for me to confirm that this change hasn't caused me to love her any less than I had before any of this happened.

"I know," I told her simply, "But we all have Brooke… I know you're trying here, and I know that I am too but… but Brooke, you have no idea how hard it is to try and belong to somebody who doesn't even exist anymore."

My words stung even me so that I wasn't particularly surprised when Brooke physically recoiled in response to them; but still, I knew that I needed to act fact just to ensure that she wouldn't take them the wrong way.

"I've made my mistakes Brooke, I know I have and I know that I can't change that but… but you need to come back Brooke, I need you… Sam needs you."

Every aspect of her features seemed to slide directly down her face into a look of anguish that cracked my heart in half as tears that couldn't even be mistaken for the falling rain dripped in a steady stream down her face.

"But what happens if I don't know how to anymore Julian?"

"Then I'm going to be there to help you Brooke. No matter what I need to do, no matter what it takes I'm gonna be there okay? I'm gonna help you get past whatever it is that you're going through… you just have to let me in… please Brooke, just let me in."

Her face wrinkled with tears but still, her chin tilted upwards and she locked eyes with me for the first time in what seemed like hours before giving the shortest, single nod of her head as she paused for the briefest of moments, falling completely still and silent…

For the longest time she didn't move and for a little while there neither did I… We just sat there, staring at each other with our vision clogged by the combination of rain water and emotion-fueled tears.

I could feel my heart pounding with every second that passed without Brooke saying so much as a single word to me… I can't pretend that I was nervous… no, nervous wasn't the right word, I was absolutely terrified that Brooke was about to deny the most heartfelt plea I could possibly ever come with, but then, just as I really started to get nervous, something changed and Brooke darted out from her place next to her front door, running towards me in that lanky, awkward manner that I always used to make fun of her for with tears streaming down her face and rain water matting her perfect hair firmly against her skull… The strangest part of it all was that I don't think that I'd ever actually loved her more than I ever did in this moment.

I had been expecting it but still, the moment our bodies connected and she wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling her body up closely into my own, I staggered a little bit on my feet so that I was nearly knocked backwards straight into the giant mud puddle that all of this excessive rain water had since turned Brooke's front yard into.

"I love you Brooke, okay?" I mumbled deeply into her hair as I rocked her body gently back and forth, "I just don't you to ever have to question that ever again."

"I know," Brooke sniffled, pulling herself away from my body just enough so that she could tilt her head backwards and look straight into my eyes, "I didn't forget that Julian… I just… sometimes I feel like I'm losing myself… I feel like I'm going absolutely crazy and I'm pushing everybody away from me and there's absolutely nothing that I can do about it."

"I'm not going to leave you Brooke." I held onto her body in a strong grasp; my hands firm, but still retaining that gentle motion of assurance that I knew that Brooke needed more than anything right now, "We're gonna get through this okay? Whatever it takes; me, you and Sam… we are all going to get through this together… You just have to believe me on that one okay?"

She released a steep exhale; her breath shaking alongside the massive production of tears as she struggled to stabilize her tantric emotions.

"I believe you." She nodded abruptly back to me, the look in her eyes telling me that she meant everything that she was saying, "Thank you Julian, for everything…"

She whispered to me softly as her head subconsciously tilted upwards so that she could lock her lips with my own, pulling me into a deep kiss that warmed me deep down to my very bones despite the freezing cold rain that was currently seeping through even the deepest crevice of my body.

And I knew that I could still feel the weight of Brooke's heavy heart hidden deep inside of her kiss, but it seemed to me as if maybe it was at least a little bit lighter this time around…

And although I knew that a million people much stronger than I could ever be could never possibly be equipped to handle this, I was, and now, it was only Brooke here, and it was only me with her, and you could guarantee for an absolute fact that I was going to be sticking around long enough to see that broken piece of her heart get fixed, and I was going to be here to help that weight diminish until one day, I know it will be gone completely.


	50. And I Shall Not Walk Alone

**Hey everyone! So this is an exciting chapter mainly because it's the end of Part III of this story meaning there's only one part left after this (14 more chapters and an epilogue) which feels really weird because I feel like I've been writing this story forever and I definitely didn't even plan on it being 50 chapters long let alone 65.**

**So anyway, quick fun fact, in case you haven't noticed, the last 12 or so chapters make out the first verse of one of my favorite songs called I Shall Not Walk Alone by the Blind Boys of Alabama and/or Ben Harper, whichever version you prefer. So if you were confused about the random chapter titles in there, hopefully it will all make more sense now. **

**And just one more quick thing, if you can't tell by reading the second ****half of this chapter, I wrote it while I was bawling my eyes out watching Brooke and Julian get married so hopefully it pleases you all lol.**

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Chapter 50: And I Shall Not Walk Alone

**Saturday, December 31****st****, 2011**

**SAM**

It's about 7:00 here on this fine New Years Eve night, and while half of the kids from my high school are busy feeling all bad ass as they drink cheap beer in their parent's basement and light off fireworks in the backyard, I was stuck in a hospital bed, the closest thing I was getting to a party being what I saw on the television in front of me as I watched the millions of people that were currently clogging into the freezing cold, confined quarters of Times Square just so that they could watch a stupid ball drop… I could only hope that some of their jovial spirit could get transferred into my miserable, brooding body through the screen.

Well… I guess that much wasn't exactly true… there was something a little bit closer than the nearly 600 miles between me and that jovial, rowdy crowd… The playroom down the hall had been closed all day long as the eccentric child life team we had here on this floor worked their asses off to decorate it to replicate New York City as much as a children's hospital ward play room located in the heart of southeastern North Carolina could ever possibly look like New York City, stocking the small room with cardboard cutouts of skyscrapers, those cheap noisemakers you could buy for 99 cents each at Party City, and those stupid 2012 glasses that were created by a bunch of people that still, three years later, have yet to realize only looked cool when there were two back to back zeros in the date…

Maybe next millennium I guess.

It was the smallest of celebrations, one that had been primarily designed for the younger children of the ward and their parents in its lameness as a method of recreating that precious initial signification of the coming of a new year, a little bit earlier than its actual arrival on account of the fact that around here, kids like us have a hard time staying awake until 8 or 9 at night with all that medication being pumped into us, let alone midnight…

The hallway outside of my door has been bustling for the past several minutes now; a mass exodus in the form of a large number of children, all under the age of ten synchronized in their struggle to balance the party hats on top of their heads with the heavy IV poles, each bigger than any one of them, as their mothers, fathers, siblings, and God knew who else followed their lead.

"Hey do you wanna check that thing going on down the hall out?" I turned, facing Victoria and just gave her a look that told her that I was way too cool to be spending my New Years Eve at a party designed for five year olds… I could just picture it now; I mean, in all honesty, could you ever image Victoria and I strolling in there to crash the closest thing to a play date that half of these kids could ever even think to have.

I only ask because I sure as hell couldn't…

It was just the two of us tonight; Victoria and I, a couple of lone rangers just trying to figure out exactly what the hell it was that we should be doing while the rest of the world was busy celebrating a new beginning and we were too busy relishing on the fact that the only thing that we had to look forward to in this new year was… well, the same old shit that we'd been doing all along.

Brooke had stopped by much earlier this morning and much, much more cheerful than she had been yesterday… I mean to say, at lease she wasn't hanging out just screaming at us all like she had been doing then… Now, Julian hadn't come with her this time around, and at the time, I'd been debating whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing because I couldn't tell if she was happy because she'd finally made up with him or if she was happy because she'd actually killed him last night and now she just didn't have to deal with whatever the hell he had done to make her act that way in the first place anymore…

But I'd eventually found out the source of her unexpected happiness had, thank God, actually been a result of the former scenario, because right before Brooke left, she made it a point to tell me that she had finally agreed to attend that movie premiere that Julian had been talking about all day yesterday with him… you know, the one that she was actually ready to rip his head off over for merely mentioning… Now, she'd used the vaguest amount of details humanly possible so I didn't actually know the methods by which Julian had been forced to go through to actually achieve this feat, but he'd somehow done it none-the-less, and at this point, that's all I could really care about.

So Brooke finally left, but per usual, not without laying down a few concrete ground rules first; rules that now that I thought about it, I had been pretty stupid not to automatically assume she would bust out with as she prepared to take a night-trip a few cities away because I knew that in Brooke's mind, a trip to Fayetteville and back was the rough equivalent of travelling to Antarctica.

It was a mere lay down of all of the basics; she'd given me the address and the phone number of the place that she was going to alongside the assurance that she might be in a movie, but that didn't mean that I couldn't reach her whenever I wanted to, and that if I needed her for absolutely anything at all, she would be able to somehow magically procure a jet pack out of her ass and fly back to my side so quickly that I would blink and she would be there…

So that's how we all ended up here; Brooke and Julian probably just arriving at some high class, fancy movie theater in order to attend a luxurious premiere while Victoria sat in the corner of my hospital room babysitting me, an action that I knew Brooke had secretly requested of her even though I know she probably would have done it anyway…

Now, the reason that Victoria's presence was weird had absolutely nothing to do with my frustrations towards Brooke's insistence on placing somebody at my side 24 hours a day seven days a week no, I had gotten over that slight annoyance a damn long time ago by terms of simply getting used to it; instead, this was so weird because I still don't' think that I was quite used to this whole Brooke/Victoria power-duo thing, you know, the two of them acting alongside each other to accomplish something without wanting to rip the other's head off in the process…

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining or anything, in fact, I'm doing the exact opposite considering all of this extra time I got to spend with Victoria was actually kind of nice with its ability to allow the two of us to catch up on the months between our last visit; I'm just saying… it's still kind of weird.

"Sam?" My head shot up towards Victoria instantaneously; I knew that she had asked me a question a while ago now… I guess I'd just blanked out before I'd managed to give her a sufficient answer.

"Huh?" I asked stupidly, my jaw slacking as I glanced up at her features, watching as they contorted into a familiar look of concern.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," I nodded, trying to sound as convincing as possible as I reached up to run a hand across the top of my head, "Sorry, I guess I just kind of zoned out for a little while there… what did you say before?"

"I asked if you wanted to go down to check out that thing they're doing down the hall." She repeated herself par to my request, not looking particularly convinced that I was totally fine but still, convinced enough so that she didn't feel the need to push the subject.

"Nah," I shrugged towards her casually, "They do this for every holiday…"

Of course, I happened to know that for a concrete fact thanks to the fact that I had conveniently ended up right here in the hospital for every single one of those holidays…

"They're pretty lame if you're over the age of six really…"

"Oh," She just nodded, her face down-turning in the idea that she had failed in her attempt to do something for me that might make my night a little bit more exciting than simply sitting in a hospital bed would do, "Well… do you want some of this?"

She ultimately resorted for her final mode of attack; Plan Z, if you will with all of the things she'd been offering to me all night, extending to me the second half of the sandwich she'd merely been picking on for the past hour now.

"Sorry," I told her with a shake of my head and a sad smile displayed across my face as I acknowledged the fact that she'd come up empty once again but at the same time tried to convince her not to feel too bad about it, "It's that special diet thing that I'm on… you know, this whole kidney thing… My options are basically zero food wise, I mean, they even measure the amount of water that I'm allowed to drink…"

I laughed at my own comment, trying to indicate that it was meant to be taken as a joke, but Victoria's expression told me that she'd taken it as seriously as she possibly could, because her face sunk in response to my words even lower than it already was.

"I'm sorry Sam."

"Eh, don't be sorry," I shrugged, trying to lighten the mood at least a little bit, "It's hazard of the trade really…"

I knew that my effort had positively failed the second that the words escaped out of my mouth because Victoria fell instantly silent, her eyes widening and her head subconsciously tilting upwards and past my shoulder towards the array of machines and medications hanging in an organized cluster behind me so that my heart sunk with the realization that I'd probably just made things a hell of a lot worse with my words rather than any better.

"Yeah…" She finally sighed, several seconds after I had made my initial statement, her eyes still dancing along the mosaic of equipment above my head, "How are you doing with all of that stuff anyway?"

"Um… okay I guess…" I shrugged my shoulders, feeling kind of awkward talking about my feelings with Victoria Davis of all people… She was trying, really she was, but I could practically hear her gritting her words through her teeth, forcing them out of her mouth for my sake while meanwhile, that voice in the back of her head was screaming at her not to get caught up with the emotional aspect of it all, "I mean, you just kind of get used to it after a while I guess."

"How?" Victoria belted out her question with an unexpected fervor, her eyes practically bugging out of her head in time with her outburst so that I could tell that she didn't exactly mean for things to happen like that.

"Well, I guess you just…" I started putting on my best display of a false explanation to Victoria, a phenomena that I knew absolutely nothing about but pretended that I did anyway, but the expression on Victoria's face halted me mid-words.

"I kind of lied to you… you don't really." I changed the tune of my song pretty quickly, my face relaxing heavily now that my muscles were no longer tensed with the tell-tale sign of lying, "It's not really that you get used to it… it's just that every day you get a little bit closer to the end of it all, and even though you don't really know how that end will turn out exactly, after a while, you don't even really care anymore."

The two of us just stared at each other for a couple of seconds, silence filtering around us so that I was forced to look away from her and speak again before my head exploded from the tension.

"I'm sorry that we waited so long to tell you about all of this because you probably would have already found that out for yourself by now… that transition kind of sucks, I know…"

It was the best possible follow up that I could come up with, but at first, when Victoria merely responded to me with the saddest smile I have ever seen in my entire life and a brief nod of her head, I wasn't sure if even that would be enough…

"Sam… you know you don't have to apologize to me right? I don't want you to think that any of this is your fault, because it's not, okay?"

I recoiled slightly at her words, I was afraid that maybe I'd pushed this conversation too far, that when Victoria was telling me that our situation wasn't my fault, she was also saying that instead of blaming me, she blamed Brooke for keeping this secret from her for that entire time… So my head scrambled as I attempted to put together a convincing argument supporting Brooke's intentions…

"But you know… it wasn't really Brooke's fault either, she…"

"Sam," Victoria cut me off, raising her hand up towards me in order to indicate that I had just gotten overworked for no apparent reason and that I should probably relax before I gave myself an aneurism or something, "The fact that your mother didn't call me sooner wasn't anybody's fault but my own."

I raised an eyebrow towards Victoria; there were so many oddities about that sentence that had just came out of her mouth that I didn't even know where to start… I was starting to think that Brooke had taken to drugging her morning coffee or something; it was the only possible explanation that I could really come up with towards why Victoria has been acting so… well, un-Victoria-like lately.

"I've screwed up in the past with Brooke Sam… more times than just once mind you… But Brooke has become a better person than I could ever be, and clearly, she achieved that without any help from me… Seeing everything that Brooke has managed to accomplish with you has made me want to have that relationship with my daughter that I'd never managed to develop and I regret that… I'm just sorry that it took watching you get so sick to really open my eyes to everything that matters… That isn't fair… to you or to Brooke."

I watched her carefully as she spoke, by face deep and serious… and I swear to God, I even saw the shadow of a tear emerge from underneath her eyes.

"You should consider yourself lucky Samantha," She finally spoke again after a couple of seconds of silence alongside the slightest of laughs and a quick motion of her hand underneath her eye, confirming to me the fact that she had indeed been tearing up this entire time, "I think that you might actually be the first person that I've ever allowed to see past… you know, that bitch in me."

I smirked at her comment but when her face didn't match the look on my own, I felt it fall all over again.

"But seriously Samantha, I am very proud to be able to call you my… my… granddaughter." She stumbled over her words for a couple of moments before dropping her voice to a volume barely above a whisper just in case anybody was around to hear her, "And I don't use that word lightly… you remember that."

"Don't worry, I will… granny." I poke fun, adding a smart ass comment to my response because let's be completely honest, that's just what I do best.

"Don't push your luck Samantha, this doesn't mean that I won't deny it if anybody ever catches you calling me that in public. I've had a difficult enough time with Brooke referring to me as a mother."

"Can I ask you something? I mean… as long as we're being honest with each other and all…" Her words sparked a spur of the moment question emerging from somewhere deep down inside of me and I couldn't really control the inquiry before it finally just kind of slipped straight out of my mouth.

"Sure," Victoria nodded in her appreciation towards the fact that I'd at least asked for her permission first before belting something that I knew would be deeply personal towards her even though I probably would have asked anyway no matter what she said…

"Why were you always so crappy to Brooke all these years then? I mean, why couldn't you ever just tell her all of the things you just told me?"

Victoria sighed very loudly in response to my question, standing up from her chair in order to move closer towards me; the answer to this question requiring more interaction than what could be offered sitting across the room from each other.

"Sam…" She paused, trying to find the right words to say, but even after a decently lengthy period of silence, she still couldn't seem to find the right words to answer that, because the only satisfying response that she could come up with wasn't exactly the answer that I had been looking for… "I think that you know as well as I do that the story behind that is very complex and well… very long."

"Well, I don't know if you've noticed or anything but these days, I'm positively made of time." I tried to throw a joke between the threat of intensity for what seemed like the millionth time in the past few minutes alone, but Victoria simply shook her head, indicating that the issues at hand were way too deep, way too personal for jokes.

"Listen, the only thing that I could really tell you about that is that I have a whole set of underlying issues involving myself, and I'm not sure how much Brooke has told you about her father, but most of those issues have to do with him, our relationship, and the years of emotional abuse that that relationship involved… And I wish I could take it back Sam, I really do, but I took most of those issues out unfairly on Brooke, mostly because she is the kind of person that would do anything for somebody that she loves… even if that anything is taking the brunt of the blame for somebody else's problems that is of no fault of her own.

"I guess I can understand that." I shrugged, even though in reality, I had absolutely no idea.

"What did you have a decrepit old git for a husband too? And before you answer that question Samantha, keep in mind that if you say yes, I'm going to have to kill him… I may be a grandmother now but I still have more leeway over this town than God himself."

I couldn't help but smile in response to Victoria's comment; I mean, after all of this emotional garbage that Victoria and I have been going through together, I was afraid that she might have lost her edge or something, and I was starting to get pretty nervous, because as scary and selfish as she could be most of the time, I liked the old Victoria… but you know, I was starting to think that maybe I could get to like this brand new twist towards the old Victoria even more… a fine in between that I could definitely get used to.

"No, it's nothing like that… but I guess my dad kind of sucked too… I mean, I never knew him but from what Rebecca told me about him, he was pretty much a deadbeat… then again, I guess that Rebecca turned out to be pretty crazy herself so I don't really know what to believe… Anyway, I guess my dad was kind of like Brooke's dad in that sense… I don't know, she doesn't really talk about him too much…"

Victoria nodded her head, shooting me a sympathetic, yet understanding glance.

"It's just one of the millions of reasons that the two of you are exactly the same I guess…"

I felt my cheeks flush a deep red as I forced myself to look away from Victoria, embarrassed, as always, towards that sense of pride that always surged through my veins every time somebody compared me to Brooke… who ever would have guessed, right?

"Listen to me Samantha," She spoke her words with such a solid tone to her voice, teeming with importance that my head shot up almost instantly, "You've survived a trip to hell and back that's for sure, and I want you to be proud of everything that you've accomplished and the independence that you've managed to achieve from that… But not all parents turn out so badly you know… I know that you've had a rough go with all of that the first time around, but with Brooke… well let's just put it this way; Brooke might have gotten screwed out of having a decent set of parents to raise her but you should just be grateful that she didn't end up anything like her mother… you should be happy about that… I know I sure as hell am."

Her words hit me hard, and for a long time, I just stared because I wasn't exactly sure of what else it was that I could do… my mind physically just couldn't think hard enough to come up with a more appropriate response.

I thought of my birth parents; a mother and father who never wanted me, I thought of my foster parents; bounced across the system of child welfare for years in an adventure that took me clear across damn near all fifty states in a short fifteen year time period before finally bringing me back home where I truly belonged… I thought of Jack, I thought of Brooke, and then finally… I got cut off by thinking about how freaking sick I currently was, because it was at that exact moment that another flash of pain originating at the base of my back shot upwards across my very spine, crawling through every pore of my skin, causing me to hunch over and gasp so loudly that Victoria jumped, afraid that I was dying or something… and for a second there, I honestly thought that I was.

I waved her off casually, trying desperately to repeat Victoria's words over and over again across the back of my mind, but as the waves of pain began filling the space in between my very brain cells, her words of wisdom got lost deeper and deeper, and I started to remember that no matter what, all good things eventually have to come to an end… it's happened before, it happened right now, and I knew for a damn fact that it would happen again… I guess the only difference now was that I finally realized that when it does, it probably won't be as glamorous and beautiful as everybody might imagine…

But if you did actually think that on the day that you die the sun will be shining and the birds will be chirping well don't worry about it, we all understand that sometimes even the best of us forget that no matter how hard we look for one, well maybe there really is no such thing as a perfect ending after all.

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**BROOKE**

I've been sitting in my bedroom for a solid half an hour at this point, just staring at myself in the mirror while simultaneously looking around the room trying to figure out if there somebody else in here or something because I knew that there was no way in hell that this reflection staring back at me was… well… me.

Here's the thing, sometimes when you're busy spending all of your time taking care of a sick child, when you're constantly spending all of your time inside of hospitals and doctor's offices, you often forget the fact that there was a point in time when you had a real life, a real job, a real home…

In my past life, I was a celebrated fashion designer.

I was on the cover of magazines hell, I was on the cover of my own magazine… I was being invited to parties being attended by Bono and Ben Affleck; I had the life that the majority of human beings could only ever have dreams about…

My life was cancer now, my job was simple; to take care of Sam, to make sure she got better… my permanent address was Tree Hill Memorial…

I guess that's why it took me such surprise when I saw my own reflection; my hair in an elegant bun, my face all made up, a low neck, slant cut red dress hugging loosely at my frame…

I'm still not entirely sure how Julian had managed to convince me to go out with him tonight, but however he'd done it, I was grateful, but still, sitting here, finding myself falling back into that old life that I'd left behind a long time ago felt like I was about to enter a time machine, and even though Julian was the one who had ultimately managed to rearrange me back into sanity… at least temporarily that is, I still had the strangest feeling of craziness lingering inside of this elaborately made up, externally perfected version of me that I hadn't seen in so long now.

"Brooke come on we're gonna be late!"

The reflection in the mirror turned her head sharply behind her shoulder towards the door in response to Julian's call at precisely the same time that I did, yet another overwhelmingly supportive piece of evidence that that person really was me although I still hadn't found myself quite so convinced.

"I'm coming!" I called, my voice shaking slightly due to the fact that I had so many different thoughts currently clogging my brain right now that I was having a hard time contorting it all into one distinct thought.

With one final exhale, I finally allowed myself to step away from my mirror, opening the door slowly and peering out into the hallway with an expression of shy sheepishness dancing across my face as I began to worry what Julian's reaction towards seeing me in a manner that seemed to be so nonexistent these days would be.

He was standing at the base of the stairwell, looking down towards the shining white bowtie around his neck, working desperately to adjust it until it fell evenly across the center of his neckline.

Upon my entrance, he glanced up only quickly towards me at first before turning back down, clearly not expecting what he'd seen and as a result, quickly coming to the understanding that maybe he'd just been making up my appearance all along… But just as quickly, he paused suddenly, readjusting his thoughts for a moment before he finally tilted his head slowly back up at me, his eyes widening and his jaw slackening alongside the corners of his mouth tipping upwards in the slightest of grins that made me blush and forced my eyes away from him…

The scene was starkly comparable to prom night or something; you know, your prom date seeing you all dolled up and extravagant for the first time before your parents frazzle you all out of that initial state of bewilderment by forcing you to take about a million embarrassing pictures… Yes, it reminded me almost exactly of my own prom night… minus the black eye, the whole going stag scenario, and of course, that whole crazy psycho stalker trying to kill me thing…

"Do I look alright?" I asked him cautiously, trying to say something that would intercept his gawking as I placed a skeptical look across my face as if I was afraid that he would say something other than what he knew I wanted to hear.

"My darling," He extended his hand towards me and bowed slightly at the waist so that I could accept his offer and intertwine his hand within my own, "You look wonderful tonight."

I rolled my eyes slightly through a laugh as I pretended that his corny pick up line hadn't just positively melted my heart.

"Julian you loser, did you just quote Eric Clapton to me?" I asked him, wobbling slightly on my feet, still trying to get used to this whole heels thing considering its been about three months now since I'd last worn them.

"Maybe," He shrugged in his casual attempt towards being sly, "But you have to admit, you walked yourself right into that one… Did it at least work?"

I laughed, shaking my head as he ruined his attempt towards the sweet romantic card completely by asking for a confirmation that it was in fact, exactly what I'd wanted to hear this entire time…

"Wouldn't you like to know," I played along with his little game, placing him in the hot seat for a change.

"Oh well," He sighed, turning away from me in his false bravado as he strolled over towards the front door, "I guess I'll just have to take that limousine to Fayetteville all by myself… and who knows what kind of trouble I can get into then with nobody there to keep me under control."

"Well fine then," He was trying his very hardest to play this little game with me, but little did he know that I was the master at this type of thing, in fact, he'd gotten his miniscule amount of skill from me, so I wasn't about to fall for it as easily as he tended to do. "I guess I'll just have to stay here alone all night then… all lonely on the couch… oh but this dress is so uncomfortable… I'll probably just end up taking it off completely…"

"Wow… how is it that you always know how to get to me Brooke Davis?" He asked, taking a step forwards so that he could grab me around the waist and spin me in a fancy pirouette so that by the time my feet were firmly attached to solid ground again, we had magically apparated straight in front of the door.

"I've been told I possess a certain charm."

"Oh you possess more than that… trust me." He smiled and winked down at me, sliding the front door open with a simultaneous movement before guiding me across the path leading away from my house.

I walked right outside, straight into that perfect time of the night where the moon hangs just low enough in the sky that everything the light touches positively sparkles so that it allowed me to feel like I was walking down a sidewalk sculpted from pure diamonds, straight down the path towards a life that I didn't even think was possible anymore… but of course, which I was truly grateful towards Julian for reminding me that it was.

"Your chariot, madam," He played the chivalrous card all the way down the length of the front path towards the limousine, guiding me gracefully as he opened the rear door of the luxurious elongated car and directed me inside of it first… I smirked, recognizing his plan of action instantly… Early this morning, when Julian that that I had still been fast asleep and not listening to a word of what he was doing, I heard him call in a favor to the limousine company that he always used on days that he was feeling particularly diva-ish; a free ride that would take us into a brand new city; a place that was just a few hours away but still had a remarkably different feel to it with that clean air all around us and the aura of the sun, that just never seemed to want to go down, shining continuously down on all of our heads… we might as well have been switching universes…

"Champagne?" He asked me instantly upon settling himself into his own seat, presenting me with the bottle that had been chilling in the mini-cooler.

"Oh no," I shook my head instantly, forced to direct my eyes away from the offending bottle, "Please Julian, after the other night I still can't even look at alcohol without wanting to vomit…"

"Oh," His face dropped as he lost his romantic edge for a brief moment in the terror that he'd just messed everything up completely… Of course, in reality, I thought his little blunder actually just made him even cuter than he already was as I watched him scramble to hide the bottle, but failing, ultimately deciding just to sit on top of the offending glassware altogether…

"Sorry," He flashed me his characteristic goofy grin; the one that positively made me melt from the inside out, and I couldn't help but laugh at him, shaking my head up towards him just to indicate that he had absolutely nothing to be sorry about.

"Don't be sorry," I told him, nuzzling up against his shoulder just to enforce the fact that there were no hard feelings, "Let's just get out of here okay?"

"Okay," He nodded in his agreement before turning over his shoulder towards the driver, murmuring a single word towards the driver that sparked our final escape to God only knew where, to achieve God only knew what, but finally, in the quickest of transitions that I could only describe by comparing it to jumping into a pool of ice water, I suddenly realized that I didn't even care… I knew that Sam was safe with Victoria, I knew that I was safe with Julian, and for the first time in a really, really, really long time, everything about this moment just felt completely, 100% right.

Beforehand, I think that I was more nervous about the ride over there than I was about anything else, that the only thing I would be able to think about with ever mile that we drove was that I was just another mile further away from Sam… But I received a pleasant surprise, a thrill when I realized that I'd barely been thinking about that at all… In fact, to me, the drive seemed more like it lasted two minutes than two hours, because I blinked, and there we were, slowing down in front of our destination.

It was the exact instant that the limousine pulled to a complete halt in front of the theater along the array of lights and people that my cell phone dinged with the alert of a text message and glowed with a prominent display of Sam's name across the screen.

"Who is that?" Julian looked over my shoulder with nosy interest.

"Sam," I told him with a soft smile as I opened the message and read it out loud, "Have fun tonight you two, but not too much fun… I think she's nervous that the two of us are gonna try and get ourselves into some trouble while we're here tonight."

"Well what she doesn't know won't hurt her right?" He asked me with a hopeful expression and a sly smile on his face.

I raised my eyebrows at him, toying with him as I placed the most innocent look I could muster on my face, moving closer into him with a distinct motion of preparing to move in and give him a kiss; an action that he reciprocated until finally, at the last second, I pulled away, purely so that I could break his balls like I loved to do so much in order to remind him who was the dominant one in this relationship.

"You can only wish to get so lucky Julian Baker." I whispered softly into his ear before I climbed right over him, lingering slightly against his lap for an additional second before finally stepping out of the limousine and onto the short sidewalk leading up to the entranceway.

It had been so long since I've actually attended a public event such as this one that for a little while there, I'd almost forgotten how it was exactly I was supposed to behave at things like this… but after a while, I warmed up to the experience, finding out that it was after all, just like hopping on a bike years since your last ride…

I spent most of my time mesmerized by the elegance of it all; elaborate but still, low key enough so that I was comfortable using it as a crutch for my re-introduction to that high profile lifestyle that I'd left behind as a mere ghost of m y past life.

For a little while, it had proved to be quite overwhelming. My social skills, diminished from months of limited use and communicating with nobody beyond the same doctors and nurses at Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, struggled for a little while there amidst introduction after introduction… Meet this rising movie star over here, this half-assed producer over there… but gradually, my memory on the basic rules of the etiquette of public events rearranged into a complete puzzle in my mind, and it was just as I was standing awkwardly amidst a small circle of Julian and a few of his old college friends that something inside of me clicked.

I hadn't felt this relaxed, this loose in a while, and I embraced every moment of it because I knew that once tomorrow came it would be right back to real life… So I clutched desperately to every second, every moment, begging time to slow down and acknowledge the fact that it didn't have to be like that tonight… Tonight was about having a good time, tonight was about experiencing a good scene, some good food, and a few good friends… tonight was about me transforming back into that exciting person who constantly socialized and who actually meant something to a lot of people… it was about relieving my mind from all of the stress for just this once.

"Hey Brooke, come over here for a minute." Julian called, catching my attention as he motioned over towards me so that I was forced to look up from his junior year roommate who was just telling me about how much of a loser Julian had been in college, much to my amusement, "I want a picture of us to send to Sam."

I obliged to his request easily, walking towards him and sliding my body underneath his awaiting arm, which rested comfortably across the back of my shoulders as the two of pointed our faces forward, poised with a shining, luminous smile towards where one of Julian's friends was pointing his cell phone, camera facing forwards in our general direction.

My face still and beaming, I watched as the flash of his camera illuminated the two of our faces more than they had already been for a quick second before it was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared.

"Thanks Keith," Julian expressed his gratitude towards the man I didn't know, but I had the strongest feeling that Keith here could never possibly understand the magnitude of meaning behind Julian's words… I could tell by his casual motions as he returned the phone to Julian, leaving the two of us to huddle like giddy children around the device as to reflect the image of the screen back up to us.

"Now that's the Brooke Davis that I know." He smiled, tilting the phone closer towards me proudly; a moment of time representing the two of us truly happy, truly in love, permanently captured within a couple of megapixels of frozen time that were worth the world to me.

"Sam will like this I bet." He smiled, talking more to himself than he was to me in a manner that made my heart swell with even more love and affection towards him than what I was currently feeling.

"Yeah, I think that she will." I agreed, watching as he poured all of his concentration into affectively sending the picture for a couple of seconds before he finally pocketed his phone and looked back up towards me.

"So how are you feeling about this so far Brooke?" he asked me, pulling me even closer to him using the leverage of his hand still firmly attached around my waist so that we entered a sort of awkward ballroom dance-type pose that I could only lean into even further with an urge of happiness and a lack of caring towards what other people might think if they saw us like this.

"You know, I am feeling remarkably good." I told him, tilting my face, prominent with a permanent smile up towards him as I stood up on my tip-toes, because even in heels I wasn't tall enough to reach his lips in a manner that I would have deemed affective.

"Thanks for all of this Julian," I whispered my words into his cheek after finally forcing myself to pull away from his mouth before I got lost inside of it forever, "It's because of you really… I never would have come out here tonight if you hadn't pushed me, and you know it feels so good to be so… adventurous again…" I told him, searching briefly for the right words to describe exactly how it was that I was feeling before ultimately settling on the perfect adjective.

"Adventurous you say?" He asked me, putting a sly look on his face that made me a little bit nervous about the plans that he obviously had cooking in the back of his mind as we spoke.

"What do you say to being even more adventurous with me tonight Brooke Davis?"

"What do you mean?" I asked him to be cute, but I knew that the look on my face told him that I knew exactly what he meant.

"Come on," He grabbed me by the hand, pulling me in a firm, yet gentle manner as I moved my feet in a double time motion just so that I could catch up with the movement of his legs, nearly twice the size of my own.

"Julian, we can't…" I expressed the skepticism that the rational portion of my mind was currently screaming with, but I said it with a laugh because the spontaneous part of my brain really didn't want him to ever stop.

"Of course we can… hell, we already all." He told me, stopping only once to turn over towards me and flash me a quick smile only once before pulling me into the bathroom; a single, unisex unit that had been decorated to represent an elaborate scene from the Italian Riviera…

Before this night, I never truly understood why anybody would ever choose to design a bathroom so elaborately, but as the door closed with a slam behind us, the lock clicked loudly in my ears, and I felt my back slam across the thick wood of the door in the strength of passion with the thought running rampant through my mind that I just couldn't get my clothes off fast enough, I figured that the reason for all of that must have been to accommodate moments like this.

Our lips jammed together abruptly, connecting so hard that it probably would have hurt if it didn't feel so good, and in the first time for a really, really long time, I allowed myself to fall back in love, I allowed myself to lift my chin and hold my head up with pride with the recognition, and finally, after an eternity of waiting, I allowed myself to feel like I was a live once again; resuscitation created in the form of roaming hands and synchronized movements across each other's bodies.

My head felt like somebody was pumping me with pure helium, and finally, despite me spending the past several months convinced that either God didn't exist at all, or else that he was holding some sort of unknown vendetta against me, tonight I finally realized that I had been wrong to assume such a thing all along, because right now, heaven was slowly filtering all around me; symbolized in the motion of Julian and my bodies entangled within each other's, twisted with love… I felt as if I was finally being redeemed for spending my entire life getting pushed to the side, and right now, the only thing that I could hope for was that the big guy upstairs could at least do me one more favor and make sure that this feeling currently building up inside of me could last the entire night… if not even more than that.

The bathroom was spacious but the way Julian and I flew across it in our tantric motions, we might as well have been inside of a cardboard box… Adrenaline poured across each of our bodies, stimulating every loud crash, every bang, every more than audible voicing of pure pleasure that contributing to the exciting thrill accompanying the idea that we could be caught any second…

My heart filled to capacity with exhilaration that didn't seem to want to go away so that still, several minutes later, when all of the guests had settled into their seats and the film began rolling, Julian and I couldn't find it in us to rip our bodies out of each other's clutches.

"Julian, we're going to miss your friend's movie." I panted, laughing with the irony of the idea that I had just spent the past twenty four hours positively panicking about coming here tonight to see a movie that we never even ended up going to because Julian and I were too busy acting like horny, pre-pubescent teenagers inside of a public bathroom.

"That's okay… we can rent it." He breathed, nipping casually at my neck in a manner that confirmed that I sure as hell wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon…

"That sounds fine by me." I conceded easily, pushing my body firmly back into his own so that the only thing separating our total contact now was the thin layer of sweat lining every inch of our skin, glistening brightly underneath the fluorescent lighting hanging above our heads.

I felt Julian's muscles relax against my own, his bodyweight pushing me backwards so that the sink dug uncomfortably into my hipbones in a manner that I barely even noticed on account of the fact that his fingers had been clasping perfectly at those exact same crevices along the lining of my waist, empowering me with that magical touch of overriding any feeling of pain that would have resulted otherwise.

I can't be completely certain of how long it was exactly that the two of us hogged up that bathroom, but I can tell you this; by the time somebody finally couldn't hold it anymore, and started knocking on the door demanding that we come out, it was easily a solid hour… probably even more than that, into the movie.

The firm knock made us stop straight in our tracks, the sound of a solid palm slapping firmly against the wood leading to a briefly concerned pause by the two of that only lasted a couple of seconds before we broke out into a fit of giggles, uncontrollable amidst the thrill that we'd just been caught.

"We'll be right out!" Julian called between laughter, trying to contort his face into a more serious look as he struggled to redress himself and put his legs correctly through each pant leg as fast as humanly possible.

Meanwhile, I straightened my dress down over my legs, trying desperately to compress each wrinkle back into the fabric with my palms as I simultaneously looked at my appearance in the mirror and attempted to straighten my hair as much as I could possibly could and dab at the smeared mascara across the corner of my eyes with a wet paper towel.

"Are you ready?" He whispered to me as the sound of yet another knock on the door filtered through my ears. I nodded to him in my readiness, trying my damned hardest to put a neutral, guiltless expression on my face but failing miserably as Julian unlocked the bathroom door and swung it open to reveal an elderly man whose face was purpled by the tightness of his bowtie and the constriction of his bladder… I locked eyes with his, watching as they narrowed down at me, his expression being just enough to cause me to snort out yet another fit of laughter that reverberated over towards Julian so that he could no longer contain himself either.

"Come on, come on," I pushed him forward, yelling at him to move faster and sneaking only a single glance behind my back towards the man as he gave us a curious expression before turning away… We ran around the corner, halting in front of a door with Employees Only written across it in large red ink, our hands clamped firmly over our mouths to compress the noise escaping them, and our backs slamming firmly against the wall, side by side in an effort to keep out of the sight of any suspicious passerby.

"How was that for adventurous?" He turned and looked at me, his eyebrows raised with the expression of lawless satisfaction that I couldn't help but return.

"You know, as far as adventures go, I have to say, that was probably one of my best." I nodded in agreement, turning so that our eyes locked and that gleam that I sometimes managed to catch in his eyes when he looked at me washed through my body, freezing me stiff and forcing me to linger a few seconds longer…

The thing was, I'd grown up with this notion being constantly pounded into my head that love was something completely blind, and for the longest time, I thought that maybe I just lacked the proper genetic code or something to be able to see it like everybody else could…

And then one day Julian Baker walked into my store and asked me to design some clothes for a close friend's movie and in that moment, I truly learned how to see again… But for a while there, I'd forgotten and then, on one rainy day in the middle of the night at the end of December, it happened again, and I remembered what it felt like…

The only difference was that this time, I didn't plan on forgetting ever again.

"Do you think that maybe we should actually go watch the movie now?" He laughed, turning towards me for an answer as I shrugged back at him.

"Well, now that the bathroom is occupied… what the hell else are we gonna do, right?"

"Right… Come on then," He nodded firmly, sticking his elbow out so that I could link my arm around his own as he escorted me towards the entrance of the actual theater, "Let's go."

Luckily for us, the theater was pitch black and the patrons were fully concentrated in there already half way through a movie haze, because if there was any more light, and any more concentration on the two of us, they probably would have noticed the fact that Julian's tie was rather askew or that I had frizzled strands of hair sticking out of my head in all directions…

We found our assigned seats easily, feeling very lucky that we were at the end of the aisle so that we wouldn't have to interrupt anybody, sparking suspicions as to where we'd been this entire time… but maybe it was because I'd already missed half of the movie, or maybe because I felt like I hadn't been this in love for my entire life, but I just couldn't find it in myself to pay too much attention…

Julian was sitting one seat next to me but still, I felt like I needed him to be so much closer than that. I spent the entire time with my head nuzzled directly in that space between his neck and shoulder, concentrating more on the scent of his cologne and the even motions of his breathing than I actually did the screen in front of me.

In fact, I was almost disappointed that we'd only caught the last half an hour of the movie because I probably could have stayed in that position forever… of course, if watching the entire movie meant giving up our promiscuous sexual escapades, than, well… never mind…

The credits started rolling but still, the lights barely brightened a fraction of a watt higher, and instead of going completely black, a new image was suddenly being reflected onto the screen; one of some young, new-aged news reporter sitting snuggly inside of a comfortable heated building that overlooked Times Square and the millions of people packed inside of it below, all of whom were looking astonishingly upward towards the giant, sparkling ball that had already begun to drop slowly downward in its quest to indicate the start of this brand new year.

I must have lost track of time or something… an unusual event to occur on New Year's Eve, I know, but the small countdown clock in the bottom right hand corner of the screen let me know that I had exactly four minutes and fifty four seconds to relish on 2011 before midnight.

"And with a record amount of people packing into Times Square this year to count down the minutes until 2012, we are all reminded that this is the time to embrace the memories, but erase the pain of the past year. It's the time to resolve to make yourself better, to start fresh. This is the year for you to become the person that you want to be."

For the first time all night, I found my yes completely glued to the screen in front of me as my ears magnified the meaningful cue-card words of this unknown reporter and blocked out everything else… Around me, the excitement of the crowd faded into nothing more than a dull murmur; I had tunnel vision, and apparently, I was the only one, the thing was, I didn't really care.

To my left, the only thing that could possibly ever pull out of my daze, Julian, wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled my body close into his as I was passed a flute of champagne from the assembly line coming down our row on my right.

I held the elongated glass without even really realizing what it was, my fingers gripping so firmly around it that it nearly shattered under the pressure.

With my eyes closed, I forced myself to take a deep breath, desperately controlling the pattern; in and out, in and out… I thought about myself, I thought about Sam, I thought about everybody really, and finally, not for the first time in the past months, and definitely not for the last in the months coming, I started praying.

I prayed that by the time I found myself in this exact position one year to the second, I would have pulled myself out of this ever-retreating darkness and found who I truly was once again. I prayed that Sam would have found lasting health; that we all somehow found a little bit of hope…

I didn't even realize that I'd started crying until Julian pulled away from me and grabbed onto my shoulders in order to assess me more closely.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah," I laughed embarrassed, reaching up to wipe the loose tears out from underneath my eyes, "Yeah I'm fine… I was just thinking that's all…"

He simply nodded, and I was grateful that he didn't ask me what it was exactly I was thinking about.

"You know Brooke… I know that this past year has been hard on all of us, but I have a feeling that things are gonna get better soon… real soon."

I closed my eyes slowly, leaning into his words with a slow, satisfied sigh.

"If you told me that a week ago I would have called you crazy… But for the first time in a really long time I actually think that you might be right…"

I smiled up at him, finally ripping my eyes from the movie screen for the first time since the news report began just as the sound of the gleeful shouts of the ten second countdown of all the guests around us infiltrated my congested thought bubble.

The clock struck midnight but all I saw were Julian's eyes staring into mine as the screams and cheers of those around me lingered around me, their celebratory cheers fading into an even mosaic.

"Happy New Year Brooke," He whispered to me, but I still heard it loud and clear amidst all the noise around us.

"Happy New Year Julian," I reciprocated his words, leaning forwards into him so that our lips connected, still lingering with the electricity of our last kiss so that I got lost inside of Julian, lost inside of myself, and lost inside the incomplete idea of what could possibly be in store for the next couple of months.


	51. Don't Release Me Until It's Over

**Okay guys so here is the first chapter of Part IV, so that's why there's a huge time jump... Okay so anyway just a few things to clear up here, basically, this chapter is kind of just to summarize everything that happened in that time jump and to lay the scene for the rest of the story. Another thing, I've been really loving the whole Brooke/Haley relationship they've been doing on the show recently so I tried to start a story line that would kind of focus on that a little bit too... Oh and to all of you that have been really enjoying the massive amounts of Brulian, there is much more on the way, I promise that was only a preview so the rest of the Brulian story line that I have planned is going to start to develop at the end of the next chapter. **

**So like always thanks for sticking around and reading, and I finally got the rest of this story all planned out and organized because my OCD forces me to make these elaborate plot summaries before I can actually write a chapter so I'm not promising anything but I'm hoping that updates will go a bit quicker... **

**Thanks again for reading, hope you enjoy!**

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Chapter 51: Don't Release Me Until It's Over

**Wednesday, February 1****st****, 2012**

**SAM**

If I had to choose one word to describe to you all what the past month has been like for me, the first thing that comes to mind is… well… interesting, to say the very least.

After that whole pneumonia debacle grounded my life to even more than a complete standstill than I had already found it in, I'd found myself committed to my longest hospital stay yet, which is saying a lot at this point… 34 days… I was stranded inside of that god-awful room for 34 damn days, finally getting out for the first time just last Monday…

But my extended stay hadn't ended up being an entire waste… because even though they'd kept me confined to the same four walls for much longer than what I ever would have preferred, at least they'd managed to keep me healthy… well, as healthy as I could have been kept anyway… hell, I would have even gone as far as to say that I was feeling positively better these days, despite the fact that it was only a few weeks ago that things weren't exactly looking up for me.

One day after my relatively boring New Years, I started my fifth round of chemotherapy only after finally getting the all clear from Dr. Nguyen who, despite his claims of being my primary nephrologist, I'd only actually seen three times during my entire stay… and one of those times was only because he just so happened to be walking past my door at the same time that I was looking…

I don't know, I guess I couldn't exactly complain too much; I knew that I'd lucked out in receiving a doctor blessed with an unusually remarkable bedside manner once… it would have been way too convenient for it to happen twice.

Anyway, unlike my last round of chemotherapy, I actually took to this one pretty well all things considered… My counts stayed pretty high, the side effects didn't hit me too hard, and well… this round didn't end with me nearly dying this time, so I guess that was reason enough to keep my head held high… I'd finished up with relative success about a week prior to them actually releasing me, finally being sent home with twice the amount of medication than normal thanks to this whole kidney thing which, despite spending my days being pumped full of drugs to fix them, didn't seem to be seeing any progress…

Basically, these days the only thing I was fit actually do in my life was sit on the couch all day and either watch TV or sleep.

So with all of that going for me, things were actually starting to look up for a change. I was doing well, Brooke was doing well, Julian was doing well… most importantly, _we_ were doing well…

Until about two days ago that is.

I was hanging out at Victoria's for the day while Brooke was running around trying to get some things done… In about mid-January, Victoria had finally decided to rent a condo upon acknowledging the fact that she would be settling into Tree Hill on a little bit more of a permanent basis… or at least until Brooke and I got back on our feet…

I'd spent most of the day like I spend most of days lately; sitting on the couch with my laptop splayed out across my legs and the TV blaring in front of me when suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, I was hit with what was literally the worst headache that I had ever felt in my entire life; a searing pain that flashed across my forehead and straight down every nerve fiber in my spine.

The pain had literally crippled me, sent me doubled over in pure agony; an action that, now that I actually thought about it, probably caused Victoria to nearly piss herself out of pure fear…

It took a while for me to convince Victoria that I was fine, that I didn't need an ambulance, or a doctor, or anything else like it… but I'd managed to talk her down somehow, and after several minutes of me simply laying on the couch with a pair of noise-blocking headphones over my ears and my eyes closed with a wet washcloth placed gently over them to block out any painful rays of light, the searing pain gradually faded into a much less intense, but still ever-lingering throb.

It was nearly two hours later, right after Brooke had finally picked me up and brought me home that it happened again, but this time alongside a cramping in my stomach and the most intense nausea that I'd ever experienced before; one which made it seem as if it would have been less painful to stab me in the gut with a hatchet and rip out the offending organ all together…

It wasn't long after that that Brooke was at my side in the bathroom, force feeding me water and wiping my mouth off with a hand towel as I puked the entirety of the miniscule contents of my stomach out into the toilet below me.

It was only after I'd finally stopped puking long enough to stumble into my own bed and crawl up into a protective fetal position that Brooke deemed it safe enough to finally start demanding answers from me… So I thought on the fly, and came up with the only legitimate explanation that I could possibly think of… I told her that it must have simply been a late side effect of my latest round of chemotherapy, I told her that things like this just sort of happen some times, and I told her that it usually just goes away within the morning… and for that night at least, I'd managed to convince Brooke that I'd spoken the truth… and somewhere throughout that entire process, I'd made the dual achievement of actually managing to convince myself of that as well.

I slept through the night with relatively few disturbances… at least, no more than what I usually experienced; and when I woke up in the morning, for the first few minutes that I just lay in my bed and washed the sleep out of my eyes, I didn't actually feel too bad…

And then I tried to actually get out of my bed, and that's when I actually experienced a problem… a problem stemming from the fact that my legs didn't seem to want to move in the way that I wanted them to.

Needless to say; I was alarmed.

With the idea lingering in my mind that something was wrong, I thought that maybe all of these medication combinations, or that the problem with my kidneys, or those lingering side effects of my cancer had finally swarm together and physically paralyzed me.

I shot upright from my bed, terror gleaming behind my eyes at the idea that I would never be able to move my legs ever again… but finally, I ripped the sheets off of my legs, I looked down at the motionless limbs, and I finally located the real source of the problem…

My feet, my ankles, and my calves up to about mid-level had swollen over night, expanding to about twice the size that the normally would have been; eliminating all circulation so that other than turning an ugly reddish/purple color over night, it made it so that I couldn't even feel them anymore.

For a second, I just lie in my bed; flat on my back and stiff as a board, just wondering what the hell my next move should be… I thought about calling Brooke in order to ask for help but as per usual, with my luck, my cell phone was charging over in the corner of my bedroom, just out of arms reach… I thought about screaming my head off, yelling until she finally heard me and rushed to my assistance, but I didn't want to spur a panic… and ultimately, I settled on just sitting here, waiting for Brooke to simply find me on her own accord when she came in to check up on me or something… however long that might take…

But the reality of that notion didn't last very long; especially after I felt a sudden pang come from somewhere deep inside of me that forced my stomach muscles into a painful contraction, clenching around my bladder that had just filled to capacity so damn quickly, that I was afraid that if I didn't make a move fast, I would positively pee my damn pants.

With a loud groan that was made to indicate just how badly my life was sucking at the moment, I tightened every single muscle in my body, desperate to support my loaded bladder as I swung my upper body over the edge of the bed, the heaviness in my worthless legs weighing down the tremendous plunge I'd made onto the hard, wooden floor so that they landed solidly alongside a dull grunt of pain that I'd unconsciously emitted from my mouth.

It was a scene, that was for damn sure; and I was certain that if anybody had actually walked in on me physically crawling down the length of the hallway without first knowing the actual severity of the entire situation, they probably would have laughed at me…

I've always had this seemingly complete lack of body upper body strength to support myself in endeavors such as this one… although admittedly, I've never actually been in a situation like this before… but the point was, now was absolutely no exception to that rule, but I'd still somehow managed to heave myself upwards and onto the toilet, where I was able to relieve my aching bladder, which spent such a long time emptying itself that I felt as if I was probably sitting on the damn thing for a solid hour…

And just as I began preparing to congratulate myself on a job well done, I looked down in order to flush the contents, and suddenly, things began making much more sense…

In a matter of mere minutes, alongside the addition of my very own bodily contents to the toilet water, it had diluted from completely clear to so dark that it appeared to be nearly black, and all at once the only thought that I had going through my mind was the idea that this wasn't good… this wasn't good at all.

So I paused; silent for no more than a second, allowing everything to finally come together all around me so that I turned my body as close to the door as possible, I lifted my head up into the skies, and I screamed; shouting for Brooke so loudly that I wouldn't be surprised if the neighbors themselves heard me.

I scrambled to right myself up from the toilet seat as much as possible, trying desperately to protect my dignity for when Brooke, and most likely Julian came sprinting in here, because the last position that I actually wanted to be in when that happened was sitting on a toilet with my damn pants around my ankles…

And with that motivation in my mind to guide me, I'd somehow managed to stand unsteadily up to my feet where I at least made myself descent for when, as expected, Brooke and Julian barged straight into the bathroom right through the door that had since been replaced from that night right before Christmas when Lucas had been forced to kick it in, with their eyes wide and panic written clear across their faces…

Jesus, I needed to stop having emergencies inside of this damn bathroom.

In near record setting fashion, Brooke had me up, out the door, and admitted inside of the emergency room all within ten minutes… but of course, that was mainly because Julian had acquired this uncanny ability of being able to sprint and carry me at the same time mainly due to all of the times that he'd been forced to do it…

Anyway, a couple of hours worth of IV fluids and a few obnoxious tests later, my legs had remarkably returned to damn near their normal size… at least, normal enough so that I was actually able to walk again.. and although I still wasn't exactly peeing a normal color quite yet, I wasn't peeing what looked like liquid charcoal anymore either, so I really couldn't complain that much…

And as surprised as it made me, I was discharged later that evening with an appointment scheduled for first thing in the morning with Dr. Miller in order to discuss the results of all of the tests I had been given.

And that my friends, is the story of how I ended up here; crammed shoulder to shoulder besides Brooke, Julian, and Victoria inside of Dr. Miller's private office; a room the rough size of a large broom cupboard that was located somewhere within one of the back buildings of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, which, as surprising as this may sound, I had actually never been inside of before.

We'd been sitting in silence for the past several minutes. The room was so quiet that I could actually hear every amplified tick of the clock hanging on the wall above the doctor's head… each second clicking by in a rhythmic motion alongside the movements of my tapping feet against the carpeted floor as I watched Dr. Miller with wide eyes as she thumbed through the folder containing all of the test results that I so desperately wanted to see.

I tried to distract myself as much as possible, my eyes swiveling around the room frantically in order to take in all of the diplomas, the awards, the pictures lining the walls decoratively… An undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan to the doctor's left, an M.D. from New York University to her right… But the thing that struck me the most were all of the letters, the pictures, the drawings… tokens from kids she'd treated in the past wallpapering the drywall to make it something other than a dull, tan box…

White computer paper drawings of scribbled stick figures of small children lying in hospital beds, looking similar only in that they all seemed to be accompanied by a second stick figured image of a taller women with red hair doing something or another to help make them better…

Directly to my right, there was a Polaroid; a picture frozen in time of Dr. Miller with a bright smile across her face and her arm wrapped securely around a small boy who couldn't have been much older than Jamie; his toothless grin and bald head shining brightly underneath the familiar fluorescents of a hospital room… Underneath the picture, there was a small note; recognizable as a letter from his mother judging by that neat, stereotypical maternal handwriting that accompanied it; a message of thanks towards Dr. Miller; a token of appreciation towards how much she'd done for her son in his last few days of life…

I'd found my eyes completely glued to that letter, unmoving from the fading paper until Dr. Miller finally called my attention back to her with a soft clearing of her throat; the first noise that she had made in several minutes… the first noise that any of us had made in several minutes really…

All four of our head snapped to attention at once, eyes staring desperately towards the doctor, begging her for the answers that we all knew that she would have… whether they be good ones or bad.

"Sam…" She turned and addressed me directly; her voice slow and lingering in a manner that I had perfected in reading these past couple of weeks… the news wasn't good… I'd known the second that I looked into her eyes that the news in fact wasn't good at all. "I've been looking over all of the blood and urine samples that we took from you during your ER visit yesterday alongside Dr. Nguyen all morning… Sam I'm to say that it appears to us that the pharmaceutical-based treatments that we've been primarily using in order to treat your kidney problems… well, they haven't been working in the manner that hoped they would."

The possibilities of analyzing her words seemed endless. My heart began to pound inside of my chest, but all the while, I kept a neutral gleam in my face as I attempted to assess exactly what it was that she meant by that and exactly how worried I should be about it.

"All of this blood work, the MRI, the ultrasound that we performed yesterday… it all indicates that your kidneys are continuing to decline…"

I refused to look anywhere around me other than directly at Dr. Miller herself, listening as she continued to skirt around the notion that I was actually doing worse than what she'd hoped for me at this point… I wished that she wouldn't… Honestly, sometimes I just wished that she would chose to not just tell me all of the things that she wanted me to hear and give me the full story…

Didn't these people know this by now? No matter what they had to dish out at me, I would be fine… At least, I would hurt less in her bluntness than I would in her drawing out of this entire thing, subsequently beating the dead horse with it… by the way, that dead horse; yeah, it was me.

"What does that mean exactly?" Brooke asked her, leading me to think that maybe Dr. Miller had in fact just paused for dramatic effect in waiting for somebody to physically ask her the question or something… That maybe, she'd been watching one too many medical dramas on TV… You know, spend a weekend watching reruns of Grey's Anatomy on Lifetime and all of a sudden, you couldn't even give somebody their death sentence without having to be all dramatic about it…

"Well, I was looking over the results with Dr. Nguyen this morning… and Sam… based on these preliminary tests that we took… well we both agree that the extent of your renal problems have progressed into what is called Chronic Kidney Disease… which we've staged based things such as your creatinine levels, your blood urea nitrogen, your acid base levels… at stage four… Basically Sam, it means that you have officially entered a stage of such severe renal impairment that a simply medicinally based treatment path can no longer satisfy in trying to restore your normal kidney health."

"Wait… I… I'm sorry I don't really understand…" Brooke stuttered over her own words, struggling with the idea of how it was possible that something like this could have ever happened under her watch without her so much as suspecting it… "I mean… we've been treating her for over a month for all of this now… She's been on medications… How is it possible that it could have gotten this bad… especially when we haven't even seen her present with any kind of severe symptoms up until now?"

"Brooke, you have to understand… kidney dysfunction is a tricky thing… With Sam's compromised immune system combined with the toll her chemotherapy treatments have already taken on her kidneys well, her body's resources have basically been depleted… It made it much more difficult for her body to continue to sustain her kidneys, even with all the additional medications we were giving her… Plus, most of the earlier symptoms of even the more advanced cases of kidney disease are virtually silent so that everything we'd seen in her previous lab work, we were just accounting for her pre-existing renal disease… that, plus the fact that even the more severe symptoms of chronic renal disease include things like nausea, fatigue, vomiting, anemia, bone pain… everything that is symptomatic of both the leukemia and the chemotherapy treatments… I'm sorry Brooke, but things like this sometimes just happen, usually for reasons that we can't explain… The important thing is that we've located the problem, and we can now go ahead and actively treat it."

"So how do we do that? Treat it, I mean…" My heart froze in response to Brooke's question… I was terrified for the answer, terrified of the thought of being subjected to an even more extensive therapy regimen than I was already on… It was just that… well, I was starting to get the point where I wasn't so sure that I could tolerate any more drugs, any more side effects, any more feelings inside of me screaming that my body would much rather experience the effects of the disease than the effects of the medications supposedly getting me better.

"I think that it's time that we start discussing the option of renal replacement therapy…"

A blank expression came to my face in response to her words. I mean, I know that they were supposed to spark some kind of intense emotion inside of me but I had absolutely no idea what the hell renal replacement therapy even was and therefore, it didn't actually mean anything to me…

I snuck a glance to my left, down the row of people equally as confused as I was on the matter… basically Brooke, Julian, and Victoria all looked exactly the same as how I felt.

"Basically, renal replacement therapy is just another term for dialysis."

She responded to our blank stares with further explanation that caused all eyes to fall on my instantly but I looked away desperately, trying to contort my face in a way that I knew wouldn't have my emotions written all over it so that nobody could see how much my mind was currently racing in a discrete panic at the moment.

"The hopes are that by performing dialysis and giving her kidneys a bit of a break for a little while, combined with the continuous medication that we'll continue to pump her with during the process, we'll be able to bring her renal function back to at least baseline levels without interfering with her chemotherapy treatments in the process either…"

I continued to turn my head further and further away from the doctor in an effort to prevent myself from paying too much attention to her words before they really got to me, but somewhere along that process, I accidentally locked eyes with Brooke; the expressions on our faces matching in terms that made it seem as if we both had a very bad feeling about the way this sounded…

"What happens if it does interfere?"

I was really starting to wish that Brooke would just shut the hell up already and stop asking all of the questions that I was obviously thinking about, but wasn't asking for fear of what the answer would be.

"Then we'll have a much bigger problem on our hands than what we all initially thought."

Do you see what I mean?

"So should we be looking at other options then? I mean… if the chemotherapy and dialysis combined is so risky is there anything else that we can do that poses less of a risk?"

Victoria and Brooke were one in the same, really they were… They're genetic identicalness has been becoming more and more apparent to me with every single day that past to the point that for a little while there, I thought it was actually Brooke that had spoke… Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was actually Victoria.

"There are a couple alternatives…" The doctor assured us but she spoke with an airy tone behind her voice that told me that those alternatives weren't much better than her initial offering… "But Mrs. Davis, I truly do recommend the combination dialysis on top of a less intense chemotherapy regimen the most… What we would do is we'd have her doing the dialysis four or five times a week and in the mean time, she'd be delivered a much less intense dose of chemotherapeutic drugs to help manage the leukemia while simultaneously giving her kidneys time to heal… The only other plausible options that Dr. Nguyen and I were able to come up with… well, they aren't exactly ideal alternatives… what they would basically end up entailing would be to treat one problem and not the other."

"What does that mean exactly?" Brooke asked, subconsciously chewing at her thumb nail in concentration as she took the full whirlwind of options into consideration.

"Well… one thing we could do is to keep trying a pharmaceutical approach to her kidney treatment so that she could remain on the same chemotherapy drugs she's currently being given… but of course, this method has failed Sam once before so there's absolutely nothing to indicate that adding a few extra prescriptions to that list will do anything to improve her condition… especially now that the problem is so exacerbated… On the other hand, we can do the exact opposite. We can start her on dialysis and stop her chemotherapy treatments for the time being to get her on her maintenance therapy… The problem with this is that she's only five consolidation rounds deep, and maintenance chemotherapy has statistically shown to already be much less successful in kids with AML than it is in kids with other forms of leukemia… and with Sam already being under such special circumstances… Listen, I can't tell you guys what to ultimately choose to do, but you know my recommendation… I suggest that you take a day or two to talk it over and come to an agreement."

The doctor finished her small speech with a short nod towards Brooke's general direction that she repeated towards me until the motions of her head faded out in front of us, leaving Brooke and my eyes to lock in silence for a single brief second before all at once even that faded away, leaving nothing but pure chaos in its wake.

Victoria, Brooke, and Julian all began talking at once; shouting so that their voices could be heard over one another's, expressing their different opinions on the matter and their different takes of what I should be doing in order to save my own life, but all at once so that their words just ended up conglomerated into nothing.

They waved their arms dramatically in one another's faces, stared threateningly into each other's eyes, and, in a not so shocking irony, each picked a different view point on the three options Dr. Miller had just laid out to us and attempted to convince the other why that way would be the best for me by any means possible.

I sighed, remaining completely silent amidst the continuous pandemonium surrounding me, choosing instead to look down at my feet and concentrate on the patterns of my shoes so that I could try and ignore the fact that my family was fighting about me all around me…

"Sam… what do you want to do?" Dr. Miller spoke calmly, but still, her voice carried straight over the arguing sounds of everybody else… The funny thing was, that it was only her words that finally made Brooke, Victoria, and Julian pause with the realization that they weren't the only ones who had a say in the matter, because as the subject of that matter, it was me who ultimately held the final decision…

"I wanna do both." I spoke firmly with a stiff nod of my head to support my words, looking only at Dr. Miller, afraid that if I turned towards anybody else, I just would have caught a glimpse of one of them glaring at me with the silent indication that they believed that I had made the wrong choice, and I just couldn't deal with that right now… "I wanna do the dialysis and the chemotherapy… I don't care how long it takes Dr. Miller, I just wanna get better."

I settled backwards against my chair, resting my back comfortably against the cushioned backrest, continuous in my determination to initiate eye contact with absolutely nobody else in this room other than the one woman who could actually process my final decision and do something about it…

I trusted Dr. Miller… I trusted that she would do her best to do me well, I trusted that she truly believed that this was the best option for me to take… Comfort of my decision slowly started to filter through my bones, exemplified only by Brooke after she'd made it clear that she not only trusted Dr. Miller, but she also trusted me as well by reaching over and resting her hand against my knee, giving it the slightest of squeezes in a motion of support that told me that she was going to stay with me no matter what I did, no matter what happened…

And in the long run, that's really what ended up making all the difference in the world to me.

* * *

**HALEY**

I was sitting inside of my empty classroom during one of my rare free periods, my desk cluttered with papers that were stacked in piles that were taller than I was as I scribbled furiously at each one of them in my attempts to catch up on the work that I was so behind on that I didn't even know where to start when my classroom phone rang; shrill and obnoxious from behind me… A greeting in the form of the school secretary calling to let me know that Principal Rimkus wished to speak to me in her office immediately…

Naturally, I was nervous… I mean this wasn't just about me being called urgently down to my boss's office, no, this was something much more serious than that… this was about me being called urgently down to Principal Rimkus' office… I might as well been walking to my own execution

I raised my guard and used all of the natural defense mechanisms that I could think of to prepare as I moved slowly down the hallway, dragging my feet and taking the longest route possible from my classroom to the main office trying to add up all of my recent wrong-doings so that I'd be prepared for whatever it was Rimkus had to dish out at me this time…

Of course, I had the vaguest idea as to the reason behind this meeting, and that had to do with the fact that recently, I think I'd missed more days of school than I'd actually attended…

"You wanted to see me Megan?" The young college intern secretary glanced up in my direction as I walked through the doorway into the main office and up to her desk.

"Yeah Haley, Principal Rimkus wanted to talk to you about something… Hang on I'll let her know that you're here."

I thanked her although my gratitude was empty as she stood from her seat and disappeared around the corner, allowing me to sink my body down into one of the vacant chairs lined across the wall and tap my toes nervously against the carpeted floor as a familiar feeling began creeping slowly up my spine…

You see, lately, I've just been feeling impossibly anxious all of the time; a constant sea of emotions that I never seemed to get any relief from… I was constantly worried about every single aspect of my entire life all of the damn time…

I worried about my job and how it would ever be possible for me to catch up after falling into such a deep hole that I'd dug for myself, I worried about my family; Nathan constantly being away from home for basketball or Jamie constantly running around with his school work, or wanting to go out with his friends, or trying out for that new sports team he just had to be on…

I understood that these were all relatively normal and rational thoughts to have on my mind, but of course, they're only normal when they don't actually become severe enough to give you a physical panic attack… I don't know, I guess that it all started after Sam got sick… something just kind of happened to me, snapped somewhere deep inside of my brain, and for a little while, I was able to handle things on my own… but, well let's just put it this way; as Sam got worse and worse, I did too.

Now every time that Nathan comes home from basketball with a few extra bruises decorating his frame, I panicked that he had fallen ill like Sam… every time Jamie so much as sneezed, I automatically assumed the worst.

I'm now on constant edge, just waiting for disaster to strike… I can't sleep anymore, I'm always fidgety, irritable… everything that I hate the most about myself just seems to come out full swing… the worst part is that there's absolutely nothing I could do about it…

And then, every once in a while but in a frequency that's been growing greater and greater with each passing day, I get those days where it gets so bad that I can't even breathe anymore, leaving a solid, significant block of time in which I feel like I'm about to absolutely die… and then even that only makes things worse.

The biggest bitch of it all is that I can only allow myself to lose control when I'm by myself, because if I'd ever allowed Nathan or Jamie to ever see me like that, well, I wouldn't know what I would do…

Needless to say I've been spending a lot of time alone lately.

In the past three months, I have managed to use up every single one of my allotted sick days in order to spend more time at the hospital, or more time at Brooke's just to help her deal with the overwhelming responsibility of nursing Sam back to health… But I'd ran out of those sick days pretty quickly… These days, I had just taken to using up all of my vacation days instead… of course, the biggest difference I think was that this time, I was just pretending that I was helping Brooke take care of Sam… The reality was she didn't me anymore… she had Victoria now, and Julian who was constantly around now that he wasn't travelling back and forth to L.A. anymore…

No, now I basically just spend my days sneaking off to the docks, or to the River Court, or anywhere really where I could just find a minute or two to actually think without any outside interruptions throwing me off, because let's face it, I'm feeling confused enough as it is already… I didn't need any more of that.

"Haley, Principal Rimkus will see you now."

With a deep breath I stood up, taking the traditional death march around the corner and into the small office where Principal Rimkus was sitting at her desk; spine stiff, hands neatly folded across the top of her desk, and a look on her face that basically told me that I was screwed.

"Principal Rimkus," I nodded politely.

"Sit down Mrs. Scott," She ignored my formal greeting altogether, going straight down to business as she indicated towards the empty chair directly across from her desk.

I complied willingly, lowering my body down into the chair, trying desperately to make myself as comfortable as possible in order to neutralize the beating that I was about to receive as I began toying nervously with my hands and that familiar pounding of my heart within my ribcage jerked my chest rhythmically alongside the pace of my rapid breathing.

"Mrs. Scott I called you in here today to talk with you about your attendance and how it's been… well… slacking lately…" She looked straight down at me, those giant bug eyes popping right out of her head so that she looked like some kind of irate beetle or something…

"I know Principal Rimkus, and I'm sorry but it's just that… well my family… they've had a few emergencies in the past that I needed to attend to so…"

"Your family has seemed to been having a lot of those emergencies Mrs. Scot," She cut me off before I could even finish my sentence, silencing me completely in the shock of how big of a freaking bitch she really was even though I'm not sure why that even surprised me anymore, "But the last I heard Samantha Walker is not a member of your family but still, all of these supposed emergencies seem to point right back to her."

My jaw dropped so low that I swear to you it hit my damn knees directly below me as I felt my blood begin to boil rapidly underneath my skin… I was quite sure that I had never been so pissed off at anybody more in my entire life… not ever.

"Well Principal Rimkus…" I spoke slowly through gritted teeth so that I wouldn't end up saying something that I would regret later although my voice was growing more and more hostile with every syllable I spoke, "You must have heard wrong because Samantha _Davis_ is the daughter of my son's godmother, so yes that does make her a member of my family… She also just so happens to be one of your students; you'd think that you'd care a little bit more that she's currently as sick as she is."

The echo of my voice faded into dead silence as I watched Rimkus' eyes narrow into slits so that eventually it got to the point where I couldn't even make out her pupils anymore.

"I am concerned about Samantha Mrs. Scott…"

I couldn't help the scoff that erupted from my mouth before she could even finish her sentence.

"That must be why you've checked in on her so many times since she's been in the hospital… Oh wait, that's right… you haven't."

"Mrs. Scott I understand that you are very close to Samantha and her family but if you think that that ensures you some kind of special privilege, or if you think that it will make me tolerate the tone in which you are speaking to me right now, you are wrong… I would think that you would be taking this situation more seriously… especially now that your job has been placed under review with the school board."

My face hardened and my mind went blank as I watched her give me a small smirk towards my response to this surprise news… of course, that only made me want to jump over this desk and throttle her even more.

"Consider this a warning Mrs. Scott. Anymore missed days for any supposed emergencies," She raised her fingers, bending them simultaneously in the quotation marks symbol as I felt my fists clenching around the arm rests in a death grip, "And your biggest emergency will be that you are unemployed."

"Fine," I stood from my chair so harshly that the legs scraped against the floor and emitted a loud screech that stung my ears although I chose to ignore it.

"And where are you going Mrs. Scott?" She stood up from her own seat just as I reached her closed office door in preparation to rip it open and walk right through it without so much as a single look back.

I paused before turning to stare at her, watching as she glared me down with an expression that actually made me hate her even more than I already did… if that was even possible…

"I'm sorry Principal Rimkus, you know, I think another one of those family emergencies just popped up… I'm gonna have to go attend to that immediately."

And without so much as another word, I walked out of the door, slamming it behind me and darting out of the office as quickly as I possibly could.

I ran, and without even thinking about it, I ended up just going straight to my car, where I climbed inside of it and slammed the door shut so forcefully behind me that the entire frame shuddered around me…

For a little while, I just sat there; embracing the solitude as the tears slowly began forming along my eyelids and the stress filled my head to the point that I was afraid that it would positively explode…

Then, finally I snapped; and with an elongated, obnoxiously high pitched scream, I slammed my clenched fists against the steering wheel until I felt my knuckles bruise under the impact and I was forced to stop myself before I broke them completely…

And with that, my body fell suddenly, sinking from tense enragement to a loose sense of flaccid defeat in half a second flat, and all at once, the idea that I needed to get the hell out of this parking lot filtered across my over stimulated brain and motivated me to actually move before I caused even more of a scene…

I turned at the keys in the ignition with a shaking hand, and the car was barely even turned on before I pulled out of the parking lot and tore down the street with tears streaming down my face and my lungs hyperventilating so hard I was starting to get light headed so that I suddenly felt very lucky that there weren't very many people out on the road at ten a.m. on a Wednesday morning because if there were, I probably would have killed them…

It was about halfway into the brief drive between the school and my house when I heard my cell phone ring from inside of its makeshift stand inside of my cup holders… And If I wasn't already driving like an intoxicated blind person, I decided to push my luck a little bit further, taking a second to compose myself before reaching down to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Hey Hales, I hope I didn't catch you while you were in class or something… I was wondering if maybe you had a minute."

It was Brooke on the other line thank God, because for a little while there I was afraid that it might have been Rimkus or something, calling to tell me not to bother coming back into work again after what I'd just pulled…

"Brooke hey… no, I'm not in class it's fine… what's up?" I tried my hardest to neutralize my voice but despite my best efforts, I could still hear my own voice stammering and shaking so that I knew that Brooke must have definitely heard it too.

"Are you okay Haley?" My thoughts were confirmed as Brooke deemed the mere sound of my voice as reason enough to bring about an inquiry directed towards my stability.

"Yeah, yeah…" I waved her off quickly, begging myself to relax and regain control as my brain began scrambling for a descent lie that would be good enough to explain the strangeness of my actions, "I'm just a little frazzled that's all… trying to catch up on some school work… I'm just really behind, that's all…"

It wasn't exactly a lie, and maybe that had something to do with the reason as to why Brooke ultimately decided not to push the topic any further than she already had…

"Hey, how's Sam doing by the way?" I snuck the comment in casually… I know that Brooke had been the one to call me and everything, but ultimately, it ended up being me that pushed the topic of conversation because I really just needed Brooke to tell me that Sam was doing alright in order to ease my ever-racing mind…

You see, yesterday, after Brooke had called me to tell me that they had taken Sam to the ER, it triggered something inside of me… something that wasn't good, it wasn't good at all… I had been pestering Brooke to call me and tell me what was going on since then, and I crossed my fingers praying that the news was going to be good the entire time…

"Actually Hales, that's kind of why I was calling you…" Brooke's voice sunk in her delivery and I instantly felt my heart clench even tighter… I was regretting asking, I was regretting answering Brooke's phone call all together, "We just got back from the doctor's office Haley… she told us… well, she told us that the medication that they've been giving Sam for her kidneys hasn't been working… They're gonna start her on dialysis tomorrow and… well we'll just have to take it from there I guess."

Brooke sounded calm in her explanation but I had absolutely no idea how considering the fact that her very words had seemed to snake their way around each one of my vital organs and squeezed…

"Oh my God Brooke I…" I was cut off mid-sentence by a harsh beep echoing through my ear, indicating to me the low battery of my phone before the device glowed brightly for a split second before finally just dying completely.

"Brooke?" I called loudly into my phone but to no avail; she still didn't answer…

"Brooke!" I shouted even louder, my heart thudding against my ribs like a mallet against a xylophone, sending powerful shudders across my entire body that I could feel all the way down into the pit of my stomach.

I needed a better explanation than what Brooke had managed to get in before our conversation was abruptly cut off… I needed more information; I craved to hear it… I begged Brooke to tell me that although Sam seemed to be getting worse now, it was just a minor, unexpected bump in the road… she'll still get better…

My brain felt like it was positively dissolving with the need for this assurance, and with the building frustrations mounting inside of me from not getting what I wanted, I threw my worthless cell phone to my side so hard that it bounced off of the passenger's window and cracked it in a spider-web formation that I barely even noticed as I flexed my foot harder down against the gas pedal.

I drove like even more of a maniac, finally swerving crookedly parked into my driveway, not even bothering to shut my car off before I jumped up from the driver's seat, slamming the door behind me before sprinting up the pathway and into my house, tearing like a hurricane across the length of my home and into the back kitchen area where I ran straight to the dock where I knew my home phone to lay, where I could call Brooke, where I could get the information that I wanted to hear… the only problem was that the phone wasn't there.

Sweat began forming alongside my brow as a result of my frantic movements as I began throwing things across the room in my search, continuously being met with no success…

"Haley?" The chaos caused by my motions attracted Nathan easily… hell, with all of the noise that I was making, I was surprised that half of the town wasn't rushing into my kitchen to ogle over what the hell was going on here, "Haley what are you doing?"

He appeared inside of the doorway, his face contorted into a look of shock in response to my actions as he stared at me with an expression on his face as if he'd never seen me before.

"I'm looking for the phone," I didn't so much as slow down, if anything in fact, Nathan's sudden appearance just made me push harder, "I was on the phone with Brooke and she was talking to me about Sam but then my phone died… I need to call her back Nathan; I need to call her…"

"Haley!" He cut me off mid-speech, his voice emerging with a tone that told me that he was trying to use his words to get me to stop, and although I recognized somewhere in the back of my mind that I should, that I needed to, I just couldn't bring myself to actually do it, until finally, Nathan was finally forced to approach me with the recognition that if he really wanted me to stop, he would have to physically do it himself.

He grabbed onto my by the shoulders, swiveling my body around so that I was forced to face him as I began fidgeting under his strong muscles, restricting the movements I felt such a desperate need to perform.

I could feel the skin around my eyes inflaming and reddening under the tears still streaming down my cheeks. I imagined my mascara streaming down underneath my eyelids; I imagined my hair sticking up frazzled along the length of my scalp… Basically, I pictured insanity and superimposed my face right over it.

"Haley the school just called looking for you…" My heart sunk and my muscles relaxed from inside of Nathan's arms to the point that he was basically holding my body up for me, preventing me from hitting complete rock bottom below me… But now that I'd been caught by him, I felt suddenly trapped, claustrophobic in a way that actually, if possible, made me feel even worse than I already felt… "They told me what happened Haley… Jesus Christ, by the sounds of it you're lucky that they didn't fire you!"

I took a minute or two, allowing my feet to find solid ground again as I lifted myself out of Nathan's arms and attempted to straighten myself out again and put my faux-brave face that I had since mastered on even though I knew that I'd already been exposed as the phony that we both now knew that I was.

"Wow… the school calling home… it makes me feel like I'm in high school again…" I gave a harsh laugh that not even I recognized as coming from my mouth, so I wasn't particularly surprised when Nathan's face didn't return my expression and instead remained one of stony concern.

"Hales… what's going on with you?"

"I don't know Nathan!" I screamed amidst a loud sigh, stepping a few paces backwards away from Nathan. Frustration was suddenly teeming inside of me too fast for me to keep up, but I had so many emotions currently filtering in and out of my head, that I was having a hard time pinpointing exactly who I was trying to blame.

"Well there needs to be something Haley!" I could hear Nathan's frustrations rise alongside of my own, "This isn't like you!"

"What do you want to hear Nathan!" I screamed so loudly the house shook, and even though I hadn't particularly meant to yell at him, I had… I was suddenly very grateful that Jamie was still in school at the moment… "Do you want me to tell you that I am constantly terrified all the damn time? Do you want me to tell you that not a single second goes by where I'm not worried about things that I don't even know about? Or maybe you want me to tell you that I used to be really good at hiding things like this but lately, it just seems like I'm getting crazier and crazier until I can't even control it anymore?"

My words shocked Nathan stupid… I think he had been expecting, or at least hoping that I would have said a lot in response to him, but I'm not sure that he'd thought I'd actually say that much… His jaw slackened as his face continuously contorted in an effort to find an appropriate expression to respond to everything I had just told him.

"Haley," He breathed so heavily that I could physically see his shoulders rise and fall alongside the coordinated motions of his lungs, "Maybe it's time that we found somebody to talk to you about this… you know, somebody who's… professionally experienced with these kinds of things."

My eyes narrowed directly towards his own as I tried not to express the fact that his words just stung me like a slap across the face.

"I'm not crazy Nathan." I practically hissed at him, refusing to break eye contact although he seemed to have different ideas, pulling his own eyes away from my own, unable to face my expression of hatred anymore.

"I know you're not Haley… but you're still hurting and I can't stand to see you like this… Haley there are plenty of people out there who want to help you and you need to take that help… Think of you, Hales… think of Jamie."

"I do think of Jamie!" I yelled so loudly and so unexpectedly that Nathan actually jumped, "I think of Jamie every single second of every single day of my life Nathan! Do you think that I don't worry about how he's doing with all of these things constantly going on around him? Do you think that I'm not running around terrified that something terrible is going to happen to him at any minute! If anything Nathan, it's you that needs to be thinking about Jamie more, it's you that needs to realize how many bad things can happen to him, and it's you that needs to protect him from that!"

"That's not what I… Haley, come on!" He stammered over his words, unsure of exactly what it was that he should be saying to me as I pushed past him and stormed out into the hallway, down towards the front door that I would walk out of and go God only knows where to do God only knows what…

"Haley look at me!" Nathan took a harsh tone with me because he knew that he had to, he knew that it would be the only way that he would ever actually force me to address him.

I turned around sharply, staring into his eyes and watching as his deep brown orbs contorted into an expression full of concern and pain… still panting and out of breath from all of this emotion going on around me, I suddenly allowed my face to fall and my guard to drop… I think that the saddest part of all of this was that I knew I could see Nathan, I knew that I could recognize this man in front of me as my husband who so desperately wanted to take care of me and make everything better again, but I wasn't so sure if he could say the same about me…

I couldn't be sure at all anymore if any of my family could recognize me anymore, because I knew that I sure as hell couldn't even recognize myself these days.


	52. A Million Miles From Yesterday

Chapter 52: A Million Miles from Yesterday, A Million More to Go

**Thursday, February 2****nd****, 2012**

**SAM**

Before the past week or so, I used to have this notion that I had some kind of complete blueprint of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital mapped perfectly out across the entirety of the perimeter of my brain; that I knew every nook and cranny of this entire place; that I could walk around and get to any given spot with my damn eyes closed… But that, like many other notions that I thought I'd once known for absolute certain in my life, was quickly changing…

I guess I never truly realized how little of my knowledge of the architecture of this place extended beyond the main building, particularly the infamous sixth floor, until now as I found myself being dragged from building to building and doctor to doctor in a single effort to try and control the multitude of problems that seemed to be consistently plaguing my ever-weakening body.

This realization struck me suddenly like they usually do in time with Brooke literally dragging me by the arm down the crowded building just a few blocks down the street from my normal home that had been designed specifically for people looking for outpatient renal replacement therapy… people who, as of yesterday, I suddenly became one of.

In these new and unfamiliar surroundings, I found myself becoming very self conscious, very aware of the fact that my problems were obvious, and the intentions of my visit were clear… I haven't felt this responsive to my physical appearance since that time I'd left the hospital after my very first round of chemotherapy…

I kept just behind Brooke, close to her hip in an effort to sandwich myself protectively between her and Julian right behind me, being sure to avert my eyes constantly downwards the entire time just to avoid all of the gazes of strangers that I knew were pointed right at me.

I suddenly couldn't help but wish very much so that I had thought to wear a paper bag over my head or something… it probably would have attracted less attention towards me anyway… at the very least I wished I'd been smart enough to wear a damn hat or something in a more well-thought effort to try and conceal the more obvious afflictions left by my illness…

But it had been an unusually hot February day this morning when we'd left the house, and I already positively despised wearing hats to begin with… so, obviously not thinking ahead well enough to predict a moment such as this one, I had stupidly decided to just free-ball it, leading me into this situation not so much to be desired… becoming the elephant in the room, the single outcast amongst the group of conformists…

Okay, so that was being dramatic, but you get the point.

"Hi, my daughter Samantha Davis has an appointment with Dr. Nguyen at 10 to start her on dialysis today…" Brooke stopped her rapid motions abruptly in front of the receptionist desk so that I didn't have time to process the sudden cease in movement and crashed right into her… But I don't think she even noticed, at least, she didn't make any move to indicate she did as she spewed her frantic words tainted with nerves over towards the poor, unsuspecting secretary behind the desk and pulled me closer into her side by the shoulder just so that she could prove my existence or something towards the lady…

"Oh… right, Dr. Nguyen is expecting you Samantha. If you want to follow me, I'll get you into a room right away." She uprooted herself from her chair behind her computer and walked behind the desk instantly, indicating for us to follow her lead as she began down the hallway… Oh the benefits of being a cancer patient… you never have to wait for anything.

The three of us followed her down the length of the hallway, passing along rows and rows of chairs, some occupied with individuals young and old tied down to their seats by machines continuously sweeping their very own blood into and out of their body, others empty just leaving me wondering which of these chairs were destined for me.

Ultimately as it turned out though, none of them were, because after a brief walk, we eventually bypassed all of the other patients of this fine ward and rounded into a large room at the isolated far corner of the hallway.

"Okay Samantha, this is where you will be today. Just have a seat and Dr. Nguyen will be with you in just a moment." She motioned towards a large cushioned chair that looked more like a dentist chair than a hospital bed in the corner of the room and I complied to her instructions willingly although I couldn't help but wonder what the hell made me so special to have my own private room while meanwhile everybody else had to suffer through the process of not only having to go through dialysis, but also having to watch the other poor souls, some even more unfortunate than yourself going through the very same thing.

It wasn't ten minutes that the not-as-familiar-as-it-probably-should-be face of Dr. Nguyen knocked awkwardly against the half-open door to make his presence known before sneaking into the room just as I was truly beginning to get myself settled down.

"Good morning Samantha, how are you feeling today?" He asked the question with a forced tone of concern that made me distinctly aware of the fact that he must have learned the concept of bedside manner from a rock or something…

"Just great,"

"Good, good…" He passed over my response airily as he continued to flip through the various pages of my chart, indicating to me that he clearly hadn't even been paying attention to my answer well enough to notice the blatant sarcasm prominent behind my voice.

"Okay," He established the structure of his all work and no play style of business instantly, sitting himself down on top of the empty swivel chair that had been besides my bed/chair thingy. "So I'm not sure exactly how much Dr. Miller actually told you about what we'll be doing here today when you went to see her yesterday, but what we're going to be doing today is get you started on what is called haemodialysis… Basically we'll insert a catheter into your forearm at two different sites, one of which will deliver your blood directly into the dialysis machine and the other which will bring it back into your body… Basically when it's in that big machine behind you there, your blood will be processed and cleaned of any additional fluids and toxins, and then it will be brought back inside of your body."

I felt myself glancing subconsciously to my right towards the giant machine that was easily the rough equivalent of my height and probably about twice my weight… I couldn't help but think that if this stupid thing was supposed to be acting as my makeshift kidney for the next couple of months then why the hell was it so big… I mean maybe it was just me, but aren't kidneys small? Shouldn't artificial kidneys be too then?

"So I know that this all seems like a lot right now, but what will happen is you'll come down here to do all of this four times a week, and each time it will probably last somewhere between three to four hours… but the good news is that in the meantime, you'll still be able to carry on with any other treatments that you may be receiving in terms of your chemotherapy."

I looked up at him with a blank, and genuinely confused expression prominent across my face… I'd barely latched onto a single damn word that he said, but of course, per usual, he continued to carry on as if he hadn't noticed that the expression on my face was the rough equivalent to one I would wear had I just been beaten over the head with a blunt object… Actually, I was starting to get the impression that he was so un-observant that he actually hadn't noticed…

"Okay, so we want to get you started here basically right away, so the first thing that we're gonna be doing is to insert the catheter into your arm. Now usually with patients of your general age group what we do is insert a permanent catheter throughout the jugular vein within the patient's neck or chest directly into the superior vena cava, but because…"

"Because I already have one there…" I finished his sentence for him without particularly meaning to speak out loud, and I quickly acknowledged this brief lapse of self control by opening my eyes wide and flashing a sheepish, apologetic look towards Brooke who was glaring at me warningly as to let me know that unlike myself, she was actually desperately trying to latch onto every word that this doctor had to say without me sneaking my own commentary in between…

"Right, because you already have one there…" He paused, and for the briefest of seconds, I could have sworn that I heard his voice dip in an expression of sympathy so that I was suddenly so shocked with the idea that he might have actually had an emotional capacity beyond that of a blank sheet of paper that I was temporarily left speechless, "We'll be putting a temporary line into your forearm."

He raised his own arm up towards me, motioning quickly with a flick of his fingers for me to extend my appendage in his general direction, so I obliged, offering him my gift in the form of my skeletal left arm as he pulled a black permanent marker out of the left breast pocket of his lab coat and uncapped it.

"The first tube that goes in will be the one taking your blood out of your body and that will go in somewhere around here," He drew a small black **X** in the center of the underside of my arm, directly over a slightly protruding vein, "And then the second tube, the one that brings your blood back into you after it's all filtered out will go here." He drew a second x just an inch or two below the first… "The lines will come out at the end of each session and then we'll just have to do it again at the beginning of each new one… I know that it seems like a lot of needle pricks and invasive procedures, but considering the hopes are that this whole situation will merely be temporary, Dr. Miller and I are hesitant to put a more permanent line in place just yet… How does all of this sound to you Samantha?"

If he wanted the God's honest truth the whole thing sounded crazy to me… I felt like some sort of obscure science experiment gone wrong, the guinea pig destined for some horrid, under the radar case study or something, but I put my brave face on, because like most of the things that I'd been objected to these past few months, this was just another one of those things that I just had to do…

"It sounds fine."

"Okay, so I'm gonna go get ready to get you all set up over here and after that you'll be all set to go… so I'll be right back, okay?"

"Take your time…" I muttered, watching as he stood and brushed quickly past Brooke and Julian without so much as another word before disappearing completely out the door.

"Are you okay Sam?" Brooke asked me the second that she was positive that Dr. Nguyen was completely out of ear shot, just about the same time that I had taken too distracting my wandering attention by playing with my hands below me…

"I don't like that guy," I sighed, feeling selfish for releasing such a strong complaint but at the same time relieved to have finally just voiced my opinion on the matter.

"Sam… I know that Dr. Nguyen is kind of… well… monotone…" She searched for an appropriate word to use that would be more polite than the one that I was currently thinking of, ultimately settling on an adjective that was the understatement of the century if you asked me.

"I'd get further talking to the freaking wall!" I hadn't meant to yell at her but my pent up frustrations managed to come right out in my tone of voice, a characteristic that was all too common for me, so I knew Brooke wouldn't get offended even though I also knew she wasn't going to take my words lying down.

"Okay, first of all Sam, watch your language, second of all, I know your frustrated, and I know that this situation sucks, but we need to get through this together, as a family okay? And for the record, I know that talking to him is like talking to a wall, but Sam he really does want to see you get better and he's good at what he does and I need you to be in the best care humanly possible so that means we're both just gonna have to suck it up and stick around with him… just think of it as a little extra motivation to get better faster, right?"

I rolled my eyes towards her attempted humor, not particularly because I didn't appreciate her trying to make me feel better about all of these things going around me, but because I knew that nothing she did or said could ever make me feel any better about this…

"Hey," Brooke called my attention back onto her when I simply responded to her previous words with a huff and a cross of my arms as I turned my head determinedly away from her, "This isn't permanent Sam, you won't be doing this forever you know…"

I knew that she was right… somewhere deep down in the back of my mind I knew that she was right when she told me that I wasn't going to be doing this for the rest of eternity… but forever and the rest of my life were two completely different things, and if things didn't start going my way soon… well let's just say that some days, it really did feel like maybe, just maybe I was actually going to be doing this forever… and who knows, maybe even beyond that.

"I know…" I sighed, choosing to agree with Brooke's words strictly for simplicities sake, "It just feels that way sometimes, you know?"

"Yeah… yeah, I know," Brooke nodded her head back to me without a single word otherwise on the matter, and honestly, she was probably the single only other person in the entire world that I would actually believe that answer from because Brooke was the only one around who I knew was trapped inside of this too… Brooke was the only one who was locked inside of this hospital with me, she was the only one who was just as sick as I was, the only one who got better when I got better and got worse when I got worse…

"Okay Sam…" The doctor's re-entry alongside a tray containing a plethora of weird looking items that I knew he was looking to insert into my arm at the current moment wasn't even enough to break the deadlock eye contact I had with Brooke at the moment… In fact, the only thing that ultimately got me to turn away was her short nod of the head; the slightest of indications that it was going to be okay, that she was right here… "Are you ready?"

"I'm ready as I'll ever be I guess…" I sighted out my forced response as the doctor sat himself down in the chair he seemed to have just abandoned…

"Perfect, then let's get you started shall we?" I couldn't help but wonder if I could have stalled this whole process any longer if I simply told him the truth and said that I was nowhere near ready… "What arm do you write with Sam?"

"Right,"

"Alright… then we'll use your left arm for this okay?" I nodded as he indicated silently for me to hand over the aforementioned limb which conveniently was already graffitied with the permanent marker indicated insertion sites he'd drawn down the length of it mere minutes ago.

I complied willingly despite the fact that everything inside of me was just screaming at me to get up and run… I could feel my pulse increase rapidly within each one of my pressure points, my blood pressure sky rocket as he handled my arm with the gentlest of touches and positioned it to his liking against the arm rest.

Besides me I managed to catch through my peripherals the image of Brooke subconsciously scooching her chair closer towards my side and reach down to grab onto my hand without even fully realizing what it was that she was doing.

I couldn't help but smile despite myself; after all, Brooke was intolerably squeamish in these types of situations, and even though I personally had long since gotten used to the needle pricks and invasive procedures that were par to the course of dying, I didn't think that Brooke ever quite did… In times like these, sometimes I thought that Julian and I comforted Brooke more than she comforted me, the thing was, I think that that actually made me feel even better.

"Okay Sam, the first thing I'm gonna do here is inject a local anesthetic into your arm okay… It's only 2% Lidocaine so you know the drill, the numbness should go away on its own within the next half hour or so…" He lowered the tiny syringe consisting of the numbing solution that had saved my life on more than one occasion already and slid it underneath the skin of my arm, pressing at the plunger so that I felt a sudden rush or warmth and then I just felt nothing at all… I didn't even feel the prick, but somewhere to my right, Brooke clutched at my hand even tighter than she already was…

"Sam can you feel any of this at all?" I turned away from Brooke and back towards the doctor, watching closely as he poked gently at my arm with the point of a needle roughly the size of a small tree branch that I knew he intended on putting inside of me… I was suddenly even more grateful for the Lidocaine than I had been even before this…

"No," I shook my head, staring mesmerized at the doctor's motions as the feeling in my arm filtered to one of sudden weightlessness so that it gave me the bizarre notion that my arm wasn't even attached to my body anymore even though I clearly knew that it was.

"Okay Sam, I'm gonna put the first needle in now… you might feel a little bit of pressure in your arm but it shouldn't hurt okay, so if it does I want you to tell me and I'll stop."

"Okay…" I nodded my head confidently but at the same time, released a shaky breath that counteracted all of my movements… but if anybody heard it, they didn't mention anything, because we all just sat there; lingering in a tense silence as we held our collective breaths and watched with wide eyes as the doctor slowly lowered the needle.

The buildup to it all had been so intense that when the actual event proved to be nothing more than uneventful, I was actually sort of disappointed… In fact, the only thing that did happen was that I got to watch as my own blood instantly flew up the length of the clear tubing upon needle piercing vein, so that for a second, it so starkly resembled a mere blood draw that I'd almost forgotten the true intentions of my trip altogether…

"Did you feel that at all Sam?"

"No," I responded airily, my eyes firmly affixed on the fascinating site of the pathway of my own blood as it stopped flowing only upon reaching the clamp Dr. Nguyen had placed in the line only a few inches away from its entrance point against my skin.

"Okay Sam, the next one's going in now…" It was the same thing, the same story all over again, but at this phase of the game, I'd gotten so used to repetition that I barely even noticed.

"Alright Sam, you're all set up over here…" He taped the tubing securely against my forearm, insisting that it wasn't going to be going anywhere anytime soon although a part of me wished that it would somehow magically just kind of… fall out.

"Now what we're gonna do here is to simply just let the lines run…" He spoke as he worked, releasing the firm clamp from around the first line that he'd inserted inside of my arm so that the blood shot rapidly down the length of the free tubing, directly into the awaiting machine…

I watched the trail of red without so much as blinking as it reached the circular pump and filtered around it waiting… always waiting for it to return through to the other side, straight back into my awaiting vein.

"Ah, there it is; it's coming back now…" He pointed out the obvious, because we had all been staring so intently at the tubing just waiting for this exact moment that it would have been impossible to miss it… There was a collective gasp as our breaths hitched inside of our throats, just watching as the stream of blood made its return back out of the machine, running closer and closer to that return port in my lower arm…

I was so convinced that there would have been at least some type of dramatic response towards the official beginning of me starting this supposedly elaborate process… that maybe the sky would fall down, the power would go out, or at the very least, the world would just end completely, that when the only thing that happened upon my body completing this first of many of these kinds of cycles was a strong whooshing sensation that originated from the base of my arm and travelled up my very spine itself, I was more surprised than I probably would have been had the world actually ended or something like that…

"Okay Sam, I'm going to get you all turned on over here and then you will be all set…" He muttered mainly to himself as he began poking firmly at a few buttons over on the touch screen displayed prominently across the top of the dialysis machine before finally turning back towards me… "You'll be all done in four hours okay? I'll be coming back around to check up on you in a few minutes so until then, if you need anything at all I want you to press the nurse call button."

"Will do," I sighed steeply, leaning my body backwards against the surprisingly comfortable headrest behind me, relaxing against the chair figuring that if I was gonna have to be sitting here attached to the wall for the next four hours, I might as well do everything that I could do to enjoy it…

I followed his form as it moved slowly back into the hallway, shutting the door behind him so that suddenly, it was only me, Brooke, and Julian…

"You did great Sam…" Brooke muttered to me, only finding the confidence to release her death grip against my now sore right hand when she knew that the doctor was safely gone…

"You too Brooke," I muttered, giving her the smallest of smirks before matching Julian's gaze, identical to my own in his expression of mutual humor in poking fun of Brooke without her even knowing… but of course, I couldn't help but think that the expression on my face couldn't have been any further from what I had actually been feeling at this point.

* * *

It took me less than a single hour into my very first dialysis session to learn that my previous notion that I would be simply sitting here waiting patiently for all of this to be just done and over with was going to be a feat that would be much easier said than it would actually be done.

There had been a dull migraine formulating against the back of my head for hours now; since way before Dr. Nguyen so much as inserted a single needle into my system… but now as time gradually progressed, despite a constant flow of fluids continuously being added directly into my blood line due to the nurse's fear that my headache was actually a symptom of dehydration, it persisted, and in fact, it had only gotten worse, hitting its peak at the approximate one hour mark of my session…

"Sam are you okay?"

I'd been doing pretty well in hiding my growing discomfort thus far, and don't get me wrong, my threshold for pain tolerance was quite high, especially at this stage of the game, but suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, there was a flash of white-hot pain that flashed across my skull as my senses slowly began to shut off and nothing but blackness swarmed in front of my eyes even though they both remained firmly open.

I had turned off all my connections with the outside world in an instant of time that had passed by so quickly, I almost missed it… and even though I wasn't exactly sure what had just happened to me, or for how long it lasted, I knew that judging by the looks on Brooke and Julian's faces when I started coming to again, I was starting to get the notion that it must have been pretty severe…

"Sam?" My eyes first started focusing on basic blurry shapes and a few indistinct colors as my ears started recognizing only the dimmest of sounds once again… The first cognitive observation that I'd actually been able to piece inside of my mind was the fact that Brooke was screaming out my name, begging my eyes to focus on her own as Julian jabbed repetitively at the nurse call button, begging her to move faster….

"Sam look at me… can you hear me? Sam!" Her voice sounded terribly panicked; shaking and rising in volume and inclination as she attempted to force me back into a state of attention by grasping onto my shoulders and shaking my body harshly so that I could literally feel my head rattling around inside of my skull.

"Brooke… Brooke stop, I'm okay, I'm okay." I pushed my body forcefully out of her grasp because I was terrified that if she kept shaking me at the rate she was, I would physically pass out from a combination of the extent of dizziness that I was currently feeling alongside the brutal pain in my head.

"Sam are you okay in here?" Brooke's response was intercepted by the nurse as she came scrambling into my room in response to Julian's persistence in calling out to her.

"There's something wrong," Brooke broke her own analysis of the situation between the nurse's question and my own response before I could so much as open my damn mouth, "She just… I don't know… she kind of passed out… no, that's not right… she went sort of catatonic or something for a minute or so and then she was just… fine."

The nurse turned towards me quickly, stepping away from Brooke in order to approach me as I continued to cradle my aching head between my two hands, still in too much pain to argue that I was just fine.

"Alright Sam… here, just try and relax for me… can you lay down here for a second?" She helped guide me gently backwards against my bed, lowering it downwards until I was flat on my back and free to curl automatically up into a protective fetal position that nurtured the pain suddenly radiating throughout the entirety of my body.

"Okay Sam… what's going on honey?" Her words pierced my skull, magnified tenfold as she shone a light directly into my eyes trying to check the reactions of my pupils… but she might as well have been stabbing daggers directly through me head or something the amount of pain it caused me…

"I don't know," I muttered, tears of pain stinging harshly across the back of my voice, "I've had this headache… all day long and it just suddenly got… it got really bad…"

"Alright Sam… I know you're in a lot of pain right now honey, but I want you to try and relax as much as you can okay? I'm going to take a few vital readings to try and see what's going on here and after that, we'll be able to do something about all of this…"

I didn't respond, sparing her the need to continue speaking as to not waste any precious time as she worked with rapid diligence, moving across my body with a certain amount of grace as she compiled a collection of the physical description of my ever faulty bodily function as it appeared on the computer screen in front of her, emerging in a series of numbers and symbols that I could only pray would tell her exactly what was wrong with me just so that she would be able to actually fix it.

"Alright Sam so what this is looking like to me is that you're just a little bit dehydrated… so this is what I'm gonna do here, I'm gonna lower the amount of fluids being removed just a little bit more okay? Now I know that your head is hurting you pretty bad right now but just give it 15 to 20 minutes to kick in okay? If nothing changes within a half an hour or so just give me a call, alright and we'll try and do something else for you."

With my eyes till firmly closed, the only noise that I could bring myself to actually release in response to her words of wisdom was the briefest of grunts that poised no distinguishable characteristics as to let her know whether or not I'd fully understood everything that she'd just said to me… But thankfully Brooke was there to translate for me, emitting her own words of thanks and understanding, guiding the nurse from the room before returning instantly to my side as if the two seconds that she'd stepped a foot or so away from me was two seconds too long, one foot too far…

"Do you need anything Sam?" She asked me, scrambling just to find something to do with her hands, a characteristic nervous habit that lead her to feel compelled to perform any sort of endless motion.

I squinted open a single eye, trying to let as little light into my senses as humanly possible, relieved for what was probably the first time ever, to find Brooke hovering over me to the point that she was blocking out most of the rays anyway.

"Are you okay Brooke?" I responded to her question with a question of my own, my words eliciting a confused reaction from Brooke, causing her to raise a single eyebrow up at me as she pretended as if she didn't know what I was getting at.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" I wasn't sure whether or not that was Brooke's own effort to retort the exact same question I'd just asked her right back at me, but I didn't take it as such because there was something blazoning deep in the back of Brooke's eyes that made me know that there was something else on her mind.

"You've been asking me that all day long," She had tried to change the topic, but I pushed her backwards so that I suddenly felt as if the two of us had switched places or something considering this conversation as usually going the other way around… "What about you?"

We entered into a battle of words, each looking for something else that could ultimately defeat the other.

"I'm okay…"

"You don't look okay." I was only pushy because I had learned how to do so from the very best, but Brooke only looked downwards at me, putting the fakest of smiles on her face that I could tell she hoped I wouldn't see just because my eyes were merely half open.

"Sam… you've been spending way too much time with me lately, you're even starting to sound like me."

"And you're starting to sound like me," I mumbled mainly to myself, not really sure whether or not I'd wanted her to actually hear me. "I don't know, Brooke… you just seem really… flustered today, that's all."

"Sam…" She sighed heavily, fully recognizing the fact that she had caught herself in a trap but simultaneously unsure exactly how she should go about expressing herself, "It's just… it's frustrating sometimes to see you like this… so sick I mean… especially when I can only sit here without being able to do anything about it."

She tried to laugh off the seriousness of her revelation but her words still struck me with a pang of guilt that originated so deeply down inside of my stomach that I had the strangest feeling that I would never be able to get rid of it.

"I'm sorry…" I sighed out my apology and she shook her head at me instantly, reaching down to place a firm, supportive hand between the space between my neck and shoulder, squeezing gently, yet still tightly just so that I would know that whatever she had to say next, she meant it.

"Don't be sorry Sam; it's not your fault… I never want you to think that it's your fault, okay?"

She was determined to get her point across but a part of me still felt as if it was, after all, if it wasn't for me getting sick, none of us would have ever been in this mess to begin with.

"I see that look Sam," Brooke called me back to attention with a small smile, "I'm serious, stop blaming yourself okay… sick or not, I'll always be worried about you… I'm your mom that's what I'm supposed to do."

I smiled briefly upwards towards her, but the second our eyes met, I was forced to look away awkwardly as I thought about what Brooke had just told me… I thought about what her words meant, I thought about what she meant…

It's not exactly a secret that growing up I never really had anybody around to ever tell me something like that before… I'd lived the majority of my life surrounded by nothing but pessimists, people who used to always tell me that if I ever truly found somebody who I loved with all of my heart, then I would just let them go because people like me… people who have more pain in their lives than most others could even keep track of always just ended up transferring all of that pain onto the people that they love…

It was the only lesson that I had ever taken away from living with any one of my foster parents, and ironically, now that I was finally with that one person that I truly loved, that I truly cared about, watching as she grabbed spare blankets and wrapped them comfortably around my body, it was the only thing that I could think of…

Everything inside of me was screaming at me to let her go before I hurt her even more… I don't know, maybe I was being selfish, maybe I was being unfair, but I'd never had anybody like Brooke before, and now that I did, I couldn't help but push that voice aside and never let her go.. I guess all I could think of now was how much I hoped that that held true the other way around too.

* * *

**BROOKE**

There was something strangely hypnotic about sitting in a chair besides your daughter's hospital bed watching as a machine filtered her blood continuously into and out of her body.

Wow… I never thought that I would ever say that before… hell, I never thought that I would ever find myself in a situation where I would actually have to say that, but here I am, and as nervous as I had been this morning, I was actually surprised by how melodically soothing all of this actually was… I mean, now that Sam was peacefully asleep and not practically crying from the amount of pain that she had been in like she was before…

It had literally cleaved my heart into two distinct pieces, seeing Sam like that had, after all, I felt like the last time I had seen Sam that sick and in that much pain was when I'd been sitting at her bedside watching her barely cling to her life as she fought the pneumonia infection ravaging her exhausted, battered body… and I'm not sure about everybody else, but I personally knew for a hard fact that I wasn't ready to go back to that quite yet…

These past few days, seeing Sam start to fall into a pattern of being that sick all over again has kind of thrown me out of the loop by bringing me into this strange sense of a déjà-vu-like experience that I didn't enjoy in the slightest… It made me feel nuts, it made me feel like I was slowly falling into a bottomless pit of insanity and worst of all it made me feel helpless,

Because if there was one thing that I absolutely hated feeling when it came down to Sam, it was helpless.

But she was asleep now; her face contorted into a calming sense of a painless bliss that I knew had a lot more to do with the painkillers they'd given her over an hour ago now than it did her actually feeling better… But still, the point was that it was one of those rare moments that that I actually felt as if I could spare taking some time to actually relax… for at least a little while anyway…

"Hey, are you okay?"

Julian had been sitting next to me embracing the silence that has plagued us with our hands unconsciously clasped around each other's for comfort for the past several minutes now, but I think that finally, he just couldn't take it anymore or something, and had to ask me the question before he could watch me plunge off the deep end anymore than I already was or something…

"Huh?" I snapped my head up into a look of attentive focus, ripping my eyes off of the rotating wheel circulating Sam's blood for her for the first time in what seemed like forever.

"You're just looking a little pale that's all."

"Oh…" I muttered… I'd spent this entire morning so wrapped up in worrying about Sam that I'd actually almost forgotten that I'd woken up this morning feeling slightly sickly, a feeling that had been getting progressively worse and worse all morning…

When I got up in the morning, it was with this unsettling feeling of nausea deep within the pit of my stomach, one that had gotten so intense at one point it nearly sent me straight to my knees… But ultimately I had prevailed against the power of the vomit at just about the same time that my head began to twinge with one of those tension migraines that I had become so prone to lately…

I'd passed it off as nerves instantly, playing it off as my own worry for Sam as I prepped her to begin this first day of dialysis… and still, as the familiar feeling slowly began to run through my bloodstream once again and my tired body slid down the length of my chair more and more with each passing second, I still didn't quite think that that didn't have something to do with it…

"I'm fine," I sighed, raising myself upwards in my chair in a subconscious effort to at least look the part that I was trying to play here, "It's just all this stress… this stuff going on with Sam… It's all starting to get to me a little bit I think."

I could tell instantly by the look in his eyes that he didn't believe me… I couldn't blame him really, the three of us have been spending way too much time with each other lately… we could read a lie on each other's faces from a mile away.

Hell, you'd have to be trained as a damn CIA agent to get away with anything between the three of us.

"You know Brooke, if you're sick around Sam and she picks up whatever it is that you have, it could make her really sick again… and you know as much as I do that something as simple as a cold would be enough to kill her at this point…"

He tried to guilt trip me into starting to consider my own health instead of just thinking primarily of Sam's, reminding me that when you truly thought about it, the two of those things really did go hand-in-hand…

But I didn't like to think about it that way because I never wanted to think that my persistence in fighting alongside Sam in the battle for her own life would actually be what ultimately killed her…

Julian's words struck me with a strong pang of guilt, the idea ripping through the back of my mind that I knew, and that Julian knew that I would never do anything to ever intentionally hurt Sam… but still, something was screaming at me from inside of my skull that no matter the risk, no matter what could _maybe_ happen, to leave Sam now when she needed me the most would just be impossible, irresponsible even… even more irresponsible than not leaving her would be.

"I… I…"

"Hi guys, sorry to interrupt…" I was spared the need to come up with a viable, believable excuse as to why I should stay firmly attached to the seat I'd been sitting in for the past two hours by Sam's nurse, Sue, who had been filtering in and out of Sam's room to check on her all day long, "But I was just talking to Dr. Nguyen and he wanted to keep Sam here at least over night just so that we can keep an eye on her vitals tonight because she took to the dialysis so hard today."

I released an audible sigh; Sam wasn't gonna like that one bit when she found out, but still, I couldn't lie and pretend as if after what I'd just seen her go through today, that I didn't think that the idea wasn't for the very best.

"Ms. Davis are you feeling okay, you're looking a little bit pale?" She echoed the exact same words that Julian had just said to me not five minutes ago now and I couldn't help but flash Julian a subconscious glance to see what his response to her words would be…

As expected, he was giving me that characteristic "I told you so" type glare, but it wasn't one of those cocky expressions of him simply trying to bust my balls in order to prove his point, no, it was more like a look of concern, him begging me to consider the statement now that it seemed to be the popular observation.

"I'm fine, I'm fine…" But now that I was outnumbered in the vote on my own health, it was beginning to get harder and harder for me to convince not only everybody around me of that fact, but myself as well.

"You know Ms. Davis, we have a lot of parents in here who are all determined to be there for every single minute of their child's care and I know the feeling, trust me I do, but we always tell them all the exact same thing… you have to take care of yourself too… don't worry, we'll take good care of Sam for you."

I smiled appreciatively up at the nurse; you see, it didn't take me very long into Sam's very first hospitalization here to learn that it might have been the doctor's carrying Sam's pathway to health for her, but it was the nursing staff that carried not only that, but everything else as well… They were all godsends, really they were…

"Yeah… Brooke you should head home and get some rest. Listen, I'll stay here and watch Sam for the night… You go home, get some sleep, and when you feel better in the morning you can come back, and we'll all still be right here." Julian jumped quickly onto the 'let's get Brooke the hell out of here' bandwagon, pushing for my departure so that it was starting to get harder and harder to deny the fact that I knew that he was right.

"Yeah… yeah you're right…" I caved easily after only a couple of incredibly tense seconds, standing from my seat with a stretch so that I could attempt and relax my muscles, cramped stiff from sitting down for so long.

"Will you call me when she gets done?"

"Of course I will." Julian nodded his head assuring, his voice sounding as if he'd thought me stupid to even think I had to ask the question at all.

"But if she wakes up before then, make sure that she calls me okay?" I spewed a multitude of orders for Julian to consider out of my mouth even though I knew that Julian would take good care of her no matter what.

"I will…" He probably thought that I was crazy, but he also knew that I was in a fragile state of mind at the moment, so he played along with my game, and I truly did love him even more for it.

"Okay…" I paused briefly, struggling in my effort to come up with things to say because now that my jacket was on, my bag was around my shoulder, and I'd given Julian a simple set of ground rules, I was out of things to do that could possible stall my departure any longer, "So I guess I'll just… talk to you later then."

"Yup… and I promise, I will call you the second that she's finished with her dialysis… or the second she wakes up, whichever comes first." He repeated my former instructions just to prove to me that he'd gotten them down pat.

I took a step backwards, ready to leave but at the very last minute, went back on my own motion, retreating forward where I fell into Julian's awaiting arms and buried my head into his chest in order to allow the comfort of his touch to fully charge me considering I'd have to go an entire night alone without it.

"I love you." I mumbled into his shirt, seemingly unable to pull my face up from it.

"I love you too." He told me, forcing my body away from his because he knew that if he didn't do at least that for me, I would have just stayed here all day long, "No go; get yourself to CVS or something, pick up some medicine, feel better, and then I'll see you tomorrow okay?"

He gave me distinct instructions before lowering his head in order to offer me a quick kiss goodbye although it was nothing as elaborate as I would have liked…

"Okay I'll see you later." I took a couple of seconds in order to build up the motivation that I knew I needed to leave both him and Sam, and I must admit it took a lot, but eventually, I'd managed it.

I followed his direction carefully, driving myself home but not before making a pit stop to the local pharmacy first… but while I was there it wasn't Tylenol or Nyquil or any sort of other ridiculous over the counter drug that I went to go pick up, no… instead, I bought something else… because as much as I was trying to convince myself that what I thought was making me sick wasn't actually what was making me sick, I was quickly running out of excuses, and as terrifying as it was to me, it was time to actually stop and face facts.

When I opened the door and walked back into my own home, I was a little bit surprised to see Victoria on the couch watching TV… although I did have a theory that Victoria secretly did like my house much more than she actually liked her own…

"Brooke," She sounded just as shocked to see me as I was to see her as she stood up and walked over to meet me halfway, "Where's Sam and Julian… I wasn't expecting you guys to be home so soon."

Her voice presented as nervous, afraid that just because I had come home not only by myself, but ridiculously earlier than expected, that something must have gone terribly wrong…

"Sam and Julian are still at the hospital, Sam wasn't done with her dialysis yet and besides, they're keeping her overnight because they said she was a little dehydrated… Julian sent me home because I was feeling sick."

"Are you okay?" Her attention shifted onto me instantaneously because with everything going on right now with Sam, our fears when it came down to illness with any of us were exponentially heightened to the point of a panic… None of us were very soon to forget the fact that what had began with us thinking that Sam had nothing more than a bad viral infection had actually turned out to be something much, much worse…

"Yeah I'm fine, I'm fine." I waved off Victoria's concern because I knew that it was unwarranted, "I'm just gonna get some sleep okay?"

"Yeah," Victoria replied to me, a note of uncertainty still prominent in her voice, "Yeah that's fine… but I'll be here if you need anything okay?"

She called the last of her words after me as I was already well on my way to my bedroom and I didn't even bother to turn around; instead, I offered her the simplest of waves that I hoped she would be able to translate as an affirmative response as I turned into my bedroom and shut the door softly behind me.

For a while I just stood there, back against the door and breathing heavily as I willed myself forward to do what I knew I had to do.

It took me nearly five whole minutes to finally gain the strength in my muscles to will my body forward, but even after I'd done that, it had taken me equally as long to force myself to sit down against my bed, equally as long to finally pull the CVS bag hidden away in my purse out, and double the total time of all of that combined to regain control of my breathing long enough to find the strength inside of me to will my hand into the plastic bag and pull out its contents…

And still, after all of that, I couldn't even bring myself to so much as glance down at the pregnancy test that I was currently clutching onto in a solid death grip between my two shaking hands.


	53. Don't Believe That It Isn't There

**Alright, so for all of you who have been waiting so patiently with me these past 53 chapters, this is the beginning of that big Brulian + Sam arc that I've been talking about but haven't really been doing anything about for the past few chapters so I hope it becomes worth your wait eventually! One quick note, the next chapter or two might come a little bit late just because my spring break starts on Friday and I'm going down to Wilmington which I'm ridiculously excited about so don't mind the delay.**

**Just a quick thanks to everybody reading and reviewing, as always you guys make the world go round and I love you all!**

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Chapter 53: Don't Believe That It Isn't There

**Friday, February 3****rd****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

My bathroom had never felt so small in my entire life… of course, that's probably because it's freaking huge inside of there, but that wasn't the case today… nope, instead today, my bathroom had suddenly never felt so small in my entire life.

But that probably had a lot to do with the fact that I had been restricting myself to this single spot in the center of my counter for the past 110 seconds to the exact… even though it really did feel like it had been much longer than that, where I'd been gripping onto my countertop so tightly that my knuckles were starting to turn white while meanwhile, I was staring determinedly all-the-while into the eyes of my very own reflection as I counted down the brief seconds that I had left until I could look at this damn stick that I'd just drank my body weight in water just to generate enough pee for in order to determine whether or not I had a little Brooke Jr. growing larger and larger inside of me as we spoke.

_Ten seconds…_

As expected, I had obviously chickened out of doing this last night even though I knew that I should have… Yesterday I had ended up passing out in my bed just a little after one o'clock, pretty much right after I had come home from Sam's dialysis appointment; fully prepared to sleep for the rest of my life I was so exhausted.

_Nine seconds_…

I'd probably been out cold for about forty five minutes… I don't know, maybe an hour before my cell phone woke me right back up again… It had been Julian calling me to tell him that Sam had completed her dialysis session just as I'd instructed him to do before I'd left him and Sam at the hospital and that they were now preparing to move her by ambulance just down the street towards the inpatient units so that they could prepare her for her overnight stay.

_Eight seconds_…

Talking to Julian had managed to jolt my memory for a brief moment at least, my brain groggy from sleep pushing onward to remind me that I needed to get my lazy ass up and take this test because I deserved to know what they were… because Julian deserved to know what they were…

_Seven seconds…_

But then Julian had put Sam on the line and I had started talking to her, listening closely to her voice hazy from drugs, sickness and sleep, and then the thought ran through my head that we all had way too much to worry about already on our minds today… to add something to that list would be simply irresponsible of me.

_ Six seconds…_

So I'd decided to put it off because I've always had this bad habit of putting things that I didn't want to do off until it got to crunch time… the time when things just ended up stressing me out even more than they had been before.

_ Five seconds…_

I'd ended up just lazing around the house most of the day, taking advantage of the fact that Victoria was performing my every will considering she was probably still afraid that I was dying of the flu or ebola or something and that the only thing that she could do to ever possibly save me was to abide by my every request.

_ Four seconds…_

It had been nice, really it had been, but I'd still requested that Victoria leave and spend the night at her own home because I didn't want her to have that burden of Victoria thinking that she'd had to wait on me hand and foot all night in her head… I guess now I knew how Sam felt with me all of the time.

_ Three seconds…_

The thought of what I knew I should be doing continued to linger in the back of my mind throughout the entirety of the day but of course I'd never actually ended up doing anything about it because that would have just been too easy…

_ Two seconds…_

And as expected, here I was, stressing out way more than I ever would have been had I just done this yesterday like I was supposed to, praying that this one lingering second would just hold on for me for just a little while longer.

_ One second…_

My hands were shaking violently as I slowly lowered my eyes downwards and away from my horrified mirror reflection and towards the test currently lying face down in my right palm.

I flipped the small plastic test quickly over inside of my hands, the front side flashing across my eyes for a mere split second before I just got overly nervous again and flipped it right back onto its backside so that I wouldn't be tempted to linger for too long about the results that I knew weren't even guaranteed… I mean, 99.99% accuracy wasn't 100 right?

I took a sharp inhale, my eyes widening as I raised my eyes once again towards the mirror as I tried desperately to convince the visual acuity centers in my brain that it had misread the quick flash of the test when I had actually seen it for that half of a second… because there was no way in hell that I had actually seen those two little pink lines in the center of the screen like I thought I had.

Desperate to confirm the fact that this crazy idea of mind had been correct even though deep down in my heart of hearts I knew for a fact that it wasn't, I moved slower in my second motion for results, swiveling the test much more leisurely, with much more fluid motions around between my fingers until it was completely facing me…

And this time there was no mistaking it… I hadn't misread the test the first time… there they were; two hot pink little lines, two freaking pink lines… and suddenly, I was scrambling.

My body sunk visibly, the stress of actually finding the answer deflating me like a balloon because even though I had been nervous about finding out the results, what they were wasn't what was important, it was getting to this point that was…

But now that that was gone, it left room for the infiltration of yet another emotion; pure confusion as it formed a thin layer across every one of my vital organs, leaving me debating on how this news actually did make me feel… because even though I knew that this knowledge should have been sparking some sort of intense emotional response out of me right about now, the only thing that I really did actually feel was… well, nothing.

I could only think backwards, reminiscent on the past couple of days that I'd been experiencing the sporadic cramping and the waking up every morning feeling nauseous… but of course, never nauseous enough to get me to stop and consider the fact that I could be… you know… pregnant…

Hell, I'd been so stressed out for so long now that I haven't even gotten my damn period in months… I didn't even think that it was possible for me to even get pregnant at all at this stage of the game…

Of course, the overwhelming evidence flashing right in front of my own damn eyes was screaming at me to let me know that I had been nothing short of stupid to make such an assumption.

Tears filtered behind my eyes as the element of denial slowly began to erase itself from inside of my body, because this time, there was no denying it… I am fucking pregnant…

So now what?

I was torn between two completely different emotions at the polar opposite ends of the spectrum from each other that the only thing that I could actually do was stand here with my mouth wide open as I stared stupidly at this little plastic stick in my hands and waited for my brain to relax behind its complex array of electrical activity and overstimulation so I could actually process and comprehend exactly what the hell this meant for me… for all of us really…

Half of me was ecstatic beyond ecstatic; a feeling creeping through me screaming at me that this was the best news that I have ever received in my entire life… This part of me wanted to scream out in pure joy, wanted to jump up and down and run through the entirety of Tree Hill, and scream out to the whole world that I had finally achieved my most desired goal, my most coveted of all ambitions; I was going to have a baby…

But then there was that other half; the one that was pushing that giddy, excited side of me right down the drain just to get it to shut up already and start thinking seriously about what this meant for me, for Julian, for Sam… how this news was going to change not only my life, but theirs as well and that given the fact that they had and enough life changing events in the past few months to last… well, a lifetime, that this news wasn't going to pass off as good, no, it wasn't going to pass off as good at all.

Because we all had to be honest with each other here; despite the fact that everybody and their mothers knew that I would have given up an arm and a leg in a heartbeat just to have a baby of my very own, the timing couldn't have been anything further from perfect.

"Brooke?"

With a sharp inhale, I was pulled back into a more attentive state of consciousness only by the sound of my name being called bouncing off of every wall of my house.

I snapped my head upwards, slowly starting to realize that there was still a world out there beyond the tunnel vision that I was currently forming between myself and this evidence predicting a child in my very near future right in front of me.

Moving quickly, I hid the test underneath a hand towel, begging myself to remember to come back up here and remove it later as to eliminate the possibilities of anybody finding it which would undoubtedly lead to some pretty awkward questions before I exited the bathroom swiftly, powering through the hallway where I immediately ran into Haley who had been lingering in my living room hoping that I did just as I had in responding to her beckoning call.

"Hey Hales," I greeted her, hoping that I'd managed to contort myself into at least a semi-normal expression that could hide any otherwise suspicious undertones.

"Hey… where've you been I've been ringing the doorbell for like five minutes? I hope you don't mind that I just walked in here."

"No, no," I indicated with a simple hand wave that it was the furthest thing possible to a problem because if my biggest problem right now was that one of my best friends had just walked into my house unannounced to see me, well then I would be living the good life, "I was just in the bathroom that's all…"

I knew that it would be a clear excuse; after all, nobody ever asks what it is that you were doing when you told them that you were in the bathroom.

"So Hales," I tried to steer the conversation away from myself to avoid well… talking about me, because that was the last thing that I wanted to do right now, "How have you been doing because… well you know, I just haven't really gotten the chance to talk to you in a while… and after talking to you on the phone the other day I just… I don't know… I've been worried about you."

Of course, my topic change hadn't been totally unwarranted; I had in fact been truly nervous about Haley ever since I'd heard her lose control completely while I had been on the phone with her the other day… And then after we'd been abruptly cut off and I hadn't heard anything back from her since… well, I worried about her, I did… I just felt kind of bad that my concerns for Sam overrode me remembering to check up on her sooner.

I watched her closely, analyzing the every muscle motion behind her face as her expression changed and she offered me one of those; something is wrong but I'm just going to smile anyway because I don't really know what else to do right now looks before turning her eyes away from me and shrugging her shoulders dramatically.

"I think I might be going crazy Brooke."

"Wh… what?" My words might not have been as sympathetic as I would have liked but I couldn't really think of what else to say because her admission took me by surprise… much surprise actually, "Haley you're not going crazy… Why would you even say anything like that?"

"Nathan took me to the doctor this morning Brooke…" That smile was still prominent on her face, but the glow was gone, replaced with tears swelling underneath her eyes so that I could practically feel her pain from all the way across the room.

"Why? Are you okay?" My heart constricted suddenly in a panic upon her words… the last thing that I needed was another person that I loved more than anything else in the world to be sick.

"I'm fine, I just… I've been thinking about Jamie and Nathan… and, you know… Sam a lot, and one day it just started to become too much… Anyway, the doctor was a total quack; he basically just told me that I had some acute anxiety disorder, threw me a prescription for Paxil, and sent me on my way."

My mouth hung open in shock as guilt wracked my body, which had been filling slowly with the idea that I had done this to her, that it was my crazy, messed up baggage that had done this to my best friend.

"Haley I'm so sorry…"

"Nah," She waved me off, "Don't be, I'll be okay, alright? So don't worry about me… How about you? You know no offense or anything but you're not looking so hot yourself."

I didn't want to just blow over this, I didn't want Haley to stop talking to me because I was under impression that my previous silence to her pain is what got her in this position to begin with; and besides, I didn't want Haley to think that she had to do something like this all alone… But I knew that now wasn't the time or the place, so I accepted her subject change, I opened my mouth, and I delivered the news that I was now actually feeling strangely guilty about, all things considering…

"I'm pregnant."

I hadn't exactly expected on telling her today, especially not like this… Hell, I hadn't really expected to tell anybody the news quite yet, but Haley's honesty with me had practically forced the words out of my mouth.

I watched as Haley's jaw dropped instantaneously; her face contorting into a look that I couldn't tell was pure excitement or sheer horror; and for a while, she didn't even say anything to indicate that it had been either. In fact, I was just starting to get nervous when she jumped up literally an entire foot in the air and waved her arms wildly, shouting with pure joy so that I couldn't help but smile behind the idea that maybe this wasn't as bad as I had originally thought.

"Oh my God Brooke congratulations, that's amazing!" She jumped on top of me, practically knocking the wind right out of my lungs in the process as she wrapped me up into a bone-crushing hug.

I returned the embrace tentatively, not particularly because I hadn't appreciated her words but because I hadn't exactly expected the reaction that I had gotten from her… especially after everything that she'd just told me.

"It is _good_ news… right Brooke?"

She must have noticed my hesitancy, because after a few mere seconds, she pulled out of the embrace she'd initiated and looked up at me with much more skepticism in her face than she'd had when she first heard the news.

"I don't know…" I sighed dramatically, shaking my head and looking carefully away from her, "I'm just… I guess I'm just confused… I mean, you know, with everything that's going on with Sam lately… I keep telling myself that I can't do this right now Haley… that as much as I want a baby, that is the last thing that I need added onto my plate right now… But then every time I think about that, I also start to think that maybe this can actually be something good… like… I don't know, like a start to having a real family… Does that make me selfish Hales?"

"Of course not Brooke," She spoke forcefully as to let me know that she truly meant what she was saying, adopting a strong posture behind her words in order to support them with a tone of a solid physical presence.

"I just can't help but feel that Sam is going to… I don't know… think that I'm trying to replace her or something… I keep thinking back to that time right after me and Sam finally began to get along; you know, the time that the adoption agency called to tell me that I might be getting a baby… She was so nervous Haley… so scared that I would be ditching her the second that I had a baby in my life… What if she thinks that I'm just trying to, I don't know, replace her or something; that she's gonna think that I'm just preparing for the worst to happen by bringing a new baby into all of this."

"Oh my god Brooke, Sam would never thing that… not ever." She sounded shocked that I had so much as even thought that that could have even been a possibility, "This is a blessing Brooke, really it is so don't look at it as anything less than that, okay? Sam will be ecstatic to have a little brother or sister on the way, I know that, really I do… She is going to be so happy and she's going to make such a great sister to that baby… and Julian… well I already knew that Julian would make a great father… look at him with Sam… We all see it, every one of us. You guys deserve to be a family; you guys deserve to be a great family."

Tears sprang into my eyes for what seemed to be the millionth time today alone… and I couldn't tell if it was because I was hormonal or because that really was just the one thing that I needed to hear somebody say to me right now, but either way, it made me feel better… it made me feel a lot better.

"Listen; have you been to the doctor at all yet Brooke?" Haley asked me quickly, trying to change the subject before she had me bawling all over her.

"Uh… no," I shook my head quickly, my words stuttering over each other as I attempted to straighten out my thoughts, "I just found out this morning… I only took the test a few minutes ago…"

"Let me take you!" She offered her services instantly, the excitement building up inside of her face so that it practically turned blue.

"Haley… I don't know…" I didn't want to burden her, especially knowing that she already had so much on her mind already, and besides, I still didn't even know what I was going to do here… I mean, I hadn't told Julian or Sam yet… hell, I didn't even know how to tell Julian and Sam yet… and what the hell was I gonna do if the news didn't go over well; if they didn't approve of me being pregnant, if they didn't want this baby?

No, now that I thought about it, it seemed like I didn't know much of anything…

"Come on, it's the least I can do for my little niece or nephew…"

I sighed, the motion exposing my skepticism on the situation as a whole to physical light, but Haley seemed determined, she seemed like she needed a project to focus on, somebody to take care of, and if that project had to be her helping to take care of this baby, and that somebody had to be me, well then I was more than willing to help her do that… Besides, it was the least I could do considering the fact that I still felt obscenely guilty that she had been placed in this situation to begin with anyway…

So a couple of hours and one rushed OB/GYN appointment later, there I was, sitting in some embarrassing position on top of an examination table in my doctor's office with my shirt pulled up over my stomach in order to expose the skin that hadn't begun so much as protruding with my pregnancy as early on as it was as I struggled to get used to the bizarre sensation of the ultra sound gel squelching around my skin alongside the small television screen enhancing the picture of my insides right next to me.

"Okay Brooke… so judging by the size and the shape of the fetus it's looking to me as if you are about six weeks pregnant." I glanced towards Haley, my eyes bulging at the surprise of the news, almost as if it was the final confirmation of everything, the positive factor to erase any uncertainty… and out of nowhere, I was suddenly struck with the feeling that this was perhaps the single best sentence that I have ever heard in my entire life.

"Now everything is looking good developmentally so far although it's still too early to really tell too much at this point." She turned back towards me, swiveling the screen with the projection of my six-week old child across it staring at me right back into my face… and amidst that little swirl of barely distinguishable black, white, and grey images that I could barely even make out, I saw something beautiful.

"This right here, that's the fetus," She told me, pointing towards a slightly curved lima bean shaped dot that looked like absolutely nothing more than a speck… "And this, this is going to develop into the head, and then the spine… you can't really see it on the ultra sound, but it's already starting to grow down this curve, and all the way down at the end, that there is where the legs will emerge."

I could only stare at the picture; channeling everything else that she was telling me into focus as I just looked down at the screen, simply waiting for something to happen, waiting for that little lima bean shaped dot to simply sprout limbs out of the blue and then to grow organs and bones and to become a boy with a huge heart and an endless sense of creativity like his father, or a girl with a sense of dedication and a love towards family like her mother…

"Can you tell if it's a boy or a girl yet?" I asked quickly, my excitement carrying over in my voice as a tone of hopeful surprise shined brightly behind each word I spoke.

She gave me the smallest of smiles; an appreciative glance towards my eagerness but at the same time, a flash of sympathy that told me not to get my hopes up about the answer.

"Not quite yet," She shook her head apologetically, "It's usually not until 18 to 20 weeks or so that we're able to find that out."

I released an audible response to my disappointment, my shoulders sinking from the lack of results that the doctor replied to with the smallest of grins as she turned back towards my chart, flipping through a couple of pages before finding the one that she was looking for.

"Okay Brooke, one thing that I want to mention to you is that your blood pressure was a little bit high when the nurse took it before so I have to ask you; has there been any recent changes to your diet or your exercise routine, or have you been under any particular amounts of chronic stress lately?"

Haley and I exchanged a quick dance; to say that I have been under a particular amount of chronic stress lately would have been the understatement of the year… I could have laughed right in her face if it wouldn't have been so rude to do so.

"I think that I would be under less stress if I was the president of the United States." I made my own attempts towards a joke but my doctor didn't seem to have taken my admittance quite as comedic as I did… so I dropped the false façade, the jokes, the humor and I got serious in order to give her a bit of an overview as to what exactly it was that I was talking about when I meant stress.

"My daughter… Sam, she's been battling leukemia for the past couple of months and things… well things haven't been going so well lately so it's been kind of… well, hard."

Her face didn't change but she did nod her head towards me sympathetically.

"Brooke… I know that that is a lot to have to go through by itself, which is why I have to ask you… do you think that you're prepared to take on all of the pre-natal responsibility required to ensure the health of both you and your baby."

"Absolutely!" I shouted urgently as to ensure her that I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would be able to handle this pregnancy, that I would be able to have this baby and raise this family… all four of us. "I swear to you Dr. Roberts, I am ready to do anything that I have to do in order to make sure that this baby stays healthy… literally, anything."

I begged and pleaded for her to give me advice, remedies, anything to ensure that my child would be the most beautiful, the most healthy child that had ever been born, because although mere hours ago I had been unsure, terrified even of what could possibly happen now that I had the responsibility of another life on my hands, I had suddenly been struck with this final, definite knowledge that I wanted this, I could have this, I could do this, and most importantly, I was more than certain that I was ready to start building something good out of my life for the first time in what seemed like a very, very long time.

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**JULIAN**

If there was one true, solid fact that I had managed to learn throughout these past three months; something that was indefinitely true, something that always remained consistent no matter what, it was this; there was only so many times that you could actually read the same issue of some ridiculous five year old Nascar magazine that was conveniently placed on just about every single table in every single waiting room of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital before you just wanted to blow your freaking brains right out of your head.

Like I've always said ever since moving to North Carolina from the sunny wonderland of Los Angeles; you gotta love the South, right?

But still, this whole four hour long dialysis session four times a day for the next God only knows how long thing it made me feel… well, let me try and put it in a little bit of perspective for you… It was so boring that I literally reading the same issue of some ridiculous Nascar magazine that was conveniently placed on just about every single table in every single waiting room of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, which is exactly what I was doing right now, was the only thing I could actually rely on for entertainment.

And if this is how I felt about all of this, well then I couldn't even imagine what it could possibly be like for poor Sam, who didn't even have the freedom to get up and walk around or anything like that for when things got really rough.

When Brooke finally came back into the room, looking slightly flushed, a little bit frantic, but overall better than she had looked when she'd left yesterday, to say that I was relieved to see her would have been the absolute understatement of the century… Considering the fact that I was damn near ready to claw my own eyes out from pure boredom, seeing Brooke to me felt like the sudden equivalent of seeing Jesus or something.

I shot upwards and out of my seat in a flash so that I think I might have actually scared poor Sam who had yet to even notice that Brooke had entered the room at all.

"Brooke, hey how are you feeling?" I bombarded her with the question immediately, probably overwhelming her just a little bit if not more as I rushed to her side and came to a dead halt a mere inch or two in front of her face.

She backed away a little bit at first, trying to regain her ground from my overwhelming presence, hesitating for just a brief second before turning back into my concern, recognizing it as just that.

"I'm feeling better Julian…" She smiled brightly, nodding her head in time with her speaking; her expression offering me with a confused relief considering the fact that I thought her to be pissed at me considering the fact that I'd sent her home and away from Sam yesterday…

But today she had an extra glow about her; an additional sense of happiness and pride laced inside of her eyes; one that I couldn't quite place, but that I really enjoyed seeing from her just the same.

I opened my mouth in response, completely prepared to ask her exactly what this cause for such celebration was, but before I could get so much as a single word out, I saw the tears begin to spill from each one of Brooke's eyes; dumping down in an alarmingly fast rate so that my jaw, previously slackened with the intentions of producing words, just lost control all together and fell practically to the ground in the shock of her actions combined with the terror towards the idea that I had just done something wrong to make her cry with such a force to begin with.

"Brooke… what's wrong? Are… are you okay?" I stuttered nervously over my words, scrambling in an effort to figure out exactly what the hell it was that I should be doing with my hands, but when I stopped over-concerning myself with my own actions, and actually started to focus on Brooke's, I suddenly realized that although her face was currently stained with the pathway of tears, this didn't seem to be the type of cry indicative of something wrong… No in fact, it appeared to be the exact opposite, because now that I truly saw her, I noticed that she was smiling… In fact, she was positively beaming.

"I'm okay, I'm okay… really," She waved me off embarrassed, trying to wipe at the tears in her eyes with the back of her shirt in an effort to hide them although she knew that I had already seen them, "I'm just feeling so, so much better today that's al."

She repeated her response to my initial questioning, her breathing beginning to increase in time with her falling tears so that I couldn't help but plaster my stereotypical look of dopey, dazed confusion onto my face in the moment… The thing was, it's been such a long time since I've seen Brooke cry in this sort of well-perceived manner… in fact, I had gotten so used to watching and reciprocating tears shed out of pure sorrow, that I had actually almost forgotten that people could cry in response to good news sometimes too…

So I played along, amusing myself with the idea that I finally had some good news to look forward to so that even if I was wrong to assume that, it still made me feel really good to forget about all of the bad for at least a little while.

"How much better are you talking here?" I asked her playfully, feeding off of her positive energy as I grabbed her by the hips and lifted her into the air, swinging her body around in a complete semi-circle for no other reason beyond the fact that I had a sudden desire to make contact with that gorgeous body of hers.

I turned her around in a complete 180 so that my gaze lingered straight past her shoulder and onto Sam who remained completely tethered to the wall by means of her dialysis but looking as if in this moment, she might have preferred it that way because she was looking at Brooke and I as if she thought us to be absolutely crazy in this moment… and you know, some days I think that she might actually be right about that… but of course, I wouldn't have it any other way.

"Come here for a second." Brooke beckoned me forwards, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me over closer to Sam, positioning our two bodies perfectly so that we were arranged into an extremely tight triangular formation before she finally spoke.

"Okay, so I have to tell you both something really, really important." She began in her introductory speech, her stalling of spilling whatever secret that she was currently hiding just making me more and more nervous with giddy anticipation.

"What is it Brooke, come on spit it out!" Sam urged her to move faster and I silently agreed, watching as Brooke paused and took a couple slow, deep breaths, her face growing pink with excitement as she struggled to formulate the right way to say whatever it was that she had to say.

"I'm pregnant,"

She'd waited so long in her silence only to finally, and very unexpectedly might I had, completely blurting out the last words I had actually expected her to blurt out that for a long time there, I actually thought that I had maybe misheard her.

"Wh… what?" I stuttered over my own words, looking for a conformation as Brooke turned upwards towards me nervously in an attempt to read the reaction off of my face that I knew was as blank as a sheet of paper as I struggled to process exactly what it was that she had just said to me, "Y… you're… you're pregnant?"

"I'm pregnant," She repeated with a nod, fresh tears stinging her eyes as she confirmed her initial words to me with a soft, high pitched squeal that hit me like a slap across the face.

"I'm gonna be a dad?" I could feel my face slowly brightening as the meaning behind her words slowly seeped down into my bones.

"You're gonna be a dad Julian."

And this time, Brooke wasn't the only one with tears in her eyes; she wasn't the only one with that dazed look of joy and an unbelievable sense of pride in her face… suddenly, I had found myself joining the club, feeling exceptionally overwhelmed so that I couldn't find myself able to process much of anything outside of the realization that I was currently standing here like a moron with tears in my eyes and a dopy grin on my face as I attempted to sort out just what I was feeling right now in response to being told that I was going to become a father.

I asked her to repeat herself in a million different ways trying to confirm her words because no matter how many different times she said it, I couldn't seem to process, I couldn't seem to believe that I had just heard the best news that I could ever possibly hear in my entire life… And after so many months of nothing but bad news, I couldn't really process exactly what my response towards this good news should be… so I just stood there.

I turned towards Sam; she looked just about the exact same way that I felt, completely shocked, positively unsure of just how she should respond to this sort of information.

"Alright, can somebody please say something?" Brooke finally laughed through the thick silence, unable to handle it anymore for fear that our lack of words actually meant that we didn't approve of her news even though it couldn't have been anymore of the opposite of that.

"That's awesome," I blurted stupidly, acting as if Brooke had just shown me some really cool video online or something like that rather than just telling me that she was currently carrying my child.

She raised her eyebrows at me, giving me a look as to say that that wasn't exactly what she had had in mind when she told me to say something, but before she could scold me, or else tell me to reformulate my sentence in a manner that was more appropriate, Sam intercepted the situation with her own tone of approval.

"Yeah Brooke, that's pretty awesome… congratulations."

She echoed my own words, and whether to poke fun at me or to try and save my ass from the wrath of a hormonal Brooke destined to yell at me for saying the wrong thing, I would never know, but either way I was appreciative.

"When did you find out?" Sam asked, coming up with all of the legitimate questions that were needed to be asked here while meanwhile, I could only stand there with my mouth hanging open like a complete idiot even though I knew that I should have been the one asking all of these questions instead of Sam.

"Last night," She spoke, turning her head between the two of us as to address us both, but nodding appreciatively at Sam's efforts to keep the words flowing because Brooke needed words of support and approval right now, not the general silence that I had to offer, "I went to the doctor with Haley earlier this afternoon and they confirmed it."

"How far along are you?" Sam continued alongside her stretch of asking all of the important questions that I couldn't quite process enough to ask right now although my ears were still poised with the answers that I so desperately wanted to hear.

"The doctor said that I'm at only about six weeks right now so we still have a while to go… She gave me a tentative due date though… October 2nd."

I was torn by the information; one side of me disappointed because if it were up to me, I would have had this baby be born tomorrow… the idea that I'd have to wait another thirty weeks or so was actually physically painful to me… of course, on the other hand, I was ecstatic, already beginning forming the tentative countdown to October 2nd in the back of my head.

"What is it?" I spluttered what had thus far been the only tangible contribution to the conversation that I could come up with, the absolutely ridiculousness of my words causing Brooke and Sam to both turn sharply towards me with a look of confusion that clearly indicated that they had no idea what I was trying to say here.

"I mean… I mean…" I scrambled to right my brain again, but I couldn't help but feel like Brooke's still-lingering announcement had hit me like a bag of bricks straight upside my head… "Is it a boy or a girl?"

I got my meaning across, watching as Brooke took a single step forwards and gave me the softest of grins behind the tiniest shake of her head that indicated to me that Brooke didn't have the answer to the only question that I really wanted to know.

"Sorry Julian," Her words confirmed my initial idea and I could practically feel my face falling in response, "The doctor said that it'll be a few weeks at least until we find that out… But hey, I didn't walk out completely empty handed you know… here, look at this."

I looked down at her, slightly confused towards what she meant as I watched her turn back down towards her bag where she dug inside of it and pulled a small picture out from inside of it so that realization suddenly sparked through me like lightning.

I looked at the ultrasound image carefully, my eyes not moving from the picture in front of me as I clasped it strongly between each of my hands and felt the tears sting at my eyes even harder than they already had been so that a few of them even managed to fall down my face…

The image in front of me was no more than the tiniest of white dots; no distinguishable features of any kind of human being quite yet, no indication that this would one day become the son that I played catch with or the daughter that I'd walk down the aisle one day… But still it was all right there in front of me; the images dancing across my head so vivid that I could physically see them; the possibilities, the future, the emotions… it was amazing really what this small picture of the tiniest of white dots with no distinguishable features of any kind of human being quite yet could actually do to me… what it did do to me.

"Look, you can almost see it already," Brooke spoke, leaning over my shoulder and pointing towards the image at the center of the picture that I couldn't seem to rip my eyes off of no matter how hard I tried, "It has your huge feet and big forehead."

"I hope not," I laughed but really though… I was serious, "No, I have a feeling that our baby is going to grow up to be just as beautiful as her mother."

"Or just as handsome as his father," She added her two cents to the end of my sentence, leaning her body even further into my own, allowing me to wrap my arm around her shoulder and help pull her to contort her body comfortably into my own.

"I love you Brooke Davis, did you know that?"

"You know, I'm starting to think that you're not so bad yourself Julian Baker."

I couldn't help but smile down towards her, sweeping her towards me with a single, movie-like fluidity that brought her directly in front of me so that I could look down into her sparkling eyes, lean forwards, and kiss her like I have never kissed her before in my entire life… and although I knew that I've done that a million times before, it suddenly felt brand new to me, different, better even…

Maybe it had something to do with the picture of our child still clasped firmly in my hands that was pressing against the small space between our bodies, or maybe it had something to do with the simple knowledge that we were about to seal the deal on our steadily growing family that we had already been expanding on for months now, but whatever it was, it felt good… really good.

I pulled away from Brooke only so that I could stare back down at the ultrasound image, finding myself unable to go more than a minute or so without looking at that fuzzy haze of black and grey matter that I couldn't even properly identify as much of anything quite yet but still felt unbelievably proud to have taken a part in making it, and all at once, with a sudden force that nearly knocked me flat on my ass, it hit me…

When you truly think about it, it's absolutely amazing how small you are in retrospect to the rest of the world, and if you're daring, and start thinking about your relative size as compared to the entirety of the universe, well then it's even more baffling… and don't even get me started about all that lies beyond the boundaries of the universe, because even though before today, I never quite believed in anything like that, well today it seemed that all of the proof I needed was right in front of me, represented in the form of a small photograph clutched in between me clenched hands leaving me overwhelmed in my attempts to try and come up with how something much bigger than I could ever be, much bigger than I could even imagine could have ever created something so absolutely perfect.


	54. If Youre Something Don't Ask For Nothing

**Hey guys sorry about the wait but I've been in Wilmington the past week and a half or so and it was freaking amazing so I didn't have a lot of writing time on my hands. Anyway, thanks for being patient with me, hope you enjoy!**

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Chapter 54: If You Are Something, Don't Ask For Nothing

**Saturday, February 4****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

If there was one thing that I've learned in these past twenty four hours or so since discovering the news of my pregnancy it was this; I was absolutely, 100% clueless.

And as I progressed through the hours since I'd found out, this fact seemed to be nothing short of being constantly enforced either, especially now as I pushed a shopping cart full to the absolute brim with all of the teas and the vitamins, the herbal supplements, antioxidants, and good knows what else that I suddenly felt obliged to buy after spending my night on the internet which told me if I didn't take enough of this or that my baby would be born with spina bifida, or cerebral palsy, or six heads and no legs, or whatever other horror story I'd managed to come across.

"Haley what brand of folic acid should I buy?" I hollered my question down the length of the supermarket aisle, inadvertently including all of the other shoppers around me into the privacy of my grocery list.

"It doesn't matter Brooke." She replied to me the same way that she'd been replying to all of my other strikingly similar questions that I'd been throwing at her for the past hour or so that we've been there.

"Okay…" I responded, my voice falling as I grabbed the bottle that I thought looked the prettiest and threw it into the cart, "How about Vitamin D?"

"It doesn't matter Brooke." She spoke this time with a slight laugh behind her voice directed towards my persistence despite her assurance, watching me with a bemused sort of grin as I analyzed the two different bottles in each hand before ultimately settling on both.

I shrugged casually as I tried to squeeze the small plastic bottles into the over-stuffed shopping car before getting behind it and giving it a jolt forwards, wheeling down the length of the aisle, parting ways with the shelves through of all of the things I needed to promote my baby's healthy growth for the first time in nearly a half an hour.

"So have you talked to Peyton yet?" Haley asked, trying to make casual conversation as the two of us rounded into the produce section, leaving me to analyze which exact apple I believed would be good for the baby and which would be deadly.

"No," I responded airily, rotating the fruit delicately around in my palm in an effort to get a good look at its every mark, its every bruise, before ultimately declaring it defective and therefore dangerous so that I discarded it back into the stand below, "She's been in South Carolina with Lucas and Sawyer all week… Karen, Andy, and Lily docked in Charleston on Sunday… I think she told me that she was coming home tomorrow or Monday or something, I can't remember… I don't know, I just figured that this was just news that I should probably tell her in person and not over the phone, you know?"

Haley nodded her head alongside my explanation, following me slowly as I guided her across shelves and shelves of juices and sodas and energy drinks…

"Does it matter what kind of coffee I drink?" I scanned my head across the various brands, picking two different cans up in each hand before turning behind me in order to ask Haley yet another question.

"Brooke…" Haley laughed at my apparent naivety, walking over towards me in order to pluck the coffee cans out of my hands before re-shelving it and finding a different can, picking it off of the shelf and placing it between my still outstretched hands… "You're not supposed to drink caffeine when you're pregnant."

"Really?" I spluttered, glancing up at her with my mouth open in surprise by the news that I had absolutely no idea about before tilting my head back down towards the can Haley had just placed between my hands which had the word "decaffeinated" popping in bold, vibrant letters directly back into my eyes.

"Really," She nodded affirmatively back to me, watching as I could only continue to simply stare back down at the label, feeling as tears formed a thin layer over my eyes in response to something so simple…

"Brooke… Brooke are you alright?"

"I don't know anything about being pregnant Haley!" I hadn't exactly yelled by my voice definitely was a tad bit louder than it probably should have been, echoing down the enclosed aisle so that heads all around me turned in order to shoot me glances of estranged confusion, "How the hell am I gonna take care of a baby, Haley I can't even take care of a damn teenager!"

"Brooke! Brooke come on, listen to me!" Haley tried not to laugh at my unwarranted melt down for fear of my already teetering emotional stability as she grabbed me by the shoulders and literally shook me back into reality… Of course, Haley has been pregnant before, she knew what an unexpected emotional breakdown looked like when she saw one, and therefore, she knew how to deal with it, "Listen to me Brooke; you are an absolutely amazing mom to Sam, okay? And you sure as hell are going to be just as amazing of a mom to this baby… Trust me Brooke, I know that you have been put through the test here in these past couple of months with everything that's been going on, but if anybody can do this Brooke, it's you."

I visibly relaxed inside of Haley's arms, suddenly very much so aware of the fact that I was having a very obvious, very public nervous breakdown now that my adrenaline level was declining… In fact, I'd just noticed all of the faces up and down the aisle that were sneaking quick glances at me in order to investigate the cause of all of the commotion, their eyes widening with the realization of just who it was they were looking at before they averted their gaze just as suddenly and pretended as if they hadn't seen anything… But I knew what was going through all of their heads right now, I knew that their minds were currently reeling with the fact that they'd just seen Brooke Davis crying in the supermarket about being pregnant… great, just what I needed.

"I guess that all of the celebrity gossip columns will be buzzing tomorrow…" I joked towards Haley, noticing as she stared angrily at curious passerby, shooting them angry glances every time their eyes lingered on me just a little bit too long…

"Just ignore them Brooke, they don't know what they're talking about."

I just nodded in response to her comment, silently acknowledging the fact that her advice would be easier to carry out than she would ever know… I knew that I wasn't going to be in any gossip news tomorrow; I knew that this story would never get beyond the confines of the supermarket… hell, I would be surprised if it even got beyond the confines of this here aisle…

Nobody talked about me anymore… people don't even recognize me… it's as if they have selective vision all of a sudden or something… Here's how it goes these days, I got out, and they all avert their eyes, pretend as if they don't see me, pretend as if they don't even know me anymore.

I guess that when you think about it, it is pretty easy to forget… I mean, when you have your own problems to face, your own lives to live, other people just don't tend to make the top of your priority list… but sometimes, the problems of other people are just so overwhelming that you just have to ignore them, and sometimes the only way to do so is to forget about them all together…

I mean, I won't pretend as if I don't forget about people every now and then, it's easy to do after all, especially when you're traveling down a road that is anything but certain for yourself, let alone for others… And now, even though I knew that I complained endlessly about the fact that the press was hounding on me before, well the fact that they simply just seemed to forget about me all together one day… well that was even worse.

"Hey," Haley called my attention back onto her, apparently noticing that I'd just been staring out into space for a while there, "Let's just get out of here okay?"

She probably thought that I was taking to all of this staring hard, that I wasn't used to everybody looking at me like I was a damn china doll everywhere I went by now, but that wasn't it… In fact, it was the exact opposite… but I was in no mood to explain all of this to her right now, so instead, I just forced my focus back over towards the conscious universe and smiled and nodded back towards her.

"Yeah," I told her softly, lugging my cart in the direction of the cash registers, "Let's go."

A half an hour in line and about $300 worth of organic food and several supplements later, I had managed to slink away from the psychosis of the inhabitants of your average, local supermarket, and after successfully, although slightly guiltily avoiding Haley's invitation to go over to her house with the claim that I had to go to my store and get some work done… well, I did actually go down to my store because I really did need to get myself down there, that much hadn't been a lie, but the thing was, I hadn't been entirely truthful to Haley… because although I really did have a shit ton of work on my plate, I had no intentions of actually doing it…

No, instead I had a very different goal… and a month or two ago, if you had told me that I would be driving out of my way just to go down and make sure that my mother was one of the first people that I would be telling that I was pregnant, well then I would have told you that you were absolutely crazy… But here I was; driving out of my way just to go down and make sure that my mother was one of the first people that I would be telling that I was pregnant…

The overhead bell rang above me, the noise traveling throughout the store as I opened the main door and spotted Victoria instantly at my work desk in the corner which was currently littered with colored pencils and designing pens, scribbling furiously at several random pieces of paper without so much as glancing up upon my entrance as if she hadn't even heard it…

"I didn't know that you were into design Victoria," I called her attention away from her work with a witty, sarcastic comment that made me very aware of the fact that I had been spending way too much time with Sam lately, "If I did I would have been a lot more worried about my job a long time ago."

Victoria jumped at the sudden announcement of my presence, standing to her feet and shuffling frantically in an effort to cover up her drawings from my prying eyes as if she were embarrassed by them or something.

"It's nothing, it's nothing." She spoke abruptly, sounding unusually flustered in a manner that made me raise a very suspicious eyebrow up at her, "It's just a little project that I've been working on, it's not even finished yet… so… yeah, it's nothing… So how are you feeling? Any better?"

I stared at her, completely dumbfounded by the sheer amount of words that had just spilled out of her mouth in such a short period of time so that I was stunned silent by her actual question, mainly because I was still trying to process the things that she'd been saying at the beginning of her little shpeel by the time that she was already at the end of it.

"Um… I'm fine." I shrugged us into silence, both of our words slowly sinking into our head as the origins of why I had initially come to this store to begin with seeped back inside of me, erasing all of the mystery of Victoria's secret project with a spark that reminded exactly what this moment meant…

It was funny actually, I was suddenly reminded of all of those times, the ones that seemed to be so long ago now, when I was still in high school and feared beyond feared this exact moment… having to tell my parents that I was pregnant… Because even back then when they hadn't been there and when I was constantly being tested with the idea that they didn't even care about me, there was still something exceedingly terrifying about a sixteen year old girl having to tell her mom and dad that they screwed up big time…

And the reason that it was so funny now was because… well, I think that I would go ahead and safely say that this was one of the most important moments of my life now… for a good reason anyway.

"Hello? Brooke, are you even listening to me… Brooke?" I hadn't even noticed that Victoria had been calling out to me until she started yelling, her voice physically focusing my attention fully back onto her.

"Huh?" I snapped my head back up towards her as she stared at me with a look of concern glistening across her face.

"Are you sure that you're feeling better Brooke? You still look a little bit… I don't know… out of it."

"I'm fine Victoria, I'm fine… trust me… In fact, I'm more than fine." A small smile appeared at the corners of my mouth at the mere thought of the true reason for my happiness and I once again found myself beginning to drift off into space until Victoria broke out into a tangent stemming my inability to express myself any further that snapped me right back out of it.

"Well have you been to a doctor at all yet Brooke? Because I for one truly believe that you should get an all clear from somebody who actually knows what they're doing before you so much as even think about going in to see Samantha again… And you know, you should probably go ahead and do that quickly with that poor girl stuck in the hospital like that… Now, in case there is something wrong with you, and you do need a few extra days to clear it out of your system, I've been thinking, if Sam does get released today, she could stay with me for a little while… at least until you're feeling at your best again and find some time to air out your house a little bit and…"

"I'm pregnant."

My words stopped Victoria dead in her tracks like I knew they would… after all, that had been the plan all along because my head was starting to hurt from her constantly treating me like I had small pox or tuberculosis or some kind of other crazy infectious disease that had been eradicated decades ago when I in fact knew that it was nothing more than the exact opposite of that.

For a while there, she actually stood her ground up next to me, each of us waiting for the other to make the first move until finally, it was Victoria that took the first step forwards… and then another one, and then another until finally she was directly in front of me, able to wrap me up firmly into a deep hug, using her hands against my back to push my body further into hers so that for a second there, I couldn't help but tense at this unfamiliar feeling before finally relaxing into it, returning the motion and leaning into how surprisingly good this actually felt.

"Congratulations Brooke," She spoke softly, sincere as she rubbed her palms gently up and down over my back, "Really I mean it, if anybody deserves this right now it's you and Julian."

"Really?" My voice emitted as childish, desperate even just to hear that tone of approval coming from Victoria's voice once again so that she could ease my racing mind, dissolve everything screaming inside of my head that was the exact opposite of everything she'd been actually saying to me.

"Of course," She responded immediately, her voice rising with an inclination that told me that she didn't quite understand why I would ever even question that, "Are you kidding me Brooke after everything that you've been through… you deserve something that will make you truly happy and I can see it with you and Sam… you're at your happiest when you're being a mom… even when it's when you're sitting in a hospital room… I don't know where you got it from Brooke, truly I don't, but you're a fabulous mother… that baby doesn't know how lucky it is that it landed with you."

"Have you been to a doctor yet?" Victoria asked, spilling with immediate concern over the technicalities of it all now that the initial grace period of celebration was done and over with… Meanwhile, I couldn't help but cling onto Victoria for a long time afterwards, positively clinging onto the very fabric of her shirt, not wanting to ever let go of this cyclic notion of completion; the idea of getting praise, of getting approval from my very own mother… an idea that I have been looking for the past 23 years of my life…

"Yeah, I went yesterday with Haley, she said that I was about six weeks along and that everything looked okay, she just gave me a couple recommendations for some herbal teas and supplements and things like that to try and lower my blood pressure and reduce my blood pressure… you know, things like that."

I watched Victoria's face as it fell instantly; dropping from one of blissful approval to an instantaneous turn towards concern towards the news that apparently took her by surprise although I thought it would have been much more obvious given my situation…

"Brooke…" She placed an emphasis of concern in every single letter of my name that she spoke and I understood, really I did, because trust me, I had already considered, and probably was still considering every single one of the concerns that she currently had.

"I know Victoria, I know okay?" But really, had she honestly thought that I hadn't already thought about the fact that I had one of my children currently growing bigger and bigger inside of me with each passing second while meanwhile the other was falling further and further away?

"Brooke I'm just saying, taking care of yourself is incredibly important… not just for your baby's health, but for yours too okay? Doing all of that is a stressful enough thing as it is in itself… I just really need to know Brooke… Are you absolutely certain that you're ready to balance taking care of Sam and this baby?"

"Do I really have a choice?" I smirked alongside a chortle amidst the seriousness of my statement, trying to indicate towards Victoria that this absolutely was not the first time that the idea of the ridiculous inconvenience of the timing of this situation entered my head.

"You always have a choice Brooke." I was confused as to what exactly it was that she was implying, but I stood my ground and waited for an explanation, "You have the option of letting people in to help you when you need it… And I know you're stubborn, and I know that you're not particularly keen on asking for help, but I'm gonna tell you this now Brooke, you need it. You need to ask for it, okay?"

I breathed out what was probably an over-dramatic sigh of relief at Victoria's extending of a helping hand, practically falling into her arms in a quick hug that I could tell surprised her based on the fact that she jumped a little bit underneath my open arms.

I couldn't help but smirk at her hesitancy, subconsciously glancing over her shoulder so that my eyes caught a quick glance back towards the table that I had almost forgotten all about that Victoria had been so diligently working at before I had to come in here and interrupt her.

"What are you working on over here Victoria?" I asked her, pulling away in order to walk over and observe just what it was for myself before she could answer for herself… I hadn't meant to change the subject, really I hadn't, but I had a short attention span and the curiosity of a small child, two factors that were definitely starting to get the best of me…

My eyes danced across the various sketches that had been strewn in a precariously organized fashion across the table where they lingered for a brief moment before finally recognizing a few of them as my own… the ones that I had been working on in the months that had otherwise been designated to sitting in a hospital doing absolutely nothing, the ones that had never actually made it to review for design although I thought that was a sin because, and forgive my lack of humbleness here… they were damn good…

In fact, the only difference between these images and the original ones was that I was suddenly noticing an unusually high amount of orange coming from within them… orange that I definitely do not remember putting there…

"I thought you hated orange." I mumbled vaguely without even actually realizing that I was speaking, "What's with the sudden change of heart."

"Well… I didn't want to mention it to you until it was completely finished… you already have so much on your plate book… but… I guess it's sort of a little… well surprise that I've been working on." She rambled nearly incoherently in her blatant exposure, her words emitting in a manner that was confusing me more and more with each passing second, "I mean I guess when you think about it, it's for Sam really but…"

The simple mention of Sam's name was enough to spark a revelation inside of me, dawning glistening over my eyes as I suddenly began feeling downright stupid for actually having missed Victoria's now obvious intentions before… I mean, how could I have forgotten that orange was the official color designated for leukemia awareness when it had been staring me right in the face for the past three months?

"It's going to be included in the spring line." Victoria continued without pause so that I had the slightest feeling that she knew that I knew exactly where she was going with this although she never actually had to say anything, "The board came up with the tag name 'Clothes over Cancer' for the brand which I thought was tacky but they refused to change it so I don't know… Who hired those people anyway?"

I smirked up at her, way too appreciative of all that she had put in for this campaign to point out the fact that it was indeed her that was responsible for hiring "those people."

"The line is going to be completely orange in order to support leukemia awareness and it's been designed so that a little bit more than half of all of the proceeds will end up going to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in order to support pediatric cancer research."

"Victoria this is amazing…" I spoke through my shock, too busy filtering gently through the endless papers supporting this new line to emit any completely processed words that would truly be able to believe the gratitude that I was currently feeling, "Thank you so much."

I think that the only reason that I was actually able to finally rip my eyes away from all of these images and official documents below me was because all at once, a wave, a sudden desire washed over my body so powerful that even the gigantic swelling of my over-emotional, hormone-sensitive heart couldn't distract from the feeling.

And all at once I acted on it, feeling as if I might explode if I didn't. I launched my body forwards a step or two, pistoned towards Victoria, and threw my arms around her neck so sharply that the two of us staggered backwards upon the impact…

I felt as Victoria pulled me closer into her arms, beckoning me in silence to lean further into her as the tears filtered underneath my eyelids alongside feelings that I've never actually felt before but which felt good none-the-less…

The feeling was so foreign, so new, yet so welcomed that I couldn't help but dig my face further and further into her shirt with each passing second, I couldn't help the tears as they fell harder and harder into this ever growing puddle of water beneath my cheeks, and I couldn't help but feel this powerful emotion bubbling around the entirety of my body that was constantly telling me that maybe my family was finally starting to come to its full circle, that maybe I was finally getting something good in my life after all.

* * *

**JULIAN**

I have been absolutely walking on nothing more than pure air ever since yesterday right after Brooke told me that she was pregnant… that I was gonna be a dad… To be completely honest with you, I didn't even get any sleep last night mainly because I had been so convinced that my skull had been filled to capacity with nothing less than pure helium the way I felt all night, that I was afraid if I let my guard down, it would literally pop off of my neck and float away like a damn hot air balloon or something…

Of course, being this giddy was quite difficult when you were stuck in the confines of a small hospital unit all day as I had found myself, sitting with Sam as she currently embarked on her third round of dialysis and her second to last one of the week.

"Where's Brooke been all day?" Sam asked me suddenly, marking the first sound that had entered the room in a while now so that my head snapped up with a crack of my vertebrae in response to the inquiry.

"Hm?" I asked vaguely for her to repeat herself, my head, so typical of me these past 24 hours, too busy dancing amidst the clouds to be truly sure that I'd caught the message behind her question correctly.

"I was just thinking that I haven't seen Brooke all day and she never actually told me that she wasn't coming over later… It's just weird for her to be M.I.A. that's all."

"Um… I think that her and Haley went over to the store to pick up some stuff she needs for the baby… We were on the computer all night last night looking up everything that Brooke needs… I think that reading up about all of the things that can happen if you do the wrong things scared Brooke into buying the entirety of Whole Foods."

I laughed casually at my own comment, not even considering the fact that my statement could have been ill-perceived until Sam responded to it with nothing short of complete silence.

I looked up only when I became fully aware of the fact that Sam wasn't about to say anything more on the matter, something that I took with surprise well, because Sam always had something to say on the matter.

"Hey are you alright?" I asked, forcing our eyes to connect quickly before ultimately, it was her that turned her head away, but not before I noticed that she was suddenly looking very upset although I wasn't quite yet good enough to tell if she was simply feeling sick or if she truly had been offended by something that I'd said.

"I'm fine," She'd spoken abruptly, and as she emitted her words, she'd done so with a huff that told me that she was the exact opposite of fine, an idea that was confirmed to me when she swung around in her bed, rolling onto her side so that her back was facing me; a silent attempt to let me know that she wanted this conversation to be over before it even began, and I couldn't help but sigh audibly in the realization that something much deeper than I'd originally anticipated was going on here.

"Sam come on, talk to me here what's going on with you?" I pushed her with the hopes that I would sound sensitive enough to get her to trust me to spill her guts out to me.

"I told you Julian, I'm fine." She mumbled into her pillow without making so much as twitching in a motion to face back towards me like I wanted her to do.

I struggled to produce a follow up, struggled to find something to say that would ultimately forcing her to open up to me without it being obvious that I was indeed forcing her into it…

"Sam, does this have anything to do with… you know, Brooke's pregnancy at all?" I tried desperately to put two and two together; linking Sam's' sudden distress with my mentioning of her being pregnant to begin with, carefully developing a question that I knew would prove impossible for her to avoid.

"Kind of…" I considered this much of an answer progress at the very least, especially considering the fact that as she spoke, she shuffled her body a little bit back towards my general direction so that she was actually almost looking at me again, "I've just been thinking a lot lately Julian, and I just… I don't know, I just hope that I'll… you know… still be around once this baby actually is born… It sounds stupid, I know it sounds stupid, but what if I never even get a chance to meet this kid?"

My heart sunk, not because I didn't think that her fears were warranted, but because actually hearing her say it made it much more real than I ever actually wanted to think about.

"Sam…" I sighed mainly because I was more upset with myself for being unable to think of anything more than that to actually say. I subconsciously beat my brain into submission, begging myself to produce words that would actually be somewhat meaningful, but fearing that I would say the wrong thing; or worse… nothing at all.

"Sam of course you'll still be here when Brooke has that baby. And even more, I'm gonna make sure that you're the first person to meet your little brother or sister, okay? I know you will be… really I do."

"I'm not so sure Julian," She projected relentlessly, her hesitancy persistent amidst my best efforts to procure some confidence in the girl, "You can't tell me that I've been the only one around here noticing that things haven't exactly been going my way for a while now."

"Sam… where's all of this coming from?" I couldn't help but ask; after all, I've always known Sam to have such confidence, such faith in herself, especially when it came to the often times impossibly exhausting task of getting better… I guess that must be why her statement left me so confused, why it made my heart possibly drop with the question as to whether this really was a new development in her thought processing or if I'd simply been closing my eyes to her feelings these past couple of weeks simply because I didn't have the strength to confront them.

"I don't know," She sighed with a shake of her head, her face telling me that she'd realized the second that the words were out of her mouth that she'd broken that threshold of the emotional barrier that she normally refused to allow herself to reveal to anybody, even me or Brooke, "Sorry… I didn't mean to bring it up, I was just thinking out loud that's all… Forget about it, okay?"

"Sam I can't just forget about something like that… Listen, it's clear how much this is affecting you and how upset you are by all of this and I don't want you to ever think that you can't come to me and talk to me when something is bothering you so I want to let you know that you can talk to me okay?"

I stared at her determinedly; I was quite sure that her eyes had produced a slight, yet extra layer of wetness across them, but still, it wasn't enough to allow me to determine whether or not they were actual tears or if it was all just a trick of the light stemming from the angle that her head was currently making with my own as she kept her eyes firmly out of the sight of mine.

"I don't know why I'm thinking like this Julian… and I'm happy for you and Brooke, really, I'm more happy than you'll know, and I'm excited to have a little brother or a sister but… it's gonna sound crazy, but I've just been getting worried that ever since Brooke told us that she was pregnant and that once she actually has this baby… that, you know, she won't need me anymore."

I opened my mouth alongside my slackening jaw immediately, ready to profess aggressively if need be that that was the absolute last thing that was on Brooke's mind right now and by default, it should be the last thing on Sam's too… The thing was, the words never actually came out, because after the shock of Sam's revelation started to wear off and my brain slowly began turning back to its on position, I realized that I could say that until I was blue in the face but it wouldn't have made any difference, because even though using a child to in any way, shape, or form to replace Sam wasn't even on the radar of Brooke's mindset, I knew that Sam had the right to worry; it was natural for her to worry; after all, she'd just gotten Brooke to herself, losing her again was easily number one on Sam's fears list; I knew that, and apparently, Sam did too.

"Sam I need you to know that Brooke and I having this baby isn't gonna make either one of us love you any less than we already do… I know that I can speak for Brooke for damn certain here too, you will always be her daughter no matter what biology ever says about that, and she will always love you and she'll sure as hell always consider you her first child… and you know what; I know that I will too."

I immediately believed my little speech to be thought-provoking, insightful, probably one of the best that I'd ever made now that I thought about it, but when Sam's face didn't change, I had to reconsider the methods by which I was praising myself over here, because I was quite sure that it hadn't had the same effect on Sam as it had on me.

"What else is on your mind Sam?" I continued to push her, probably beyond any manner by which she actually wanted to be pushed at the moment but I could tell just by looking at her that there was more, and if she wasn't done, well, I wasn't either.

"That was it." She shrugged, trying desperately to contort her face into a failed look of neutrality that I saw through before it was even there.

"You're a terrible liar you know Sam," It was true; despite the fact that she'd previously been one of the best liars I had ever known, Brooke had worn the kid down, that's for sure, now she wasn't even good enough to get a fast one past me, "I know that there's something else going on inside of that head of yours."

"What if Brooke stops fighting for me?" She blurted he words so abruptly that I was still too busy trying to come up with more ways to coerce Sam, thinking she'd need a little extra push, that her words took me by complete and total surprise even though I had been asking for them all along.

"What do you mean?" I requested clarification, trying to look through that head of hers and positively read her mind so that I could actually predict exactly what it was she was hinting at here.

"I mean what if Brooke has this baby and she realizes that now she has a kid to fall back on so that she doesn't have to spend all of this time and all of this energy on me anymore… Julian I won't be able to do this without her, I know I won't… What am I gonna do if that happens Julian?"

"Oh my God Sam…" I couldn't help but allow my jaw to drop and my expression of absolute horror spill from my mouth in response to this crazy scenario that Sam had been fearing beyond fearing, an idea that was so completely out there that I wasn't even that sure how she'd managed to get it into her head to begin with, "Sam where did you even come up with an idea like that?"

"Think about it Julian!" She damn near screamed at me so that from her position amidst the rows and rows of chairs holding the various other patients currently receiving their dialysis treatments, a few of the closer heads turned towards us inquisitively, "Do you have any idea how exhausting taking care of a baby is gonna be for the two of you? It's like taking care of me times like… a thousand. Face it Julian, there's no way in hell that you guys are gonna be able to take care of two dependent kids which is exactly what you're gonna have with the baby and me."

"Sam look at me." I spoke sternly, the essence of a fatherly tone behind my voice so that she practically had no choice but to turn her head and stare directly at me, "This is absolutely not going to come down to being a choice between taking care of you and taking care of this baby. Brooke would never, ever, under any circumstances leave you alone for any reason… not now, and not ever, okay? Sam, if anything it's gonna be the exact opposite because I happen to know for a fact that Brooke wants more than anything else in this entire world to turn us into a real family, and having you be a part of that family is the most important thing to Brooke in this entire world, you have to believe me when I tell you that, okay?"

"Okay," She spoke only after a couple of seconds, nodding her head shortly and looking at least a little bit more confident in herself this time around as she dabbed cautiously at her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"Are you sure?" I had to be absolutely certain because I couldn't end this leaving her with even the slightest feeling of lingering unimportance.

"Yeah," She assured me, plastering the most confident smile that she could possibly manage onto her face, "I'm sorry… I mean, I know that that would never actually happen but… but the thought came into my head and then I just couldn't get it out and so I got worried… and you know me, I mean, when I worry I ramble so…"

"Hey you have nothing to be sorry for alright?" She grimaced up at me, an expression of sheepish embarrassment on her face despite the fact that she nodded her head towards me anyway… I could tell that that lingering feeling of concern was still there; perhaps less than what it had been, but still there none the less… The thing was, I was starting to think that the only way to get rid of it was for her to hear it from Brooke herself.

"Sam, come here," I took half a step closer to her, my arms outstretched towards her as I leaned into her just far enough to allow me to wrap my arms around her and pull her close, "You know Sam, if you're feeling that strongly about this still, I think that you should talk to Brooke about it."

I felt her nod her head against my chest as she subconsciously buried it deeper inside of my skin.

"I know," She mumbled into the fabric of my shirt, "I just hope that you're right Julian… I mean when you said that all Brooke really wanted was to turn us into a real family, you know… I guess it's just that… I don't know, I've never really had a real family before and I'm starting to think that that's all I really want too."

"Me too Sam… Me too." I felt my arms subconsciously wrap around her just a little bit tighter than I already had been, feeling a strong sensation that I couldn't quite describe flood throughout my entire body as if a bolt of lightning had just flashed across the entirety of my insides… The sensation was so foreign to me that for a while there, I couldn't even place it until suddenly, all at once, I identified it as that raging paternal yearning, the fatherly instinct that I'd known had been somewhere inside of me this whole time…

I don't know, sitting here with Sam in my arms, with talk of our future potential family still lingering on our tongues, well it made me truly realize just how much starting this family meant not only to Sam, but to me as well…

She closed her eyes and put the smallest of smirks on her face that made her features glow, and I mean truly glow; the rays of light emitting out of her body exemplified by the paleness of her skin, and in that moment, my heart swelled with a broad smile of my own…

The truth was that whenever Sam smiled, I couldn't help but do so myself and I couldn't help but wonder…

Was this what it was like to be a father?


	55. Lay Down Your Arms

**Hey guys, sorry this is turning up a bit late but I made it pretty long just to try and make up for it! **

Chapter 55: Lay Down Your Arms

**Sunday, February 5****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

I've been in such a fog these past couple of days with everything that has been exploding all around me that I honestly barely even remember that lengthy time period between actually watching Sam begin her latest dialysis session and watching the nurse remove the needles that had been siphoning blood out and back into her arm for the past four hours… It was almost as if I had positively just blacked out or something, as if sitting down in the same place dazing into space was an automatic gateway to granting me permission to drift off into a daydreaming tangent.

I still felt kind of bad about it though; a tad bit guilty that in my lack of ability to pay attention to the real world for more than five minutes at a time, Sam had remained relatively silent, and as a result relatively bored as she sat in her chair and watched a movie with half-assed attention on my laptop in order to try to avoid thinking about the fact that she was having one of the most vital components of her body drained out of her.

But never-the-less despite our lacking in the communication department throughout the majority of today, it still felt impossibly good when it was all said and done and I had been granted permission to take Sam home after the poor kid had been confined to the hospital for the past couple of days in order to help her adjust better to the challenging demands of her dialysis treatments… In fact, it was starting to get harder and harder for me to properly identify who was more excited about the prospect of her discharge; her or me.

I mean, of course, the thrill would be short lived just like it usually was these days, because by Wednesday, Sam would be right back to where she started, sitting in the hospital in order to receive her latest round of chemotherapy where she would remain at least until Friday so that they would be able to continuously monitor exactly how her body would react to the new combination of dialysis and chemotherapy… of course, I had learned a long time ago that it was best to dawdle on the present and not linger for too long on the future, so I decided to focus on the here and now for at least today anyway before I started worrying about that.

We drove home silent. In fact, I had to actually force myself to turn on the radio about half way into our drive just because the heavy space between our unspoken words was physically beginning to hurt my head, and the fact that the only noise I could hear besides that of my own breathing was the windshield wipers as they swished back and forth rapidly across the pounding rain against my windshield simply wasn't settling with me very well.

I couldn't help but sneak an occasional glance over towards her, desperately trying to see if I could properly identify exactly what it was that was going through her mind right now using that x-ray vision that I'd so effectively managed to acquire over the past few months in regards to Sam and what it was that she was thinking about when something was clearly bothering her…

But this time, I just couldn't seem to do it, I couldn't see through her as she sat determinedly forwards in her seat the entire time, meshing her fingers together just so that she had something to do, rocking back and forth slightly against her seatbelt so that she roughly resembled a little ADHD-ridden child who was suddenly finding herself trapped in a car seat for the duration of a five hour drive.

"You're awfully jittery today." I finally spoke, breaking the silence only when the quiet truly started getting to my head.

"I'm just excited to be going home finally… that's all." She responded airily with a semi, but not totally believable tone in her voice; a flatness that told me that that wasn't the only thing that she had on her mind, not by a long shot.

"Are you sure that that's all?" I pressured her into continuing to tell me the remainder as she unbuckled herself, turned to me quickly with a blank look in her eyes that told me what I already knew in that that was absolutely not all, and emitted a totally different tune from her mouth than her face was telling me.

"I'm sure… I've just had a lot of things on my mind lately, that's all." She shrugged as if she didn't think that I would actually push her even further after admitting something like that to me, as if her vague admittance wouldn't have a profound effect on my… And for a vague second, I thought that maybe she didn't actually know me as well as I thought she did, but then I realized that it was the exact opposite… that maybe she really did want to talk to me about this, that maybe this was simply a cleverly designed ruse to get her to talk to me without me realizing that she had truly wanted to do it.

"A lot of things like what?" I played into this theory, just in case because I knew that I would have been a terrible mother to do anything less than that.

"Just about this whole baby business that's all…" I had been right, after all if I hadn't been it wouldn't have been that easy to get Sam to open up to me; it wouldn't have been that easy at all.

"It's stupid," She sighed, responding to her own comment after a second or two of reconsideration, trying to avoid having to listen to my response by finally opening the car door and stepping outside into the rain.

I followed her, determined not to leave her silent on this hard note so that I followed her quickly, ducking out of the car myself with my bag raised over my head in a pretty useless effort to protect myself from all of this rain as I darted towards the cover of my porch, using this brief period of travel to think up exactly what I was going to say to Sam once we got inside… But the thing was, when I finally stopped feeling the rain pounding down like bullets against my skull thanks to the overhang of my front porch, and when I finally dug my keys out of my soaking wet purse to unlock my front door, and when I finally turned to let Sam in before me because her standing out in the rain for even a second terrified me into thinking she was going to catch something from it, I realized that Sam hadn't been following me as closely as I previously believed her to be.

"Sam?" I peered over my shoulder knowing full well that Sam had the reputation of a curious small child when it came to disappearing into thin air… I'm just saying, this isn't the first time I've considered buying the kid one of those leash things… but it became instantly obvious to me that she hadn't run off; instead, in just the opposite fashion, she was standing in nearly the exact same place that she had been when she'd first stepped out of the car; her shoulders hunched, her hands buried deep inside of her pockets, and her body soaking up more and more rain water with each passing second.

"Sam listen to me," I called to her with a tone of understanding, trying to convince her to trust me when I told her that whatever was on her mind, I would listen to it as long as she did it from within the confines of my warm, dry house, "Whatever is on your mind… it's not stupid okay? So come on, let's get you inside and you can dry yourself up and then we can talk okay?" I knew that she was upset, that much had been clear to me since she'd woken up this morning, and I didn't mean to sound uncaring or harsh, but to be completely honest with you, at the moment I was more concerned that she was going to stand out here in the freezing rain and catch pneumonia… again.

But still, she refused to move; instead, she just sat there, trying desperately to avoid my eyes as she shuffled back and forth from where she stood as if she hadn't even heard a word of what I just said.

"Sam…" I lowered my tone, recognizing my first effort as a failure even though I wasn't so pleased by that fact… So I decided to play hardball, taking a step out of my cover and back into the rain towards her, trying to prove to her that I wanted to hear what she had to say to me as long as we could compromise and do it inside, "Come on talk to me here… what's going through that head of yours, huh? Because clearly something important otherwise you sure as hell wouldn't be sitting here in the rain scaring me half to death that your gonna catch your death out here."

She scuffed her feet slowly against the ground, digging her toes into the mud as she pointed her eyes determinedly in any direction other than towards me trying desperately to gain the gusto she knew she needed in order to speak her mind.

"I guess I've just been… I don't know… scared lately about you having this baby… you know, that once you have it I'm gonna… I don't know, lose you or something."

"Oh my God, Sam…" I responded kind of inappropriately, speaking less out of the shock of her words and more out of the disappointment that I was currently feeling towards myself for ever putting Sam in a position where she would even come close to thinking a thought like that.

I stepped out further into the rain, not even noticing it anymore as it soaked through my clothing and drenched my skin down to the very bone.

"Sam, I…"

"I get it Brooke, really I do…" She cut me off abruptly, despite the fact that mere moments ago she'd been too afraid to speak up enough to so much as formulate a sentence, knowing full well that now she had started, she would be unable to stop the words from expressing her true feelings, "I know that you've always wanted a kid that's yours, and I knew that having a brand new baby is a hell of a lot better than having a sick teenager but I just wanted to let you know that… well… I can't do this without you Brooke… any of it I mean… so I guess that what I'm trying to say here is that I really, really don't want to lose you."

"Sam… you're not gonna lose me…" My voice was suddenly softer, much gentler than it had been before… In fact, I would almost go so far as to describe it as vulnerable as I struggled to come up with something to say in response to my daughter's expression of her deepest of fears involving my abandonment of her the first chance that I got…

I knew that we'd been down this road before, more times than once now mind you, and to be completely honest, I wasn't sure how many times I had to tell her that there was nothing that could ever happen in our lives that would make me want to simply ditch her at a moment's notice, but I was certainly determined to put a rest to that notion right here, right now…

I wasn't sure of the things that had occurred in Sam's life that ever made her this untrustworthy to anybody who had taken up the responsibility of caring for her… she didn't like to talk about her past and I didn't want to push her on a topic that was so sensitive… but whatever it was, I wanted more than anything to erase it, to start something new, better even because if there was one person who deserved that more than anyone else in the entire world, well it was Sam.

I'd always admired that girl, from the moment I met her… even if she was stealing from me at the time, there had been something about her that had stuck out at me from day one, and I was just glad that I got the opportunity to find out exactly what that something was… It was her resilience, her courage, her ability to bounce back and rebound from any mountain that dropped itself down right in front of her… You see, Sam is the type of person that has always been able to dream the most elaborate of dreams even when she was wide awake… images full of extensive wonders that I couldn't even come close to thinking of even in my most wildest of imagination… She was the type of person that has been known to fill entire oceans, soar clear across the world by means of flying on air… I'd even swear to it that I've seen her ignite the sun in the morning, extinguish it at night… Yeah, Sam is a lot of things, that's for damn sure, but one thing she is beyond anything else, she's the type of person that me jealous in my wonderment as to why I will never be able to do the things that she can.

"Do you promise Brooke? Can you swear to it that I'm never gonna lose you… Because Brooke, I was able to stand losing a lot of people before in my life but… well you're definitely not one of them."

I took the miniscule amount of steps separating Sam and I until I was directly in front of her so that I could reach out and place my hands firmly down against each one of her bony shoulders, crouching ever-so-slightly at the knees so that I could match her slightly shorter frame and make direct eye contact with her so that she knew exactly how much I meant everything that I was about to say.

"Sam, there is absolutely nothing that can ever come between the two of us that would ever make you lose me okay? And even though I'm not sure what the hell other shenanigans the two of us can possibly get ourselves into, no matter what I'm not leaving… not ever. The way I see it Sam, anything that has ever come between us just makes me love even more if that's even possible… Trust me Sam, there's no way in hell you're ever gonna be able to get of me that easily, okay?"

I smirked up at her, pressing my hands even harder into her shoulders as I stared her down hard amidst the ran pounding harder and harder against our heads and the thunder clapping down in a circle around us while strikes of lightning seemed to come so close that we were nearly burned… But suddenly, my desire to turn back, to escape this sudden wrath of Mother Nature herself was diminished… suddenly, I was instead embraced by this idea that I had somehow, amidst all of this chaos, actually had managed to find a hint of safety that I was certain could never be broken.

I watched as Sam soaked up my words through closed eyes and a couple deep, patterned breaths and I couldn't help but watch her with wonderment as slowly, her face broke out into a soft smile, and tears of relief that I'd even managed to distinguish through all of this rain slid slowly down her cheeks so that all at once, I was suddenly struck with the realization that it had never felt so good to just let go and love more in my entire life.

For a split second, she simply stood her ground, watching me carefully as she slowly allowed my words to drift inside of her and wrap themselves around her brain before in one fluid movement, she ripped herself out from underneath the hands I still had pressed firmly against her shoulder and compensated within seconds by throwing her surprisingly strong body against my mid section, her long, lanky arms flinging around me so that she could pull me closer and allow me to return the movement, contorting her body so that it could fit perfectly against my own in a manner that truly made me believe that I could stay here forever if that truly was an option…

Time flew past us so quickly that I probably couldn't even tell you how long we sat there or how much longer we could have actually stood to wait, but that didn't really seem to be a concern on either one of our minds at the moment because to be completely honest with you, time had become somewhat of a relative aspect of our lives lately because these days, it wasn't something we particularly liked to think about considering the fact that our lack of knowledge towards how much time of it we had left of it was a concept that had become a prominent feature of our lives lately…

But that didn't change the fact that I allowed myself to carry this feeling of completion that I'd achieved from having such a good conversation with Sam with me so that by the time I had finally showered and made my way back towards the kitchen, leaning over the counter top with a towel over my head, my robe wrapped tightly around my body, and a cup of tea between my hands, my head was so wrapped up within the clouds that I didn't even hear the front door open and close or somebody walk through my house in search of me until that person was right in front of my face… and even then, I hadn't even noticed her presence until she actually said something to me.

"You look like you're thinking about something important Brooke."

I jumped slightly, a bit of the tea that I had been cradling between my hands spilling out of the side of the mug so that it burned my hands slightly in a dull pain that I hardly noticed after looking up only to see my best friend in front of me; the one person that I wanted to see right now more than anybody else in this entire world…

"Peyton!" I leapt up in my excitement, ripping myself away from the countertop and practically sprinting across the kitchen where I wrapped her up into a firm hug in a reaction that made it seem as if I hadn't seen her in years let alone merely for a couple of days, "How was your trip?"

"Um… it was good." Peyton replied with almost a nervous kind of laugh behind her voice directed towards the fact that I had an extra, unusual sense of giddiness behind my actions today… something that may have been very characteristic of the old Brooke, sure, but definitely not of this new Brooke that I had been embracing these past couple of months, "Yeah, Karen and Andy are doing great, and you should see Lily, she's getting so big… And hey, before I forget, I hope you don't mind but I told Karen what's been going on with you and, you know Sam lately… she wanted me to let you know that she's thinking of you and that if you need anything, they have that weird satellite phone thing on the boat so just call."

"Thanks P. Sawyer…" I nodded appreciatively, my voice and my actions relaxing in their post-excited phase as I relaxed against the comfort of the acknowledgment that I had yet another voice of support behind me… however distant it might be.

"I miss them…" The thought made me sigh our this admittance without particularly meaning to, because even when her presence wasn't even here in the physical, the idea of having Karen's thoughts and prayers still flushed me with this sense of comfort stemming from that naturally calming way she had about her.

"I know," Peyton nodded her understanding because I was sure she felt the same way, if not more so, "But they all say hi and that they miss everyone here and that hopefully they'll be able to sneak a visit over the summer for a few weeks… But hey, listen, the reason I came over here was that I just talked to Haley and she told me that you had some pretty awesome news for me… But of course she wouldn't tell me what it was so aside from wanting to see my best friend, who I missed dearly by the way; I came over here because I was curious… what's the news?"

I couldn't help the smile that splayed across my face at the sudden reminder of exactly what that news was as I grinned slyly towards Peyton and tried to contain my sense of excited pride that always came with my revelation of my pregnancy to people… especially when said people was my best friend.

"I'm pregnant!"

I watched her closely in an attempt to read her initial reaction as her jaw dropped, her eyes bugged out from her skull, and her face started contorting strangely in an attempt to find the proper expression that would show all of the feelings she was currently experiencing all at once so that it looked as if it had been made out of Play Dough or something.

"Oh my God Brooke, that's amazing; congratulation!" Her voice emitted as a yell, easily a solid octave higher than it would normally be in her excitement as she flung her body towards me with arms outstretched and wrapped herself around me in a motion that practically knocked the wind right out of my body… Of course, that hardly seemed to matter, after all it was probably one of the best feelings I had ever felt in my entire life; this tone approval, this sharing of my excitement with one of the people who mattered the most to me.

"Thanks Peyton," I leaned into her touch, embracing the comfort that naturally resonated off of the body of my best friend as I held onto for probably what would be considered a little bit longer than was actually necessary, "You have no idea how long I've been waiting to tell you… I swear I was half ready to walk to South Carolina if you didn't get back soon."

"Jesus Brooke, I've only been gone a few days," She laughed at my impatience, pulling away from me first so that she could look directly at me when she asked her next question, "When did you find out?"

"On Friday," I told her, my face glowing brightly as I spoke, a feature that Peyton apparently not only noticed, but also considered to be a nice change of pace for me, "I went to the doctors with Haley the other day, she told me that I was only about six weeks along so I've got a while to go but…" I trailed off in my sentence, allowing Peyton to piece the rest of it together for herself.

"Brooke… I know how badly you've wanted this for so long now… I'm happy for you, really I am." She continued to project her pleasure towards my announcement that I was about to make her Aunt Peyton once again, speaking with a gradually progressive higher and faster tone in her excitement, unable to contain that elated sense of enthusiasm anymore so that I couldn't help but feed off of her excitement, following her lead as she began literally bouncing up and down in front of me, unable to produce physical words anymore now that she said everything she had to, merely expressing her thrill in a series of high pitched shrieks that I matched perfectly so that the two of us were quickly finding ourselves speaking in the form of wordlessly, incomprehensible noises that could never be properly translated back into the English language.

"Hey… what's going on?"

I craned my neck so quickly it cracked, Peyton and I turning our heads simultaneously sideways towards the sound of the voice where we found Julian standing in the space between the hall and the kitchen, looking thoroughly confused for a brief moment before his expression slowly faded into one of cordial understanding as my and Peyton's bright features filtered across the every surface of his brain.

"You told her?" He answered his own question before either one of us so much as had the opportunity to explain ourselves, his expression softening with a notion of pride similar to the one I was currently feeling myself in regards to the spreading of the news of our inevitable parenthood.

"Oh she told me alright… I guess that now's about the time that I'm supposed to be telling you that you had your chance with me Julian but really, congratulations… dad."

Peyton emitted her congratulatory speech, stepping up closer towards him so that she could wrap him up into a friendly, genuine hug.

I watched the interaction with semi-surprise, a feeling that Julian apparently reciprocated as he tensed briefly, looked over towards me with a quick raise of the eyebrows and a shrug of the shoulders that I returned before placing a soft expression on my face that I hoped he would be able to translate in that I was thinking that maybe this was a physical representation of a peace offering, or something like that… one which I knew for a fact that Julian would be more than willing to take.

I watched the two interact, feeling as my heart swelled with pride, joy, and shear gratitude towards the fact that I had somehow gotten lucky enough to receive such an amazing family, an amazing group of friends, and an absolutely, indescribably amazing life.

Sure I'd heard about it before, but the thing was, I've never really understood that feeling, that sense of cyclic completion of everything coming full circle around me before this moment… But here it was; this idea sparked from the conversation I'd just had with Sam, the assurance I'd made towards her that she would be a part of my family for the rest of my life and beyond, and the evidence of my best friend's approval showing itself off right in front of me, and the idea that I could practically feel my very own child growing larger and larger inside of me with each passing day, and finally, with Julian's mere presence, which can always make me feel better, no matter what the situation… well there it was… an enormous relief provided by the family I used to always fear I would never be able to achieve piecing itself together right before my very eyes.

It got me thinking… I mean, I know that I've tried that whole living in darkness thing once before, more than once mind you… and I'm not going to lie, for a little while there, that life had actually worked out for me just fine, but ultimately, it got pretty old and pretty miserable, and eventually, it managed to turn me into the kind of person that I absolutely did not want to become… a person that I knew that I just… I don't know, wasn't.

But then one day I woke up, and I finally realized; no matter how bad it ever got, no matter how far I ever fell through, I would always have somebody around me to make sure that I would never lose the light in its entirety… In fact, the closest that I've ever actually come throughout all of this to achieving a state of total darkness was at night, right before I fell asleep when that darkness filtered around me so heavily that it forced me to actually be consciously aware of the fact that there has been a light constantly surrounding me from them no matter how black the day, no matter how much, on some days I didn't quite believe it to be that way after all.

* * *

**JULIAN**

Coming home to the sound of a celebration that was so loud, and seemingly so elaborate that for a second there, I literally thought that Brooke had been throwing a full-blown party inside of her house wasn't exactly what I had been expecting when I'd walked through that front door, but in a pattern that seemed so usual of my life these days, what I'd expected the very least actually ended up being exactly what I'd gotten, because really… it sounded like there was a freaking frat party or something currently being thrown in the kitchen…

In fact, I'd been so convinced of this aforementioned scenario that when I followed the noise to its source towards the back of the kitchen and saw that the entirety of the commotion was being caused by no more than two people, I couldn't help but find myself completely and utterly shocked.

"What's going on?"

Looking back now, I guess I had been stupid to ask; after all, knowing Brooke and knowing Peyton, there could only be one source and one source only towards all of this excitement… this is why the acknowledgment of exactly what was going on here seeped into my head before either Brooke or Peyton actually had the opportunity to answer my question.

"You told her?" I provided the answer to my own question before either of them could do it for me as I felt a soft smile flood across my face with the acknowledgment of the fact that the proudest announcement of my entire life was currently being passed around… but honestly, I think that I could tell the entire world that I was about to become a father and I still wouldn't think that would be enough…

"Oh she told me alright… I guess that now's about the time that I'm supposed to be telling you that you had your chance with me Julian but really, congratulations… dad." Her word stunned me stupid… mainly because I was so used to her yelling at me for being an ass, but I wasn't left to linger on the shock of her words for too long, because not five seconds later, she did something even crazier; she took a step towards me followed by another one, and then another, and she wrapped her arms around my mid-chest and pulled me into a firm congratulatory embrace.

Now, and don't take this the wrong way when you hear it, I couldn't help but retreat ever-so slightly at first because even though Peyton and I have, at least in the superficial, moved on from all of those lingering bad times between us, I still wasn't exactly sure where she stood in this whole, "hey I used to date you but now I'm in love with your best friend" scenario that we had going on over here.

I stiffened naturally, my eyes lingering over Peyton's shoulder towards Brooke with an expression on my face that I would have paid top dollar to actually see as I shrugged towards her figuring that this could only be taken as something good, and leaned into her instantly shedding the persistent history we had with each other in a solid second.

"Thanks Peyton, really," I responded to her approval genuinely, taking a step or two back after a couple of seconds before this whole thing started to get too weird or Brooke started to get the wrong idea or something… okay so I was only kidding about that last one… kind of.

"So Julian, where have you been hiding all day I've barely seen you?" Brooke asked as the three of us gradually faded out of the mood briefly enticed by our initial excitement and into a period of normal conversation.

"Actually I've kind of just been floating around on my own all day… I've just been thinking about something… something big…" Well actually, I think that to say that I was thinking about something big was an understatement… a better adjective for my plans would probably actually be something huge, something monumental, something positively, without a doubt, life altering… of course, I wasn't quite ready to spill the beans on what exactly that something was just yet so I figured I'd leave Brooke squirming for at least a little while longer.

And just as expected, I watched as she put a glimpse of sly curiosity across her face in response to my announcement so that she looked just so freaking adorable, I couldn't suppress the sudden urge I had to take her into my arms and kiss her into my mouth positively fell off… so forgive me when I tell you that that is exactly what I actually did.

I matched her expression to the exact, pouncing towards her with a gentle aggressiveness as I grabbed her around the waist and lifted her into the air until her feet were just too high to touch the ground, even with her toes extended… Performing a not-so-grateful little pirouette in mid-air as if I was suddenly trying to channel my inner ballerina or something, I set her back down on top of the counter, leaned over her, and kissed her so deeply, so passionately that for a little while there, the rest of the world positively disappeared.

"Okay…" Ultimately, it was Peyton's voice that pulled us back into the real world, forcing me to pull myself off of Brooke abruptly with the embarrassment of the reminder of the presence of another person in the room who apparently, I had simply forgotten all about up until now, "I think that that's my cue to leave."

Peyton took a step forward towards Brooke and me, currently identical in the fact that our cheeks were bright red with humiliation, moving slowly as she took each one of us up in our arms one last time before taking a backwards step towards the front door.

"Congratulations again the both of you, really… Brooke make sure that you call me if you need anything okay?"

"I will Peyton!" Brooke shouted after her, her voice echoing through the house as Peyton disappeared back into the hallway, her footsteps echoing further and further away until the distant sound of the front door opening and closing acted as our indicator that we were alone.

"So," Brooke wasted no time in pushing her investigation of me, making an abrupt about face away from the hall Peyton had just left down and back towards me, the excitement prominent in her features as she attempted to be sly in her desire for me to be quick about elaborating on the vague announcement I'd made mere moments ago, "What is this something big that you have to tell me all about?"

"Well…" I killed her stalling and I knew it; in a sense, that's kind of why I kept going at the rate that I was, "It kind of has to do with Sam too so… where is she anyway?"

"She's in the shower," She pouted a little bit, responding to my lack of a sufficient answer but kept talking despite herself because, well let's face it, that's what she did best; and I loved every second of it, "The two of us, well we kind of got caught outside in the rain."

I raised my eyebrow up slightly towards her, admittedly just a little bit confused about the context of her revelation and whether or not she was being literal or if this was some kind of strange metaphor that I just couldn't make heads or tails out of.

"We talked," She shrugged alongside a clarification, noticing the obvious perplexity currently written all over my face, and I felt my expression slide into one of better understanding at the realization that Sam must have actually taken me up on the advice I had given her yesterday after she'd spilled her guts out to me in the middle of her dialysis session yesterday.

"About you having this baby?"

"You knew about that?" She asked, arching her eyebrows upwards in her surprise towards my revelation as I shrugged back to her with half-assed movements, offering her the briefest of nods simply to indicate that I did indeed know all about that.

"Yesterday, you know, while you were out at the store with Haley and Sam was having her dialysis, she just looked kind of… I don't know, a little bit off… I kind of had to force her into it, but you know, she basically just told me that she was scared about everything going on and I told her to talk to you about it… I'm just kind of glad that she actually did, I'm not gonna lie I didn't really think that she would."

"I know what you mean," Brooke nodded back to me briefly, "I kind of had to force her into it too…" Her face fell slightly in time with her words as her eyes began glazing over with a dazed look that told me that she was thinking about something, and she was thinking about something pretty hard, and I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that something was the lingering memory of the mystery conversation that her and Sam had seemingly just had prior to my walking back into this house.

"Hey what's wrong?" I asked noticing just how suddenly and how visibly Brooke's expression had just changed, deciding not to wait until she answered to offer my comfort in the form of turning towards her and wrapping my arms around her waist in an awkward middle school dance kind of position just to attempt to transfer some physical comfort deep inside of her body.

"I just feel bad that's all… Actually I'm kind of pissed off at myself for making Sam feel like I don't want her… for making her think that I don't love her unconditionally…"

"Hey, she know that you do," I told her sharply, trying desperately to force the idea into her head simply by using the tone of my voice, "Listen with all of the crap that Sam has been through with all the families she's been pushed through her whole life it was just natural for her to have that fear in the back of her head, it has nothing to do with you… But I mean… I talked to her about it and you talked to her about it and I'm pretty sure that we pretty effectively pounded it into her brain that neither of us are going anywhere on her any time soon."

She offered me a sheepish sort of grin upwards, glancing up slowly as she began to process my words and slowly managed to start convincing herself that they were actually true.

"Thank you Julian,"

"You don't have to thank me, it's the truth." I assured her, reaching around so that I could clasp my fingers into the indents of her hip bones and pull her closer into me so that she could comfortably wrap her arms around me at mid-chest level and I could comfortably lean down and plant a soft, comforting kiss directly on the top of her head, allowing it to linger for just a moment before I pulled away again, suddenly feeling as if I might literally explode if I kept the secret I was currently hiding to myself any longer.

"Hey listen…" I pulled away from her so that I could look directly into those gorgeous eyes that positively made me melt inside every time I saw them when I spoke, "I mean, I guess this is kind of what I wanted to talk to you about but… well everything that happened between me and Sam yesterday, it just kind of got me to really start thinking you know, and I got this idea… I don't know, it's this crazy idea that I just can't get out of my head… Brooke, after you told me that I was going to be a father… I want to feel like this… you know, like I'm walking on pure air all the time, forever… and I started to realize how much I want a family and how much I need you and Sam in my life because Brooke, when the two of you aren't around me I'm miserable. I feel absolutely empty and when that happens… well Brooke, you're the only one who can ever actually fix that… I've never felt like this before Brooke, not about anything, not about anyone… and, well… what I guess I'm trying to say here is this…"

I took a deep, shaky breath as my every body part began trembling with sheer nerves so that I was currently cursing my overactive adrenal glands for pumping so much of its adrenaline through my body right now, silently warning them that if they screwed the single most important moment of my entire life up for me right now, I would personally rip them out and stomp them straight into the ground myself.

My body felt so heavy all of a sudden that it practically sunk itself down onto its right knee which I couldn't' complain about too much considering that those had been my intentions anyway… after all, if I was gonna do this, I was gonna do it the right way even if it was just the two of us currently sitting by ourselves in a kitchen.

I felt my knee collide with the cold tile ground at the precise same moment that Brooke released an audible gasp as the realization of my current intentions hit her like a slap across the face.

"Oh my God… Julian…" Brooke muttered her response but I barely heard it; I was too busy focusing all of my energy, all of my thought processes on the exact details of this moment; the one I had been planning with a tedious precision all day long now.

"Brooke," My voice came out as an embarrassingly high shriek, strangely reminiscent of the way it sounded when I was fourteen years old and hit puberty… But I tried to shake it off, turning to dig inside of my jacket pocket briefly, my fingers clasping around the small velvet box, allowing me to present it to Brooke, opening it with a precision that I definitely practiced a little more than a few times by myself in the bathroom this morning… "Will you marry me?"

I glanced up tentatively towards Brooke who, for a moment or two there stood stunned still and silent, her jaw so low, it was practically rested down on the floor right next to my knee and her eyes glistening with a thin sheathe of tears… and let me tell you, that five or so seconds of absolute silence might as well have been an eternity because it did absolutely nothing for my confidence with took a free fall for a little while there as my heart clenched with fear that ran throughout my entire body.

A couple of those previously threatening tears spilled from underneath the barrier of her eyelids as slowly but surely, a smile so wide, before today I didn't even know a human mouth could actually move that far up your face appeared prominently across her features and she began nodding her head in sporadic up and down movements so vigorous I thought her head would pop off; but of course, it was the only expression of her answer that she could currently manage considering the fact that her mouth seemed currently unable to produce words in her haze leaving her babbling incoherently as if she were speaking an entirely different language all together.

"Oh my God Julian… yes, yes of course I'll marry you…" She finally managed to form at least a semi-coherent sentence only after several previously failed attempts, her words hitting me like a breath of fresh air as she reached down and grabbed me under the arms, impressively pulling me up to my feet all on her own, where she allowed me to push her up against the counter top, her body contorting into a practical 90° angle until her back was fully pressed up against the granite and I was left hovering above her, lowering my body slowly on top of hers where it fit with just a twinge of an extra sense of perfection simply given the circumstances.

"Wait… hang on a minute…" It took me a lot of motivation and several extra minutes after I'd actually said something to actually force my lips away from Brooke's long enough to pull the both of us back up into a fully standing position so that I could actually continue this whole process of my proposition.

"Before I do something stupid like drop this or lose it or something…" I spoke from experience because I knew that I was the single biggest klutz on the face of this planet meaning that I definitely did not trust myself holding onto this ring I don't even want to talk about how much money I just spent on any longer.

Well let me tell you, Brooke didn't need any sort of persuasion from me; instead, she presented her hand towards me with a tone of excited obedience, allowing me to hold gently hold her by the delicate bones of her hand and slide the ring lightly across her finger where it nestled itself comfortably in a near-perfect fit.

"Julian it's beautiful." She muttered in her awe, barely able to rip her eyes off of this surprise newest addition to her body so that I couldn't help but to feel a sudden surge of a sense of self-accomplishment towards the acknowledgment that I had actually done something good for a change.

"The guy at the store said that if you needed to go in and get it fitted or anything like that he would do it whenever so…"

"It's perfect," She stopped me before I could really start rambling about the technicalities, distracting me easily by grabbing me by the collar of my shirt, pulling me back into her so that I knew there was no way in hell I would ever be able to deny an invitation like that one.

"Wait… there's one more thing." I muttered between the motion of our lips against each other's, reluctantly raising my head from up against hers once again so that I was suddenly very aware of the fact that our constant detachments were starting to become physically painful… Clearly I hadn't been thinking when I had come up with the elaborate plan to tell Brooke all of these ideas I had in store for our futures all at once, I hadn't thought about the sense of passion that would have arisen as a result of me choosing to propose to her… stupid, I know.

"I figured that… well, if we're going to do this, if the two of us are going to be a family officially, and if we have this baby to be a part of that… then I've been thinking that I want Sam to be a piece of that too… Brooke, I love that kid more than I could even possibly explain to you. I want my family to be her family, I want her to be our child's big sister, I want to be able to call her my daughter… Brooke, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to adopt Sam too… I just wanted to… I don't know; see how you felt about it."

I didn't think that it was possible for Brooke to actually look even happier than she already had looked before I'd said this, but she'd proved me wrong, because by the time I'd delivered to her my second proposition in about a ten minute time period, I swear to God, she had literally begun physically glowing.

"Julian I think that Sam would absolutely love that… and I know that you know that I would too. Hell, you're already like a father to Sam… that's how she sees you anyway; and I see the way that you two are together… You're a good dad Julian Baker; our kids won't even know what hit them."

My face grew hot as it flushed red in response to Brooke's compliment, and I couldn't help but to break the eye contact that I'd previously had with Brooke and point my gaze down to the floor where I stared determinedly at my feet as I scuffed them along the tile so that Brooke wouldn't be able to see how much of an emotional response her words had actually enacted upon me.

"Okay… is that it, because Julian I think I might drop dead of heart failure or something if you lay one more of your huge announcements on me right now…"

"Yeah," I smirked at her joke as I allowed myself to raise my eyes back up once more to meet her own, "That's it."

"Good," She nodded, barely wasting so much as another second of time before she grabbed me by the shoulders with such force that I staggered backwards a few paces so that my back collided firmly with the refrigerator door behind me, halting me in my tracks while meanwhile, Brooke just continued pushing me forcefully up against the stainless steel until my body was literally squished between her body and the solid platform behind me, leaving me having a very difficult time deciding whether this constriction that I was currently feeling in my chest that was starting to make it very, very difficult for my lungs to actually take in a substantial amount of oxygen was due to the fact that I was currently being compressed into a pancake or because Brooke and I were currently finding it very difficult to pull our mouths away from each other long enough to actually suck in a descent sized breath.

My mind shut off, I completely lost any concept of time that I had actually had beforehand, and my muscles moved completely on their own accord as my hands began to roam and my brain blocked out any notion that wasn't about either me or Brooke.

"Oh Jesus… gross,"

And just like that, it was gone… The sudden reminder that Brooke and I hadn't been the only ones inside of this house at the moment hitting me, and apparently Brooke as well full force across the head as Brooke jumped up with shock so abruptly, she actually bit me in the midst of her retreat so hard that I could taste that metallic clang of blood fill inside of m y mouth.

Brooke swiveled around towards the opening towards the hallway and I glanced directly over shoulder, each of us wearing matching expressions quite similar to those seen by deer who had just found themselves caught directly in the headlights.

I felt like I was in high school again, being caught by my parents doing something that I definitely knew that I should not have been doing as Sam stared us down with a stern expression on her face and her hands resting firmly on her hips just so that she was sure she was currently letting us know just how permanently scarred she had become from walking in on what she'd just walked in on… but still, I just couldn't help but stop and silently thank God that she had come in when she had at a time when sure, Brooke and I had been frantic with passion, but still at least fully clothed and remaining relatively PG-13… a few seconds later and well, who knows how emotionally damaged she would have become… hell, we'd probably be taking her to therapy until the day we died.

"Um… hi," I spoke with a chipper undertone, guilt prominent in the back of my voice as I struggled to come up with exactly what the hell I should say to her, ultimately deciding on what was quite possibly the lamest thing I could have ever possibly said.

"Dude… that's like… my mom… Jesus I already have cancer, do you want me to go freaking blind now too?" In typical Sam fashion, she'd managed to dish out the single handedly most smart ass comment she could possibly muster, which, if anything, just left Brooke and I more embarrassed than we already were… if that was at all possible.

"SAMANTHA!" Brooke tried her luck at scolding Sam's less than liberal sense of humor, pushing her luck in her hopes that pinning the guilt onto Sam would offer us a significant enough distraction to instigate a subject change… of course we both knew that we could never get so lucky… especially not with Sam who was notorious for her ability to break balls.

"Whatever," Sam laughed at our apparent awkwardness, turning away from the two of us and moving towards the direction of her bedroom, "I'll stay in my room tonight… with my headphones on… as loud as they go… And hey, if you guys manage to catch a free minute or two, make sure to just slip some food and water underneath my door every once in a while, okay?"

To my left, I could see Brooke through m y peripherals as she buried her face into her hands with mortification while meanwhile, straight in front of me, Sam sat still in her door frame for just a fraction of a second, offering the tiniest of innocent little waves and a mocking sort of smile before she closed the door behind her, leaving Brooke and I absolutely stunned stupid.

The two of us just kind of stood there for a minute or two in order to attempt to process exactly what the hell it was that just happened before all at once, a hearty laugh originated from deep down inside of my very gut and escaped through the back of my throat so that I knew now that I started, there was no way in hell I'd ever be able to stop again…

"Oh my God Julian, this is so not funny what the hell am I supposed to tell Sam?" She responded to my apparent humor with a completely opposite approach towards the situation with a scolding and a small punch to the arm, but behind the humiliation still prominent in her eyes, I could see the gleam of a smirk that told me that I wasn't in too much trouble with her at the moment.

"Well, first you can sit her down and tell her that when a man and a woman love each other very, very much…"

"Ugh, stop!" She cut me off mid-sentence, pressing her index fingers firmly into each ear so that she didn't have to hear any more of it, turning away from me sharply and walking towards Sam's closed bedroom door, her intentions towards attempting to rectify this little mess she had just found herself in obvious at once.

"Hey Sam?" She knocked gently at the door, not even waiting for Sam to respond before opening it a crack and poking her head inside, "How about I take you out for dinner or something?"

"Is this your way of buttering me up?" I heard Sam respond to Brooke's plea-bargain from within the depts. Of her bedroom, her words and her tone making it very clear to me that she wasn't about to allow Brooke to forget this one any time soon.

"Absolutely," Brooke nodded her head firmly towards Sam's question, not even bothering to cover up that those were actually her exact intentions.

"Then I'm in… Just let me get dressed real quick okay?"

"Deal," Brooke nodded herself out of Sam's room, swinging the door shut behind her to ensure the girl's privacy… something that I wish that Brooke and I had actually thought of a few minutes ago, before she turned back towards me with a slight shake of her head and the smallest of grins on her face, walking past me without so much as a word, disappearing inside of her own bedroom and closing the door gently behind her leaving me completely alone inside of the kitchen feeling a little bit like a fool but all-in-all way too washed away with the notion that I had quite possibly just made the best decision that I could ever possibly make in my decision to keep the two most amazing girls on the face of this planet in my life for the rest of eternity.

* * *

A couple of years ago, if you ever came up to me and told me that I would be celebrating my engagement with my pregnant fiancé and my cancer-stricken, soon-to-be-adoptive daughter at a twenty four hour diner in the middle of the heart of North Carolina, I probably would have laughed at you, hit you square in the mouth, and then told you that you were absolutely crazy… in that order.

But had I done that, well I would be owing you a pretty serious apology right about now, because here I was; finding myself in the exact same scenario that I would have, at a time, believed to be impossible… But you know, I honest to God wouldn't have preferred my life to be any different because I don't think it was possible for me to be any happier than I was right now.

"Hey listen, Sam, besides trying to bribe you into erasing your memory of everything that you may or may not have seen before, there's another reason that Julian and I took you out tonight… well we kind of wanted to talk to you about something." It was Brooke who had actually ended up initiating the conversation, her words catching Sam off guard because well, when your mom told you that we needed to talk, it usually wasn't a good thing… The poor kid stumbled over Brooke's words, nearly choking on the dinner that she was actually feeling well enough to eat for a change… how ironic would that have been huh?

"Is this gonna be one of those awkward sex talks because of what happened between you and Julian before? Because trust me Brooke, I've already had it… I was in this foster home once, and the lady there was like the sex-ed teacher at the town's high school, and on my 12th birthday while we were all eating cake, she busted out all of these creepy mannequin-like things and these poster boards with some nasty ass pictures all over them, and… oh, this one's my favorite; she actually had this one thing and it was all like…"

"No!" Brooke cut off Sam rather abruptly before she could finish her sentence with a look on her face that told me that she'd rather decide to stick a damn fork into each one of her eyeballs before she'd decide to have "the talk" with Sam… ever.

"Actually it's about us… me and Julian… and you too." She cleverly transitioned herself towards the direction of the actual thing that she was trying to tell Sam, purposefully shifting in her seat so that she could unveil obviously, the left hand that she had been carefully keeping out of Sam's view just so we would be able to tell her what we had to tell her at exactly the right moment.

"Oh my God," Sam gaped, mouth open and wide-eyed staring down at the shimmering ring that was sticking directly into her line of vision with a look of utter surprise prominent across her face, "Oh my God he proposed? Wait… you proposed?"

She darted her head back and forth between the two of us quickly, begging for a rapid response to the confirmation that what she had seemingly been waiting her entire life to happen had finally actually managed to happen… The two of us nodded her heads towards her with simultaneous movements, both eager to confirm to her that this wasn't just some kind of sick joke that we were playing on her or something and that I had truly popped the question to Brooke after months of already knowing that she was, and forever would be the girl of my absolute dreams.

"That's so awesome!" Sam practically squealed in her delight, finding herself unable to contain her excitement as she began bouncing up and down in her seat, attracting even more attention towards us than what we already had; a factor that she honestly hardly noticed thanks to the fact that she was quite used to having all of the attention on her these days.

"And Sam… well, there's a little bit more to it than that." Brooke decided to interfere; making sure that Sam wouldn't get so excited that she positively blasted off into space from the position in her chair before she heard the whole story, because really, if you thought she was giddy now… she didn't even know the half of it.

"What is it?" She asked impatiently, practically busting at the seams waiting for one of us to speak while meanwhile, I couldn't help the smile that appeared across my face at the knowledge of just exactly what it was…

"Well… Julian and I were talking about it, and well, he came to me first but really, the decision is totally up to you okay…" She dragged out her sentence airily, darting glances over towards me periodically as to indicate that I should probably be the one to finish what she had started.

"Sam," I spoke carefully, not really sure exactly how it was that I was supposed to propose adoption to somebody… I mean, proposing to your girlfriend was easy, everybody knew how to do that, but this… well I've gotta say, this was probably something that didn't exactly happen every day… "Here's the thing Sam; with Brooke and I getting married and all, I sort of got to thinking all about how we're going to be a real family soon… but then I thought that I'd really like it to be even more than that; I want it to be official, you know… legally I mean… So… and like Brooke said, this decision is totally up to you, so I don't want you to feel pressured or anything, but… well… I want to adopt you Sam… what do you think about that?"

"Are you serious?" Her eyes widened and bugged out of her head as if all of this news that she was currently receiving was positively building up inside of her head, filling it with hot air so that her features were seemingly popping straight out with all of the pressure.

"Well… yeah," I told her, unsure as to whether or not I should be taking this initial response as a good sign or a bad one.

"Julian… I don't even know what to say…"

"So is that a yes?" I asked hesitantly, not really sure what I would do if she actually rejected me right here and now.

"Hell yes!" She screamed it, so loud that every single head in the restaurant turned towards us, eyeing us with suspicion towards what the hell it was exactly that we were doing over here that was causing so much commotion…

Her ears glowed red with embarrassment as she slowly sank her body further down into her chair as to avoid prying eyes until people slowly started losing interest, turning back to their own affairs and leaving ours to us…

"But I have a question, I mean, how many times do you think they're gonna allow me to change my name, because really, I just became a Davis a few months ago and I have the slightest feeling that I'm gonna start really confusing people if I show up with a new last name every like… week or so."

"Eh, we'll figure it out," I smirked at her statement, unable to control the feeling that was currently filling up my heart in response to Sam letting me know that she was more than willing to not only proceed with my adoption of her, but to take my last name in response to boot, "Besides, people don't mess with Bakers… we usually have our way."

I reached out with the arm closest to her, ruffling the hat on top her head slightly so that it skewed sideways off of its previously perfectly centered position leaving her to roll her eyes with mock annoyance towards my movements although the entirety of her features expressed nothing but gratefulness towards my gestures… all of them…

And all at once, the sense of pride filtering through my body was getting to a point that it was almost overwhelming, and I found myself completely, and totally unable to stop myself that thinking that for once in my life, everything actually seemed to finally be going my way… and I'll tell you what… I don't think I'd ever felt better about anything before… ever.

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Let's face it, all of us had been so used to our entire lives being nothing short of a total disaster that when the entirety of our dinner went nothing short of completely flawless, I almost went as far to believe that I had somehow accidentally transferred myself over into some parallel universe or something without even noticing…

By the time I had managed to pull Brooke's car back up into the driveway in a symbolically indicative ending of what I had considered to be probably the most perfect day that I had ever lived through, well I had to admit it, I was actually feeling what seemed to be an actual pang of disappointment flooding through my body towards this fact…

"Hey Sam, can you do me a favor and meet us inside… we'll be right in okay?" Brooke turned to address Sam with her request the second that I had thrown the car in park, and I couldn't help but turn to look at her, confused for a second there about what she was planning on achieving alone between us in the car, but then when I thought about it that way, and combined it with that familiar sly gleam that has suddenly glistened across Brooke's eyes, well I knew exactly what she planned on achieving, and you know what… I approved… particularly because Brooke and I were more than a few hours overdue thanks to that whole kitchen debacle we'd found ourselves running into from before…

"Yeah, alright I'll be in my…" She stopped abruptly, and through the rear-view mirror, I watched as she froze, her eyes widening with the exact same realization that had just flooded over me, and she slowly began shaking her head back and forth towards us in her acknowledgment towards the fact that her parents were seemingly more irresponsible than her sixteen year old rebellious self was, "Just don't get yourselves freaking arrested out here okay?"

She moved quickly, swinging herself out of the back seat of the car, shutting the door firmly behind her.

"We need to learn how to start being more inconspicuous about this kind of thing." I laughed while meanwhile Brooke hung her head in embarrassment towards her exposure of her promiscuity towards Sam for what seemed to be just about the millionth time in that night alone.

"Yeah we do…" She nodded her head in distinct agreement, the expression on her face telling me that I had probably never said a truer statement before in my entire life, "But how about we call today a freebie, okay… we can start cracking down hardcore on ourselves tomorrow which means we might as well take advantage while we can right?"

She laid out the conditions of what I was considering to be Brooke and my slightly delayed New Year's resolution to not have sex in places where we were most likely to be caught, which, given our track record, would no doubt be difficult… but I guess that was the reason we were starting it tomorrow and not right now…

"Definitely," I agreed with her terms, before, with not so much as a single other word, I reached out to her and, in one fluid movement, wrapped my arms up and around her shoulders, hooking the joint of my elbows around the underside of her arms, tugging firmly yet gently as I dragged the two of us between the narrow space in between the driver's and passenger's seats, over the back bench of chairs, and down into the trunk of the SUV, which, we both already knew had plenty of breathing room thanks to previous experience, where we landed down with a firm, satisfying plop.

She let out a shrill shriek of surprise in response to my movements, the car visibly shaking already from our less than graceful shift from the front all the way into the trunk so that I couldn't help but notice that we were already failing pretty terribly in our goal to be much less obvious about things like this.

We positioned ourselves quickly into the most comfortable position that we could possibly manage sitting in the trunk of a car, and for a second there, Brooke simply sunk herself down against my body, still and silent, completely embracing the way we contorted into a perfect, single unit against one another; that missing piece to the personal puzzle of my life that I felt as if I had been searching forever for.

In fact, I'd gotten so wrapped up in the perfection enacted simply by the feeling of her body up against my own, that I didn't even notice the exact moment that our clothes actually started coming off until we were completely entangled in our bareness, and I couldn't help but find myself silently thanking God that Brooke had decided to pay that extra couple of hundred dollars for tinted windows when she'd bought this car.

But before I was actually able to get myself too wrapped up in my concern about Brooke and my indecent exposure, I watched as Brooke craned her neck from her position with her slick back pressed firmly against my exposed chest so that we were able to link our lips perfectly, contributing towards our motions to simply turn ourselves into one distinct individual as my body sunk down against the carpeted interior and all at once, a sudden thought entered my mind that Sam really did have a point when she'd spent her days before knowing Brooke sleeping in the trunks of cars because really, these things were damn comfortable.

With great effort, I managed to actually pull my lips from her own, moving quickly as I flipped her to face me due to the fact that I knew that I couldn't possibly physically allow myself to stay detached from her for too long as I began nipping softly at that one space behind her ears that I knew drove her absolutely insane…

But in my kindness, I chose not to torture her for too long as I began to make a direct path with my mouth straight down the length of her jugular vein and into that small crevice of her neck that I knew so well, drifting quickly over her collar bones before her hips practically called my name out to them, forcing my hands to move onto them on their own accord so that I was able to lift her from her resting position between my outstretched legs expertly without even having to remove my mouth from the nape of her neck as I lowered her directly on top of me, at just about the same time that our skin, previously smooth like pure silk, suddenly became slick with sweat in a natural response to prevent the overwhelming friction between our bodies from positively burning us in our movements.

My hands scrolled over every crevice of the body that I had grown to know so well that it might as well have been my own… my fingertips had suddenly seemed to acquire the sense of being able to see all of the things that my eyes just couldn't open wide enough to catch themselves,

I dug my face deep down into that space directly between her neck and my shoulder that held me so well, breathing in softly, every detail of her scent, careful not to miss a second of it as I slowed my body against her own, suddenly much more aware of how badly I wanted to hold onto this moment, how badly I wanted to positively embed it into my memory permanently, because I knew just as well as she did that it would never last as long as either of us would have liked…

And without a word on the matter, or any noticeable sense of correlation between us, we silently came together in a single moment, and we remembered to positively stop time, for at least a little while anyway, and we made sure to make the absolute best of what an indescribably incredibly turn our lives had somehow managed to take in order to successfully find that previously missing second half.


	56. Make the Weak Strong

**Hey, hey all... So this chapter is a bit of a filler and it's also kind of long just because I've got a bunch of stuff I have to set up to carry to the end of the story so I hope its still enjoyable. Thanks all for commenting/reading as always you guys always make me feel so giddy inside :) **

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Chapter 56: Make the Weak Strong

**Monday, February 6****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

The entirety of my day yesterday, or at the very least, the entirety of my evening, had wound up being so absolutely, insurmountably perfect, to the point that it was almost dreamlike, that when the sun rose on the next day, and I was welcomed with totally un-open arms back into the real world's realities of sitting back in a hospital with Sam as she underwent the first of her latest chemotherapy treatments, the reminder that I hadn't positively floated away into never-never land or something at some point last night physically hit me with the force of a speeding truck.

But it wasn't all that bad I guess, after all, things stayed relatively dull, just the way we liked it, and even after that typical threshold of Sam's treatment struck where she was left way too exhausted to ever possibly stay awake, I was still spared from my usual decline into boredom by the presence of Haley and Peyton, where the three of us remained circled tightly around each other as they quietly begged me for more information about the plethora of gossip I had for them as a result of the action packed day that I'd had yesterday.

"Oh my God Brooke, how did he do it? What did he say? Come on, don't leave anything out, I want details okay?" Haley spoke rapidly in her excitement, barely pausing between words while meanwhile, my arm was starting to get tired from having to hold my arm out continuously for the past hour or so just so that her and Peyton could ogle over my ring… But of course, I could hardly mind; after all, as most people already knew, I took every chance that I could get in order to show off.

"He did it in the kitchen," I laughed, knowing full well that that probably wasn't at all what either of them had expected to hear, that they'd envisioned something a lot more romantic than him proposing to me while I was wearing a bathrobe surrounded by dirty dishes and a depleted pantry.

"We're not really into crowds… News tends to travel pretty quickly when people know who you are, you know? Besides, Julian and I kind of just want to keep this on the down low… for now at least."

Haley shrugged quickly, nodding her head in her acceptance of my explanation because I knew just as well as she did what happened when you were a figure of the public eye and somebody that you didn't want finding out all about your personal life actually did.

"So when's the big day B. Davis-almost-Baker?" Peyton cut in, but I could only shrug, continuing in my series of disappointing answers to important questions.

"We have absolutely no idea." I couldn't even pretend that I had the slightest hint of a notion as to when we were actually going to be doing this… The only thing that I could think to say in response was that at the rate we're going, hopefully Julian and I would be married at one point within the next ten years, and even then, I wasn't so sure how accurate that statement would be, "We want to wait until Sam is completely healthy again you know? I mean, just to make sure that she can definitely be there and that we don't have to worry about her being too sick or having to do some kind of crazy treatment on that day or something."

"Well whenever the day is Brooke, you can sure as hell count me in for being there." Peyton spoke with an assuring nod in her personal, verbal RSVP, leaving Haley more than willing to jump on the bandwagon herself in her agreement.

"Yeah, me too,"

"So, Brooke… how did Sam take the big news?" Haley asked me, nodding her head over towards the sleeping girl to our right, who had been passed out cold for a solid or so now, barely moving an inch even despite the several moments where Haley, Peyton, and my conversation got, well… rather animated in volume in our excitement.

"I think that she might have actually been happier than I was." I couldn't help but laugh to myself at the mere memory of the look on Sam's face last night, speaking with the knowledge that Sam has always been ridiculously involved with the relationship between Julian and me, even when there wasn't even a relationship to be had… At times, I even thought that she might have even been more into it than either me or Julian, "I swear to it, sometimes I think that Sam was ready for Julian to propose to me the first day that I met him… But hey, speaking of Sam, there's actually more that I have to tell you guys… Julian asked me if he could adopt Sam last night too… you know… like be a real family together… all four of us."

I finished my sentence with a subconscious motion of my hands down against my stomach, which still remained determinedly flat no matter how much I thought that I could positively feel it grow larger and larger by the very second.

"Wow… Brooke that's huge…" Peyton and Haley's eyes were wide; both of them looking pretty much exactly how I felt last night, and still today… overwhelmed in all of these seemingly remarkable, seemingly surreal developments that had occurred in mine and Julian's relationship all within the time span of a couple of minutes last night.

"I know," I sighed in a deep agreement towards Peyton's comment, still trying to wrap my head around just how huge this actually was, how much of an impact that it would happen on my life, how much it would change it; for once, for the best, "I'm having a hard time believing it you know? It all just seems so crazy... Every time I stop to think about it I can't help but think that I'm lost inside of this crazy dream world or something…"

"Well Brooke… if anyone deserves to be lost inside of a crazy dream world it's you, Julian, and Sam… and trust me, you're supposed to be feeling like you're walking on thin air right about now… so take advantage of it while you can okay?"

Haley gave me her quick speech, grinning up at me broadly for the first time in what seemed like forever, and all of a sudden, I completely forgot all about me, and about Julian, and about Sam and the baby, and instead, I focused on Haley, and how much better I suddenly felt, even though I didn't even think that was possible a couple of seconds ago, just from seeing her smile again because it has seemed so long since I'd seen her actually do so… and considering how guilty I felt about her being so miserable all the time lately, to see her this happy again actually made me feel even better.

"Thanks Hales… Hey, by the way, how have you been feeling lately?" I attempted to feed off of her comment in my production of a not-so-discrete subject change in my question, but I was sick of talking about myself which is saying a lot considering myself was my favorite subject, but after all I really had been concerned about her lately, and therefore, I truly felt a strong desire to be given an update as to how it was that she's been getting along lately.

"Actually, things have been going pretty well lately," Haley nodded to me, addressing that she recognized exactly what I had been trying to do, and accepting the invitation gratefully which came as a relief to me considering I was worried that she wouldn't want to mention it, that she would be for some reason or another unnecessarily ashamed to let her best friends, who were more ridiculously worried about her than she would ever know, into what was going on in her life, "I mean, I guess I was a little bit skeptical at first about being put on medication, you know what they say about stuff like that, but… yeah, I mean it seems to helping so far anyway, so… I don't know."

She drifted off and I nodded in my understanding, because I know that Haley and I were thinking on the exact same page here, because at the same time, our eyes subconsciously glanced over towards Sam, in the exact definition of calming down that we were talking about here…

"Yeah…" I muttered, mainly speaking to myself more than I was anybody else, "Yeah, I think I know what you mean."

But you would think that I would have learned by now to stop thinking that everything could stay alright for too long, or at the very least, to stop saying things like that out loud, to learn how to simply keep my big mouth shut, because ten times out of ten, every time I did, I jinxed it, and it was all over after that…

And this time was absolutely no exception, because literally not five seconds after the words were out of my mouth, Sam let out this painful sounding cough in her sleep, simultaneously rolling over onto her side in her sudden forced awake state as every muscle in her body heaving threateningly so that I knew in an instant that my previously eluded to moment of calm had suddenly vanished in such a manner that it literally made me feel as if it were mocking me for ever even thinking that I could ever possibly fully achieve it.

"Brooke?" Her voice slurred as she called out to me in her half-asleep state, sounding groggy and downright miserable, but that was okay; after all, I was already way ahead of her, half way from the chair that I had previously been sitting in to her side before the sound of my name so much as even escaped out of her mouth.

My tunnel vision struck me across the face harshly and suddenly, focused so intently onto Sam that I'd actually forgotten that my best friends were behind me, even though I had been sitting around talking to them not thirty seconds ago. But it was a standard feeling for me; something that I was used to, and something that I was sure as hell certain that my friends were used to, because whenever Sam needed me ever, well nobody else seemed to matter… hell, nobody else seemed to even exist…

"Hey kiddo, are you alright?" I asked, approaching her side carefully just in case the vomit started flying like I was so used to it doing, reaching down to rest a comforting hand between her shoulder blades so that I could actually feel the spasms of her muscles underneath my palm, which told me the answer to my question before she could even shake her head at me in a silent 'no'.

"Do you want me to take you to the bathroom?" I asked her, watching her carefully as she started to sneak tentative glances over towards where Haley and Peyton were watching us nervously from the corner, knowing full well that her self-conscious always got to her when she started getting sick in front of other people…even when those other people were Peyton and Haley.

"I don't think I'll make it Brooke." She muttered feebly as meanwhile the contractions of her body that I was feeling underneath my hands started growing more and more powerful in support of her statement so that I was suddenly left scrambling to find some place for her to deposit the contents of her stomach, cursing when I didn't see her typical barf bucket resting in its usual place.

The typical gagging noises signifying the beginning of the end began to emit themselves from the back of her throat so that I knew I only had mere seconds to act, leaving me to simply grab at the first thing that I saw, which just so happened to be the small garbage can in the corner of the room, and thrust it directly in front of her just into time for her to bury her face inside of it and heave powerfully, leaving me to grimace as I heard the sound of the liquid splattering against the plastic bottom of the can.

"It's okay Sam, it's okay… you're okay…" I muttered my routine words of comfort, performing the typical figure eights across her back just like I always did in an attempt to make this situation at least a little bit better.

I hated having to see her like this… I don't know, you would think that I'd get used to this after a while, watching as my daughter got sicker than she had ever gotten in her entire life while meanwhile, I was left to do nothing about it other than watch, but I'll tell you, I never did… this feeling, it never changed, it never got better… it was there on the first day that I had found myself in this exact same position with Sam, and you know what, it was still there now… Hell, I don't think it has even gotten the slightest bit better with time.

It had taken me a while to pinpoint it to its exact, but I think that I'd finally gotten it… I was starting to realize that it wasn't the pain, it wasn't the suffering, hell, it wasn't even the fear… No, instead, the one thing it was, the one thing that always got to me was the guilt…

You see, things like this, well it makes me very aware, almost painfully so, that people used to look at Sam and see nothing more than a bad kid; a kid destined for nothing but failure, a kid with no future, no family, no life, and absolutely no respect… and the reason I always went back to this, the reason that it really did kill me as much as it did was because no matter how hard I tried to forget, no matter how much I tried to think that I wasn't, I just never could shake the notion that I used to be one of those people who thought like that.

Every time that I saw her like this, every time I had to watch her unable to do anything about it, I realized that this must have been by punishment, that this was exactly what I deserved; I deserved the blame, I deserved to feel so much at fault, but I'll tell you this much; Sam sure as hell didn't deserve being forced to take the brunt of all of the wrongdoings in my life, she didn't deserve having to be the source of my guilt that I knew had been brought upon me for ever thinking that this girl was anything less than simply misunderstood.

Now, once I found myself falling into such a pit of selfish despair, I usually found it pretty difficult to pull myself back out of it, but not today; today was different, today there was something to counter act it, something to distract me, but the problem was, I couldn't help but wonder if I preferred feeling the way I had before, or the way I was feeling now…

It started as the quickest of flashes; something that at first, I thought was a mere trick of the light before I saw it for a second time…

I had been rubbing her back as I usually was, in my frenzy, my motions coming off so frantically that the hem of her shirt wrinkled, it bunched, and it lifted slightly in order to expose most of her lower back to me.

Through the corner of my eye, I caught the quickest flash of blue; a flash that I initially didn't think anything of, believing it to be nothing more than a reflection; an image of the scrub pants that she had been wearing bouncing off the thin layer of sweat that was glistening across her entire body… but then I saw it again… and again… and then one more time, and finally, I decided to investigate a little bit further.

Sam wouldn't have noticed the sudden shift in my body position; I knew that, she was much too preoccupied at the moment to notice much of anything other than the bottom of her garbage can at the moment… That's why I wasn't too concerned when I moved quickly in order to arch across her awkwardly and get a glimpse towards my point of interest at the region right above her tailbone.

My hands grazed themselves briefly across the hem of her shirt line, moving with slow, sharp movements as I lifted the fabric up slightly in order to expose the skin even more as unmistakably, directly in front of my exact range of vision, I identified the evenly patterned mosaic of light blue and purple; a small cluster of bruises splayed out almost artistically across the base of her spine.

My brows furrowed with instant worry combined with a sense of confusion regarding where it was exactly any of these could have possibly come from… I was overwhelmed with a sudden sense of worry, finding myself performing quick, jerky movements as I lifted the back of her shirt even higher, exposing each pointy, protruding bone of her vertebrae which was organized in a perfectly straight line up to about mid-back where, as expected, there was an even larger pattern of bruises blotted prominently across her skin in such a numerous fashion that they made her look like some kind of weird Dalmatian or something.

I could feel my breathing increase exponentially in the back of my throat as I begged the panic that was currently seeping through my veins to subside, repeated to myself over and over again that it was okay, that this wasn't necessarily what I was thinking it was… but of course, these methods were simply wishful thinking; if anything, I think it actually just made it worse.

I couldn't help but think it; I couldn't help but remember how things had been when Sam was first diagnosed; when she had been so anemic from the cancer that had been ravaging her body at the time that she would get bruises simply from leaning forward against the car seatbelt too hard… and I wasn't too soon about to forget the shiner that she'd had that lingered for a solid two months across her eye simply from a little boy lobbing a basketball at her…

I thought about this, and then I thought all about what Dr. Miller has been telling us for weeks now; about how because of everything that has been going on with Sam's kidneys lately, they had decided to reduce the dosage of chemotherapy that she was currently receiving, substantially increasing her risk of relapsing back into the severely leukemic state that had put us all into this position to begin with…

So yeah… my mind was currently assuming the worst at the moment to the point where my heart actually felt as if it were about to explode, but really… could you blame me?

"Hey Sam has your back been bothering you at all lately?" I tried to be discrete about my question, unable to take my eyes off of the bruises spotted across her back as she took a brief space between her bouts of vomiting to turn her head over her shoulder and glance at me, confused as to why I would be asking such a seemingly ridiculous and completely irrelevant question at such a time like this.

"No… why?" She shook her head slowly through deep breaths, her words spaced apart, each syllable being pushed out of thin air so that I'd almost missed it… Meanwhile, I put the most neutral look on my face that I could manage, but still consciously recognizing the fact that I was failing miserably, so I chose not to answer her honestly; a white lie that I had designated to tell because I didn't want her to worry, I didn't want her to think anything more out of the ordinary was going on with her health than it already was… especially when I was still speculating…

"No reason…" I tried to sound convincing, but it was more than obvious that I was far from it, especially considering the fact that I was currently having such a hard time convincing myself, there was no way in hell I could try and convince other people too… "I was just wondering, that's all."

She glanced at my suspiciously for an extra second or two, analyzing my terrible excuse for what it really was, and for a little while, I tensed nervously, afraid that she would trap me into a corner like she was so good at doing these days and force the answer out of me, but luckily, and I felt terribly for putting it like that really I did, she didn't have time to linger; instead, she turned her head forward once again, back towards her makeshift puke bucket, buried her face inside of it, and let lose once again so suddenly, it didn't seem so important to her why I was acting so strangely anymore.

"Hey Brooke… is everything okay?" Peyton whispered, careful in her approach, particular in order to be as silent as possible as to not allow Sam to hear her expression of concern.

Great… now I knew that I was being obvious in my panic, because if Peyton and Haley were coming over here to comfort me as opposed to comforting the girl in front of us currently puking her guts up, well then I know that something was wrong with this picture here.

"Yeah, yeah… I'm just over worrying myself that's all." I tried to convince not only Peyton and Haley, but myself as well, but the fact of the matter was that my voice shook, and that wasn't exactly supporting my cause at the moment…

"No… Brooke, there is something going on here… I can see it in your face Brooke, come on you can tell me… What's going on Brooke?"

I felt my eyes gloss over with the recognition that I had been caught in my incredibly terrible attempts at a cover up, quickly glancing sideways just to make sure that Sam was still too preoccupied with getting sick to hear anything that I had to say before I reached down silently and exposed Sam's back to them as well…

I watched as Peyton and Haley's eyes followed downward the path I had laid out for them, recognizing exactly what I had suddenly found myself so concerned over in a wide eyed realization… To my left, I actually heard Haley accidentally release a gasp go loud that I was afraid that Sam would have heard it even with her ears muffled by the walls of the thick plastic garbage can that she was currently making very, very good friends with.

"Oh my God Brooke… what happened?" She tried whispering, but her voice squeaked in her concern an extra volume notch higher in her horrified shock.

"I don't know Haley… but I can't stop thinking that… that this is like what it was like with before… you know, right before she was diagnosed when… when…" I couldn't even bring myself to finish my own sentence, of course, the implication was strong enough that they were able to catch the hint; a fact that was confirmed by the look on their faces that matched mine in fear in an instant.

"Can you guys stay with her and watch her for a minute or two… I need to go find her doctor."

"Yeah… Yeah Brooke, of course," Peyton nodded her head, practically pushing me over towards the direction of the door, completely understanding of my urgency… But of course, while her and Haley were supportive, eager even towards the understanding of my need to go, there was somebody else in the room that didn't seem to be as eager for me to leave… even if it was for just a little while.

"Where are you going Brooke?" The tone of her voice alone was enough to stop me dead in her tracks; the fact that she reached out her arm to grab onto me in an unconscious effort to force me to say was the deciding factor that made me actually turn back to her, suddenly much more hesitant about whether or not to complete this journey.

"I'll be right back Sam okay, I promise… I'm just gonna go out into the hallway real quick and see if I can find your doctor to come in here to check up on you." I was as vague with her as I possibly could be, determined to carry this burden for her just because it was one of the few that I knew I had… for now at least.

"Don't leave Brooke… please don't leave me." My heart cleaved into two distinct pieces at the sound of her plea so that I couldn't help myself but to hesitate, I couldn't help but to think that maybe if I stayed here with Sam right now and simply ignored all of this pain, all of this heart ache, it would simply just go away… Of course, I had already learned the hard way that that wasn't exactly how things worked in this life, as much as I may have wished that it was.

"Sam honey, Haley and I are going to stay here with you for a couple of minutes okay… We're gonna take good care of you while your mom goes to get your doctor. She'll be right back, alright?"

I appreciated Peyton's attempt to try and help to make sense of everything that was going on all around her right now, but I wasn't sure how much better it could have possibly made Sam feel, because I didn't linger; instead I took the brief moment of neutral calm to force myself away before I was turned back, I darted out of the room without so much as a second glance back, and I ran through the hallway like a mad women in search for the first familiar face that I could find that would actually be able to help me with this situation that I had currently found myself in.

Have you ever felt as if your world was crashing down all around you? Have you ever felt like you have lost absolutely everything in your entire life that you could ever stand to possibly lose? Well if you hadn't, take a close look at me right here right now because this is exactly what that looks like. This is the exact expression of that feeling, a sneak peak of what it might appear to be like just in case you're lucky enough to have never experienced it for yourself firsthand.

"Brooke is everything okay?" I rounded the corner of the hallway, skidding to an abrupt stop directly in front of the nurse's station… Hell, I hadn't even come to a complete halt before the handful of nurses that had been sitting behind the desk at the time of my sudden appearance jumped upwards, demanding to know what was wrong just so that I was suddenly very aware of how obvious my terror was across my face.

"It's Sam…" I started, but then I had to stop myself because I was stating the obvious here and more likely than not, I probably sounded like a babbling idiot, "I need Dr. Miller."

I skipped through all of the technicalities and went straight to the point, my vagueness and my apparent alarm probably panicking these poor nurses into thinking that Sam was in cardiac arrest or something… But of course, the way that my heart was racing, and the way that I was suddenly feeling, I couldn't help but think that hell; she might as well have been.

"Brooke what happened?" Kelly had been Sam's charge nurse since she'd been in the hospital since her first dialysis session; we'd had more than our fair share of scares regarding Sam together, and I guess you could just add right now to that list, because she ran around from behind the desk in her alarm at my panic, not even waiting for a response from me before indicating for me to follow her back in the direction of Sam's room, moving quickly in her urgency, barely pausing to listen to my response.

"I'm not sure… she started to get sick from the chemotherapy and while I was trying to help her I saw her back and I noticed that there were bruises all over it so I… I…" I followed the nurse in her rapid power-walk down the hallway towards Sam's room, unable to finish my sentence but knowing full well that she would understand the concern that I was trying to project in my unspoken words.

She turned sharply to her left, straight into Sam's room a step or two in front of me; our entry causing a relatively large commotion giving how rushed the two of us both were, but even still, our motions went hardly noticed; Sam was busy with her head buried at the bottom of her garbage can once again, and Peyton and Haley were busy looking overwhelmingly confused as to what it was exactly that they should be doing right now to try and help her.

"Brooke, I'm going to send a page to Dr. Miller okay? She should be able to get down here in a minute or two." I nodded towards her in a symbol of my appreciation towards her rushing, but still I couldn't quite pinpoint whether that comforted me because it provided me with the notion that I wasn't crazy in that I was the only one over here who thought that this was serious enough to warrant such a response, or if it left me positively panicked over the fact that this really was something that we had to worry about over here.

She paged and moved towards Sam with simultaneous motions, making me very grateful that Sam had just so happened to be assigned to a nurse this morning whose expertise seemed to be multi tasking.

I followed her at her heels, trying desperately to throw my most appreciative glance possible over towards Peyton and Haley for staying here with Sam during my brief absence that I really hoped they would catch amidst the chaos as they slowly began to back away from Sam's bed in order to make more room for the experts to move in.

"Here Sam honey, let me get you a clean bucket here." The nurse made her initial presence well known to Sam by moving in to act as Sam's instant saving grace; taking advantage of the space of time between Sam's sessions of vomiting in order to relieve her of having to keep her head at the bottom of a garbage can filled with her own puke, replacing it with that standard pink basin that I had been looking for at the beginning of all of this.

"Thanks," Sam spluttered in her gratitude, spitting that single residual trace of vomit up and out of her mouth, straight into the clean container which was otherwise kept relatively unsoiled… for now that is.

"Sam, here's what I'm gonna do; I'm going to raise the dosage of Zofran that you're getting a little bit okay, so just give it a minute or two to kick in… Do you feel any better after throwing up at least?"

I watched Sam shake her head pitifully in response to the nurse's question as she curled herself up into a protective ball in an effort to protect herself from the wrath of her own body so that I was suddenly very overcome with the urge to switch bodies with her and take over in this burden of the disease… It wasn't the first time that I had felt this way, and it was sure as hell not going to be the last.

"Okay honey, well your IV is all set, so you should start feeling better soon."

I watched the nurse as she circled around Sam in her fluid motions to care for my daughter for me considering the fact that her problems were currently much too complex, much too severe for somebody like me to be able to deal with myself.

I watched as she paused briefly, hovering over into the space where Sam's back was perfectly turned to her, analyzing the damaged skin that had caused me to go out and fetch her in the first place… I couldn't help but find myself staring a hole right through her, trying desperately to read the expression on her face in order to attempt to tell what it was that she was thinking…

But the woman had a stone cold poker face; all of the people who worked here did… It wasn't the first time that I had got to thinking that learning how to do so was a part of the training here or something… It was the best explanation that I could possibly come up with anyway.

A knock on the door had suddenly filled my room that was previously silent with a sharp tone like a drum that made my heart leap in shock and my muscles subconsciously turn over towards the source of the noise; the doorway where Dr. Miller was suddenly standing with an expression of inquisitive concern across her face as to silently ask what the exact reason for the 911 page that she had just received regarding Sam was.

"Brooke… is everything okay in here?" She addressed me before anybody else, not waiting for an answer before taking a couple steps further inside in order to investigate just what it was for herself.

"She started getting pretty sick a couple of minutes ago." I stepped away from Sam's bed in order to meet the doctor in the middle for two main reasons; the first being to speed up this entire process, and the second being so that Sam wouldn't hear what it was that I had to say regarding her at the moment, "But I noticed lately that she's been sleeping a lot more than usually, and then today I saw a bunch of bruises on her back… I was just concerned that if she's anemic, it might mean that… it may mean… well… you know."

I tried not to allow my worry to express itself inside of my voice so that I couldn't help the fact that I point blank refused to allow myself to go straight out and say that I had this horrible feeling racing inside of me right now that this was the first sign that her cancer was back full swing rearing its ugly head.

Of course, the way that Dr. Miller still nodded her head in response to her acknowledgment of my concern, I knew that that was exactly how she'd taken it… and without wasting another moment, she rushed towards Sam's side in an effort to assist the nurse, who was still struggling to get Sam to move so much as an inch out of the ball that she was currently rolled up in so that she could obtain a descent set of vitals from the ailing girl.

"Hey Sam, what's going on over here?" Dr. Miller approached the girl quickly, hoping that she would be at least coherent enough to provide some straight answers for her in regards to exactly how she was feeling at the moment so that maybe she would be able to figure out exactly how to fix it.

"I don't know." Sam muttered miserably, still determinedly wrapped up in her protective fetal position.

"Are you just feeling sick from today's round of chemo or do you think that it feels different than what it usually does?" She asked while meanwhile, I watched her as she both carefully and conspicuously analyzed the patterned bruises alongside Sam's back with the nurse, sharing a quick glance with her co-worker that per usual, I couldn't quite read, but I still didn't feel very good about.

"It feels different… worse than it usually does." She mumbled, breaking my heart with the mere expression of the pain clearly evident behind her voice.

"Okay… do you think that maybe you can try to sit up for me for a second or two so that we can try and see what's going on here?" The doctor pushed her luck in trying to get a very, very unwilling Sam to move, and we all held our breaths just waiting for a response, watching carefully as Sam sighed, indicating that she wanted to do absolutely nothing of the sort, but still nodded her head despite herself anyway.

"Alright Sam, we're gonna try to make this as easy as we can okay, so here's what we're gonna do; we're going to roll you over onto your back real quick and then I'm going to sit you up in your bed… Just let us know if you need us to stop at any time and we will alright?"

Sam just nodded, finished with words in order to conserve her energy as she took a couple deep breaths and braced herself for the inevitable pain that she was about to experience as the nurse grabbed her under one arm, Dr. Miller grabbed her under the other arm, and I had to physically force myself to keep from jumping over and helping because I could tell by the way that Sam kept her muscles tense and her eyes closed in a natural mechanism of defense to try and will her body to stop betraying her in such a severe manner, that she didn't need anybody else crowding around her in this moment.

"Are you still doing alright over there Sam?" Dr. Miller asked her after the short, yet so devastatingly painful shift from her side onto her back.

Sam nodded her head in response; eyes remaining firmly closed as she silently focused all of her attention on the swarming in her stomach and the overwhelming pressure in her head, just begging them to go away, or at the very least, just ease up a little bit.

"Okay then… Kelly here is going to take some vital signs from you and then what we're gonna do is draw some blood and send it down to the lab so that we can see exactly what's going on right now so that we'll be able to fix it… I'm gonna go and talk to your mom in the hall real quick, but we'll be right outside the door so if you need anything from either one of us, just shout."

For the first time in several minutes, I turned my focus away from Sam in response to the doctor making her intentions of speaking to me in private clear, feeling as my heart started to race with every step closer that she took towards me out of fear that she was about to tell me something awful; that just by looking at her that she could already see that Sam was positively dying.

I just had that feeling deep inside of my gut, and I'd learned the hard way that when that feeling came, that it was usually right. Something was very wrong; I just knew it.

I followed her into the hallway, refusing to go more than a few steps beyond the door just so that I could keep a close eye on Sam simultaneously, barely waiting until I stopped walking to become the first to speak.

"Dr. Miller what do you think it is? Do you think that it could be the cancer?" I babbled like an idiot, the worst case scenario situation that had been banging itself into my mind for the past several minutes now spewing out of my mouth with such a frantic, abrupt force, that it probably made the doctor think that I was positively crazy… but then again, these days I couldn't help but think to myself that maybe I actually was just that.

"I'm not sure Brooke." If it was even physically possible at this point, I was pretty sure that my heart fell even further in the expression of her uncertainty… There was just something about the idea that Sam was so sick, that she was in so much pain for reasons that even the best team of doctor's that this hospital could offer couldn't figure out that made me feeling very unsettled, "But listen, this is what I'm thinking okay, and now remember, we won't know for sure until we get the blood work back but the fatigue, the anemia, her taking to the chemotherapy pretty hard today… these aren't necessarily specific symptoms of leukemia, they're also side effects of dialysis and of kidney dysfunction… We don't need to be jumping to any sort of conclusions quite yet Brooke, but just to be completely certain, I'll rush the order downstairs in the lab… We should have the results in maybe an hour… two at most."

I nodded my head up towards her, afraid that if I spoke in this moment, my voice would positively crumble in its weakness and then after that, the rest of me would follow as well.

She put the gentlest of comforting hands briefly on my shoulder, trying to seep a little bit of her sense of calm onto me before just as quickly detaching herself from me, turning in order to go back to Sam so that she could retrieve said blood sample that I had just heard so much about and get them into the lab as quickly as possible so that we could get the answers we so desperately needed as quickly as possible.'

And with one more quick nod of the head, she delivered that same essence of assurance onto Sam as she had to me, making sure that the girl was indeed as comfortable as humanly possible before finally turning out of the room, reinstating me in my position as the single only person that would be able to properly care for Sam in this moment…

"Sam honey, are you feeling any better?" I asked, slowly approaching her, running my hands gently along the length of her exposed scalp just to make sure that my presence was known to her.

"A little…" Sam muttered softly, but I could tell simply by the tone of her voice that by a little she meant a very, very little.

"That's good…" I muttered in my completely unoriginal response, disappointed in myself for not being able to come up with something more clever than that… But luckily Sam had made it easy on me, because she had managed to come up with something to say in response to everything that had just happened herself.

"Hey Brooke?"

"Yeah honey"

"What's going on with me?" Okay… so forget that whole "making it easier on me" thing that I just mentioned, because now that this was the question that was currently out in the open, I suddenly found myself much more preferential to the silence.

I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do… Should I tell Sam the truth, or should I simply continue with this lie that there was no particular reason that she was feeling extra crappy today; that she was fine, and that she would always continue to be fine as long as I was here to protect her…

And suddenly, it was as if I had lost what little amount of control that I actually had left of this situation in its entirety, and you know what, out of everything that was going on here, I think that that was the thing that actually ended up killing me the most…

You see, with me the thing about control is that it used to be something that I could do; it used to be something that I was downright good at, and this new notion of no longer being able to retain that control over things like the speed of time, the rate of aging, the rate of positively dying was something that I still wasn't used to; it was something that I definitely wasn't ready for, and it was something that I definitely didn't like…

But as much as I preferred my control over control, I was starting to get the idea in my head that it was very likely that I would never be able to get that sense back now that I had completely lost it what seemed like for good.

* * *

**HALEY**

I don't think that silence has ever sounded so loud in my entire life.

Before today, I never used to think that silence could actually produce any sort of noise, but I was suddenly finding myself to be proven very, very wrong, because my ears were positively ringing over how loud the room actually was despite it being so quiet… Hell, I had half a mind to reach up and clasp my hands up over my ears if it wouldn't have appeared to be so rude.

I tried to think of something to say, tried to come up with a method of escape that would be able to effectively ease the budding tension, but every time so much as a single word came to mind, I would go over it one more time in the back of my head and realize just how stupid it sounded… There was nothing that I could possibly say that could make any sense of any of this, there was nothing that I could do that would make us forget al about the test results that we were so desperately waiting for; the test results that were the exact reason for the silence that had currently befallen us.

But the reason that I was trying so desperately hard to come up with something to say wasn't particularly to make things better, or to ease the fears of my friends around me… I mean, don't take that the wrong way or anything, the only thing that I'm trying to say here is that my biggest concern at the moment is to distract myself from those familiar anxious jitters that I could feel creeping slowly up my spine; the sensation that made me positively curse my weakness, my lack of self control in managing my insanity.

Slowly but surely, I began to drum my fingers incessantly against the arm rest of my chair, the beat increasing steadily in tempo with each passing second so that the sound of my fingers of my right hand created a steady rhythm against the wood that quickly became the only sound in the entire room so that it echoed like a freaking bass drum.

I was suddenly very much so aware of the fact that I had left my prescription at home; my crazy pills, as I liked to call them, and the incessant thought in the back of my mind repeating to me over and over again how much I needed them in this moment was honestly only making things worse, thus creating this cyclic chain of events that I'd found leaving me trembling, sweating, and positively gasping for breath.

"Hey Haley," I hadn't even realized how significantly I'd just zone out until I was brought back into reality, my vision widening in order to expand the entirety of the room, rather than simply that same spot on the wall that I had been focusing all of my attention on for the past several minutes so that I suddenly noticed that Brooke and Peyton were standing, propped inside of the door frame instead of sitting in their chairs like they were the last time I'd actually noticed them.

"Hm?" I snapped my neck upwards suddenly with a fake sense of a rapt attentiveness that I was trying to use in order to compensate the fact that I'd been so out of it for the past God knows how long.

"I was just saying would you mind staying here with Sam for a minute or two? I'm gonna go take Brooke down to the cafeteria to get something to eat." Peyton twitched her head back, indicating towards Brooke who had already wandered ahead of Peyton out into the hallway, walking aimlessly in her incoherent nervous state.

"She doesn't look so good you know," Peyton dropped her voice when she was certain that Brooke was completely out of ear shot, "Plus I just want to try and get her mind off of things for a little while at least."

"Yeah… yeah that's fine." I nodded quickly in response to Peyton's request, trying desperately to contort the most neutral, no, the most sane-looking expression on my face that I could possibly muster, a difficult task considering the fact that I felt nothing even close to either of those things at the moment.

"Alright, we'll be back up as soon as we can, okay?" Peyton made her position on her expected swiftness quite clear to me before turning out of the hallway, leaving me to sink back into the chair to finish what I'd started in finding myself losing myself into the depths of my own mind… and trust me on this one, there was absolutely nothing more dangerous than me getting lost in my own mind…

But I couldn't get this image out of my mind; this picture of Brooke's face imprinted across my brain so vividly that it was as if she was standing right in front of me… The last time that I'd seen her I couldn't help but notice that she looked pretty much exactly how I felt in this moment… But of course, Brooke had every reason to be worried; she had every reason to feel like this… I didn't; I had absolutely no reason other than the fact that I was way too weak.

And as if we hadn't already had enough to worry about over here, all at once, yet another anxious idea manifested and molded itself unmoving within my mind; the idea that if Brooke was this worked up, if she was this stressed… well let me just put it this way; not only was I worried about Brooke, but I was suddenly just as concerned for my unborn niece or nephew growing inside of her as well…

I understood that Brooke was concerned… hell, I would be worried about her if she wasn't concerned, after all, being stressed was part of the game; I knew that, hell, I was concerned and I wasn't even as deeply wrapped up inside of it all as she was… but that didn't mean that I couldn't be nervous for her or for this baby.

And as much as I wished beyond wished that Sam would simply just somehow get magically better and give Brooke a minute or two to relax, I knew it was impossible… we all did.

And just as this sudden thought of Sam came into my mind, I found myself suddenly forced very abruptly out of my thoughts by the very physical Sam right in front of me as she released a small, involuntary whimper of pain from within her bed where she'd been feigning sleep for a while now… of course, I wasn't sure if she was faking sleep simply because she didn't want to talk to any of us, or if she was truly trying to sleep but just found herself unable to she was so sick… But I didn't want to mention it; I figured that I would let her rest… she deserved that much at the very least.

But it happened suddenly; that previous thought process pulled itself out of my mind, suddenly overcome with the desire to call out to Sam, to talk to her, to beg her to tell me her secret of how she managed to stay so strong with everything crumbling to the ground around her…

And before I had the opportunity to suppress this desire and push it back into the inner-most working of her mind, my subconscious acted in on itself and spoke for me so that I knew that there was absolutely no going back now…

"Hey," I called out into the otherwise silent room, currently empty save for me and Sam so that it was very obvious that I was talking to her… I watched carefully for her response as she snuck a single eye open, slowly at first so that she could analyze the safety of her surroundings, but completely once she finally realized that she was in the clear.

"How'd you know that I was awake?"

"I'm a mom Sam, trust me, when that happens to you you'll learn to pick up on the details pretty quickly too…" She simply shrugged, turning her head away with a steep exhale that I couldn't quite read despite the fact that I'd basically just told Sam that I was a master with emotion…

"So how have you been Sam?" I recognized the conversation for the rapid downward spiral that it already was so I said the first thing that I came to my mind simply to keep the words flowing… of course, the second the question was out of my mouth, I realized how stupid they actually were.

"I'm not bad," She replied with a shrug, still refusing to turn her head around to look at me, "I guess that I've been better though… I'm sorry by the way, you know for not getting the chance to talk to you before… I was kind of busy you know…"

"Puking," I finished her sentence for her, my voice sounding suddenly somber; morose even, "But how are you feeling now? Any better at least?"

"I have my moments," She smirked but there was a sadness behind her features, "I think that Brooke sees me having a good day and automatically thinks that I'm cured or something… but I don't know, days like that don't usually last that long anymore."

"What do you mean?" My heart clenched, but that was only because I knew exactly what she meant… I just didn't want to have to actually hear it.

"You know what they've been saying about me right?" She asked me after a couple of seconds, forcing herself to speak amidst a steep exhale, needing a full breath of air just to find enough power inside of her to ask a question of such magnetite… and despite her acknowledgment that this was a question beyond which either of us wished to even think about, let alone discuss, I knew that she expected me to answer it for her honestly…

I think the saddest part of it all was that I was probably the only person in the world who she could ever ask that question to and still expect an honest answer.

"They're saying that you're not doing so well Sam." I told her, while meanwhile, all she did in response was nod her head in a slow agreement… but still, I could have sworn that I actually saw the cornerns of her mouth turn upward in the smallest hint of a smirk.

"Thanks Haley."

"Thanks for what?"

"You're the first person that's actually told me the truth about any of this…" My heart froze; all at once, the entire world seemed to defog around me so that the room became clearer, brighter, more defined that it has ever been, and I realized that maybe I could actually be the person that Sam needed me to be after all.

"But Sam… that doesn't mean that you have to listen to what they're all saying about you okay? I mean… you don't have to sink down just because everybody's telling you that you are… Don't give in without a fight okay Sam, do you hear me?"

"I hear you," She nodded her head, finally turning back towards me just to add an extra emphasis to her assurance, "But the same thing goes for you too okay Haley?"

"You don't need to worry about me Sam." I whispered slowly, cautious of the fact that I'd realized that she had suddenly cornered me into a trap by calling me out in the fact that while her body was slowly destroying itself, my mind was doing the same exact thing to me.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Let me tell you something Sam," I nodded to her, leaning forward in my chair so that I was as close to her as I could possibly get, my posture telling her that I wanted her to listen closely to exactly what it was that I had to say next because it was probably one of the most important lessons that I would ever give her… that I would ever give anybody in my entire life, "Don't be that voice that never sings… Don't end up like me Sam, okay? Whatever you do, I don't want you to ever end up like me."

She tilted her chin slowly upwards, her eyes, drained of all things life-like simply from the morning she'd spent enduring testing and disease, and with all of the energy that the girl had left inside of her fragile body, and this I will swear to, she leaned in close to me, parted her lips, chapped to the point that they were cracked down the center and so pale that they blended in with her white bed sheets, and spoke in the most miniscule whisper, near silent so that I knew that I'd almost missed it…

"Why wouldn't I want to end up like you Haley?"

I sighed… she clearly wasn't getting the point that I was trying to make, and honestly, it was just making it harder in my attempt to tell her that I was no role model here; I wasn't somebody you would ever want to look up to in your life.

"Because then you would be that voice that never sings Sam." I told her softly, watching closely as she looked up at me with a deep frown on her face.

"Hey Haley, do you think you can do me a favor?" She finally asked me after a couple seconds of silence.

"Sure,"

"Don't let that silence swallow you either okay?"

"I'll try Sam," I sniffled heavily in an effort to block the tears, forcing my eyes away from Sam just in case I slipped up and allowed a few of them to pass through the barrier of my eyes, "But it's starting to get pretty hard over here."

"Yeah… yeah, I think I know what you mean." She nodded, her statement flushing me with a pang of guilt towards the realization that I had just spent all of this time complaining about my problems when they were nowhere near as complex, as tragic as her own… and somewhere deep inside of the back of my head, my mind shut off once again.

"Hey… we're back." I turned my head over my shoulder sharply, watching as Peyton and Brooke slid back through the door with what looked much more like an armful of candy and sodas that they'd simply received from a vending machine or something rather than a nutritious hospital cafeteria meal.

"Sam… you're awake," Brooke stated simply; her tunnel vision bringing her straight to her daughter's side… I think that the room could probably have been fire and Brooke still would have noticed Sam before she'd noticed anything else… "How are you feeling honey?"

"A little bit better…"Sam replied, although I wasn't sure if there really had been any truth behind her statement or if she was simply just trying to make Brooke feel better because that was the kind of person that Sam was.

I suddenly felt very much so like I was intruding on a very private moment between the two. I suddenly didn't feel like I belonged in this mix, that I shouldn't be a part of the experience between mother and child… so I backed up slowly, lingering in the doorway next to Peyton, who apparently was feeling the same way that I was in her hesitancy to move further into the room.

"She wouldn't let me take her off of the floor." Peyton sighed under her breath to nobody in particular, really just feeling the desire to express out loud how concerned about Brooke she actually was, "She told me that she needed to stay close by just in case the doctors came back with the test results… I was surprised that I got her as far as the vending machines on the other side of the hallway."

I took a deep breath that shook much more prominently than I had intended, closing my eyes tightly as my fingers began to fidget in dangerously rapid movements that I no longer found myself able to control in my rising panic, growing amidst what had just happened between me and Sam, what was happening with Brooke right now…

"I'm worried about her Hales… You know, with the baby and with everything that's going on with her… I'm worried; I'm really worried."

The worst part was that I didn't even think that Peyton knew the half of it.

"Hey… are you okay Hales?" She turned towards me suddenly, apparently noticing that I was behaving rather strangely at the moment despite my best efforts to conceal just that.

"Yeah…" I breathed out, but the stutter that had infiltrated the middle of my response hadn't exactly helped my cause at all, "Listen Peyton… I think that I… I think I have to go… Can you do me a favor and call me to let me know when the test results come back in?"

"Yeah of course… Hales are you sure that you're okay?"

"I'm fine." I assured her firmly, backing my body steadily out of the door until I had finally found myself into the hallway, keeping my eyes determinedly attached to Peyton's as she continued to express her prominent, yet silent concern towards me until I could simply no longer take it anymore and I turned away, walking briskly down the length of the hallway until I knew that I was completely out of the view of Sam's room…

And once I knew I was in the clear, I ran; I ran the length of the hallway, I ran down six flights in the staircase, and I ran through the entire parking garage… I moved faster than I had ever moved in my entire life, attracting stares but avoiding the scene until I had finally reached my car… but even after that; it didn't stop there.

I drove home so quickly that I was actually surprised that I didn't kill anybody…actually, now that I stopped to truly think about it, I didn't really have any recollection of the details of my drive home so who knew; maybe I did kill somebody, maybe I had freaking hit somebody with my car and drove away without so much as noticing it, maybe there was a freaking paddy wagon on its way to my house right now to come and take me away, to lock me up and throw away the key forever…

My thoughts were blank throughout the entirety of the journey; barely recalling a single moment that had occurred between me driving home from the hospital and me tearing through my house like a freaking hurricane, rushing straight into my bathroom and practically ripping the small mirror-cabinet above the sink off of the wall in its entirety as I ripped it open and dug my hands straight inside in my desperate search for the small orange pill bottle that was glowing back at me like gold from its position on the top shelf.

The remaining contents of the shelf all came toppling down around me as my movements began becoming more and more erratic, more destructive, while all the while, I simultaneously found myself caring less and less with each passing second about how much of a mess I was currently making or even whether or not anybody even heard me up here.

"Mommy what are you thinking about?" I had just started fumbling with the child safety lock on the lid of my medicine bottle when I froze; snapping abruptly out of my trance, focusing so carefully that my eyes actually hurt, and making a very conscious effort to address my six year old son, who was suddenly standing directly in front of me, like a normal human being.

"Jamie honey… what are you doing in here?" I choked over my own words, mainly out of disappointment in myself that I had actually allowed my son to see me in such a state than anything else.

"You looked sad when you came home momma… I just wanted to know what you were thinking about." I found myself suddenly very tongue tied, and the funny thing was, it sent me right back to Sam, right back to the conversation we had mere minutes ago although it felt like hours now…

She'd told me not to allow me to destroy myself, not to let my voice fade away, and I'd promised her that I wouldn't… but here I was…

"I'm just thinking about your Aunt Brooke and Sam, Jamie." I told him, deciding that it would probably be best to be honest with the kid, that maybe it was about time that I stopped lying to him about all of the things that were going on all around him… after all; I'd always said that Jamie was much smarter for his age than he ever should be.

"Is Sam sick again?" I stared at the boy closely, watching as he averted his eyes and folded his hands nervously into his jeans pockets so that he would have looked adorable if I wasn't too busy thinking about how much what I would have to say to him in response to his question would hurt him.

I nodded my head, carefully contorting my facial expression into a look of determined neutrality… It was hard to have to explain things like this to him over and over again; the thing was, I don't think that he ever truly understood that Sam never really stopped being sick… she just had her good days and then she had her bad; and unfortunately for us, she had been stuck in a very long stretch of bad lately.

"Yeah Jamie, Sam is sick again." I refused to go into details, especially considering the fact that I didn't really know what they were myself anyway.

"Is she back in the hospital momma?" I nodded back towards him knowing that I should have been giving him more credit than I ever did all along. He always did have a tendency to catch onto things quicker than anybody else; some days, even me.

"Can we go see her!" His face brightened and fell again the instant I shrugged my shoulders and gave him the slightest of grimaces in response to his question, expressing the idea that I wasn't so sure that I wanted to take him to see Sam right now… not when she was so sick, not when she was like this… But still, I had been the one who had brought it up to begin with, so I couldn't back down now…

Besides, Jamie wasn't about to take no for an answer, I knew that… One day I would remember to yell at his Aunt Brooke for teaching him how to be so stubborn.

"Maybe later Jamie,"

"Hey momma?" I sighed at his incessant questions… I loved my son to death, really I did, but his continuous presence, and my determination to put up a strong front in an effort to prevent him from seeing my weakness was starting to get difficult.

"What is it honey?"

"Are you sick like Sam is now too?"

In a single instant, my heart when from a painful tachycardia to a dead halt so abruptly that for a second there, I thought I might actually dropped dead… I mean, how positively insane must I look right now for my six year old son to even notice that something was wrong?

"No Jamie, I'm not sick…" I lied to him because I knew that I have gotten quite good at that in the past couple of months; and no, for the record, that wasn't something that I was particularly proud of.

"Then why do you have to take medicine like she does?" Somewhere deep in my subconscious mind, my hands twisted even tighter around the practically freaking fluorescent pill bottle that I was currently holding between them as I silently cursed myself for not thinking to hide it behind my back or something any sooner…

Jamie knew a pill bottle when he saw one, I knew that… Nathan and I had done our best to educate him when he was younger in order to make it quite clear that things like that weren't to be played with from when we had bottles of them lying around the house from Nathan's back injury.

"I'm… I'm fine honey; I don't need to take these because I don't feel well." It seemed like the only thing that I had to say to him today was dishonesties; an unusual feature considering I'd began this conversation with the decision that I was going to start telling him the truth from now on…

But it was a decision that I had made a long time ago; actually, it was a decision that both Nathan and I had made a long time ago that we weren't going to tell Jamie that I was currently being medicated for something that he probably wouldn't even be able to understand…

Of course, I knew more than anybody else that we all tended to underestimate just how much Jamie actually could understand… I mean if he understood the fact that Sam was sick, that she was positively dying, would he understand it if I tried to explain to him that his mother was a weak coward too?

I wasn't sure, and to be completely honest here, I didn't really want to find out either.

"Besides…" I continued beyond the realm of what I actually needed to speak because the way my lower jaw was currently trembling, the motions practically forced the words out of my mouth, "I could never be sick like Sam… she's much stronger than I could ever be."

He tilted his head to the side so that he suddenly very much so resembled a confused little puppy dog, and with the motion of his head came the instant realization that I'd actually just spoken out loud, to my grammar-school-aged son no less, the idea that had been filtering throughout my head for a while now…

"Jamie honey, why don't you go downstairs and see if your dad wants to play video games with you." I suddenly couldn't even look at him anymore. I was way too ashamed, way too disappointed in myself for placing this burden on his shoulders to so much as handle so much as being in the same room as him at the moment.

"Okay," He shrugged his shoulders acceptingly, the significance of what had just happened between the two of us seemingly going straight over his head due to the fact that an invitation to play video games with his father trumped everything else in his six year old mind set… It was a factor that I had been banking on when I'd come up with the diversion, and lucky for me, it had actually worked.

I stood still and silent for several seconds, breathing deeply as I listened to his tiny footprints as he pranced through the hallway and down the stairs until it was only the distant echo of his sneakered feet against the hard wood floor that I heard; and finally, when even that shallow noise escaped my ears in its entirety, I ripped open the bottle in my hands, downed two tablets whole, and finally threw the container back into my now sloppily unorganized cabinet, closing it much more gently than I had opened it as I leaned my forehead against the cool glass; my eyes closed and my breathing finally evening out.

It was a long time that I stayed like that, and honestly, if my phone hadn't gone off when it had, well than I knew that I sure as hell would have stayed there for even longer…

I scrambled to pick it up, having a sense of an idea as to who it probably was… When I saw Brooke's name flash across the banner of the screen and back into my eyes, I knew that my original thought had been right, and all at once, I felt that nervous tingle once again, so powerful that even my steady stream of SSRI's couldn't inhibit it as the realization flooded through me… this was it; the answer to the original question that had put me into this state of panic to begin with…

Was this thing with Sam really as bad as we all thought that it was?

"Brooke!" I answered the phone with a sense of urgency, hoping that the tone of my voice alone would be enough to signify to her that I wanted; no I needed her to skip over the small talk and just go straight to giving me answers, "What's going on? Did the test results come back yet? How's Sam?"

"She's okay Haley." Brooke took my subtle context clues for what they were, the first words out of her mouth being news about Sam so that I slowly released the breath that I had been holding as relief flooded through my body so powerful that it literally forced my body to slide down the wall of the bathroom until my ass actually touched the ground and my knees curled up into my chest,

"The blood work came back with no signs of any cancer cells or anything like that… they think that everything that happened today was probably just from the dialysis and her kidneys and things like that."

"Oh Brooke, thank God…" I brought my hand up to my chest, feeling my racing heart beat below my palm as it slowly began to steady out back to its baseline rhythm.

"Yeah… yeah, it's great… really." There was something about her voice that didn't settle well with me; something extra, something obscure, something that told me that maybe this news wasn't as good as I had taken it to be… Of course, if I was actually recovered from my first crises of the day, maybe I would have been able to process that a little bit better… but low and behold, I wasn't; and I hadn't.

"Listen Hales, I've gotta go Sam is calling me… I just wanted to call you real quick and let you know what was going on."

"Yeah, yeah of course," I spoke to her as if I really did understand exactly what she meant even though I knew that I didn't because I didn't know, I could never know what it was like when your child was that sick and was calling out to you because she so desperately needed your help, "Listen, make sure that you call me if you or Sam need anything okay?"

"Yeah… yeah okay, I will." She said it but I knew that she never would; those Davis women; I swear they were engineered to be as stubborn as freaking mules.

Brooke ended up being the one to hang up the phone first, and I followed suite rather quickly, but still, even after the conversation was over, even after the line was disconnected, even after the phone was out of my damn hands, I continued lying here on this bathroom floor, images flashing across my eyes like lightning; pictures of Sam being sick, of Jamie asking me whether I was that sick, my best friend's face plastered with pure panic as she spoke with her daughter's doctor about the chance that her child was dying…

The worst part was that no matter how long I kept my eyes closed, no matter how long I laid here on this bathroom floor, and no matter how hard I tried to push these thoughts away, they lingered; and eventually, they became too powerful for me to distinguish, for me to process all at once.

I wasn't sure exactly how it happened, or even why it happened, but all of a sudden, it became too much; all of it did... The worst part was, I had no idea what to do about it, or even if I could do anything about it; so naturally, my body took control on its own accord, doing the one thing that it could possibly think to do.

I shifted with completely involuntary motions so that my knees were suddenly raised up higher against my chest, my arms wrapped around them, and my face dug so far into my thighs that I couldn't even breathe.

I fell sideways still perfectly in this scrunched up little ball just as the tears began pouring trite and true from my eyes, so powerful, so loud, and so numerous that eventually, I almost had to get up and go into the bathroom just to give them a place to drain out…


	57. Tortures of the Damned

Chapter 57: Tortures of the Damned

**Tuesday, February 7****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

I woke up the next morning to the sound of a blaring alarm that filled my ears loud enough that atomic bombs might as well been dropping all around me…

I was up from the chair that I had been previously sleeping in up in the air so quickly that in fact, I don't think that I was even truly awake when I'd decided to do my best impersonation of a rocket being launched up into space…

Shuffling about the room aimlessly with no direction and nothing but confusion fogging my mind, I forced my sense to clear; I begged my body to ignore the soreness in my back and the exhaustion burning a hole through the backs of my eyes and I tried desperately to search effectively for whatever it was that was in front of me making all of this noise, and you know what, I found that source rather quickly, easily even… the thing was, once I did, I couldn't help but wish that I hadn't.

It had been coming directly from Sam… well, from the monitors that had been carefully keeping track of all of her vitals around the clock every time she was admitted since the start of her dialysis treatments anyway… So I looked up at the computer screen; trying desperately in my frantic haze to analyze the vast amounts of numbers and lines, beeps and blips that were jumping and racing across the screen in ways that I couldn't make heads or tails out of, but however little knowledge that I actually had in the interpretation of what all of this meant, I knew at least one thing for damn certain; this wasn't good… it wasn't good at all.

Sam's eyes were open wide, but still, it wasn't the kind of open that you would normally think of… The orbs had rolled backwards into her skull so that the distinguishing features weren't even showing anymore, offering me no more than a glossy sheath of pure white with a couple strained blood vessels decorating it… Her fragile, nearly skeletal body was shaking with an incessant series of wild shudders that were gradually becoming so intense that the very frames of the bed she was lying on shook in time with her body, tugging and pulling at all of the wires and lines connecting her, ripping them off progressively, even pulling the IV straight out of the back of her hand so that blood began to quickly flow freely from outside of the torn skin…

Her back had arched itself into a perfect semi-circle, with her hands clenching into white-knuckled fists against her bed sheets, her toes curled uncomfortably underneath her feet, and her neck arched so far backwards that I could literally see the veins popping from underneath her taut skin so prominent that I was actually starting to get nervous that the bones of her vertebrae would positively crumble underneath all of this strain…

"Sam? SAM!" I screamed to her, trying my very hardest to rouse her by any means necessary but I knew that there was absolutely nothing that I could do… but as much as this realization pained me, I also knew that I couldn't dwell on it for very long; I wasn't a nurse, and I knew that I wasn't a nurse… I guess now that only means that I should probably start being less concerned with trying to become a nurse and more concerned with actually trying to find one…

With shaking hands, I reached over her still-trembling body, grasping desperately for the small remote controlled box attached to the bed that has been acting as Sam's lifeline since the moment she was admitted for the first time back in October… the one that managed to act as a trifecta in being a TV control, a bed adjustment, and the nurse-call button… the latter feature being the one that I was currently interested in the most…

My hands were trembling so hard that I was actually having a hard time achieving the seemingly simple task that I had set out for myself… I'd managed to turn on Sam's television set, raise the feet of her bed to a near 90 degree angle, and raise the volume on the TV I'd just turned on to ear-splitting levels, but it was only on the fourth attempt that I'd actually succeeded, pressing for my desperate bid for help, for somebody to come and save not only Sam but me too… of course, apparently the nursing staff had been way ahead of me, because not two seconds after I'd hit the button, a large group of them barged into the room… Sometimes I forgot that everything that was connected to Sam in here was also connected to the nurse's station out there… slightly Big Brother at times, sure, but also very convenient particularly in moments like this…

"Brooke… Come on honey, we've got her; we'll take care of her… How about you go out into the hallway for a few minutes and get some air. We're going to take good care…"

I wasn't sure who had actually said it, but I could still feel the sensation of a set of hands as they clasped around my upper arms and guided me outward towards the hallway, and despite my mind racing at me telling me not to go, my body submitted easily; my stomach far too queasy, my legs feeling way too much like pure jello to possibly resist…

I identified the nurse only when we were several paces outside of Sam's room… The main reason that I always remembered Stacy Ruddock was because she had been Sam's head RN the day that she was first admitted onto the sixth floor of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, the day that started all of this… and who knew, maybe she would be Sam's head RN on the day that it all ended too…

I begged myself not to think in such terms, tried desperately to focus all of my attention elsewhere because I knew that if I continued at the rate that I was currently going, I wouldn't be able to make it much further.

My body zoned out for a solid five minutes, and in that time period, I completely forget where it was that I actually was, making it so that when I finally came back to life with a sharp attentiveness so distinct, so abrupt that it literally hurt my head, and I found myself safely alone inside one of the small waiting areas across the hallway, the solitude seemed much more prominent, and if anything, much more painful in its obviousness.

The small box was equipped with nothing more than two painfully straight rows of uncomfortably plastic orange chairs, a single table, and a couple of vending machines designed to fulfill all of your coffee, soda, or junk food needs, and as the details slowly started filtering into my vision all around me, I suddenly felt a sharp sensory overload that caused my knees to positively collapse underneath me and my body to plunge to the ground below me, landing safely into one of those orange chairs that had conveniently been placed directly underneath me before I actually hit the ground.

My breathing began to quicken exponentially as I buried my head deep into the palms of my hands, just looking for something to do with them, but the motion proved to be more detrimental than anything as I felt myself practically drown in the small puddle of tears that had formed within my clench fingers despite everything screaming at me to calm down, to relax, to use all of those deep breathing exercises that my obstetrician had given me in times like these to focus on the health of the small child growing inside of me so that I wouldn't allow the moments of unbearable stress, similar to the one that I was experiencing now, to overcome me…

But I couldn't do it, I couldn't focus on the one child that was currently teeming to life within the confines of my very own body while meanwhile my other child was slipping away seemingly just out of arm's reach right in front of me…

I knew how important it was, I knew that I needed to do it, the thing was, I struggled to bring myself to produce any actual results to the point where it was becoming virtually worthless.

I just couldn't stop thinking; did I tell Sam that I loved her before we'd gone to bed last night? I couldn't remember whether or not I had… Did I tell her how much she meant to me the last time I saw her, how useless my life would be without her in it? I didn't think that I did, and now, I was finding myself regretting that action more than I had ever regretted anything in my entire life…

It was moments like these that I really wished that the vending machines lined up and down the walls of this room offered me something much, much stronger than coffee.

I stood up so suddenly that my knees cricked painfully and my back cracked, but I just couldn't sit still in this chair anymore because I knew that I would positively lose my mind if I did…

So instead, I did something that I had become quite good at doing in these past couple of months; I paced. Up and down and up and down, circling the floor like a crazy person, pausing only briefly out the large window that focused on the vast landscape of Tree Hill, North Carolina's expansive bay from six floors up where I watched hypnotized as people, small as ants from this height, shuffled up and down the sidewalks hurriedly, rushing towards their destinations, wherever they may be, without so much as a second thought…

I thought about all of these people, walking freely, carrying on in their normal, everyday lives, and then I started thinking about people like us; people like me, people like Sam…

A long time ago I had learned to try never to get my expectations or my hopes up too high, because every time I did just that, it just brought me back to learning the hard way that things like that are never actually met in the way that you wanted them to…

But still, against all of my better judgment, I kept setting them, and still, they continued to do me in every single time… And then I start seeing people like those below me; normal people, carefree people, and I find myself left decrepit, sick, miserable, and positively green with envy for all of the people that had ever gotten everything that they'd ever wanted out of life, leaving people like me stuck behind.

"Brooke!"

But still, and some of you may be surprised to actually hear me say this, but there's an unexpected, yet welcoming sense of comfort that comes alongside being confined to a pediatric oncology unit for months and months on end…

It's hard to describe to people who have never really experienced it, and I hope to God that you never do have to experience it, but I guess if you need a comparison, it's almost like being a member of a church, or a book club, or else a close knit army platoon or something, standing strongly together as they prepare to go to war…

No matter who you may be or what kind of situation you're in, it's always a comfort to know that you're not alone in this world; that every single person that has walked these halls and held vigils inside of these bedrooms has been through the exact same situation…

A family formed over the bond that we have all watched our children travel to hell back.

I turned in response to hearing my name echo loudly across the otherwise empty room and I turned my head away from the window that I had been hypnotically gazing through so quickly that it took me a while to straighten out the dizziness that had just infiltrated across my skull and focus on the image of the person that had just appeared in the doorway in front of me.

Her name was Lily Adams…

Two years ago her husband divorced her and took everything that she owned with him except for the one thing that he didn't want; their three year old son.

So with nothing left and everything to lose, she packed up the little that she had left and moved her and her son to Tree Hill from some northern New Jersey suburb in order to live with her parents until she could manage to get herself back on her feet again.

It was only a few months after that when her son had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of osteosarcoma that doctors had discovered when she'd brought him into the hospital after he'd managed to fracture his femur simply from bumping into the edge of the dining room table.

They had performed the surgeries, done the chemotherapy, performed the radiation, and a few months later, the boy was officially in remission… Hell, he'd even managed to keep his leg; a rarity I heard with those types of cancers…

But almost a year and half to the date of his initial diagnosis, his mother was told that the cancer was back, and that this time, it wasn't going to go away.

Josh Adams had been in the room next door to Sam's the first time she was admitted into the sixth floor of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital… I'd met him and his mother on our second day here after I'd been taking Sam for a walk around the hallway only to find him playing in the playroom all by himself while his worried mother chatted away with a graying doctor in the hallway with a look of frantic desperation in her eyes that I had grown way too accustomed to experiencing lately.

Sam had decided to take a turn into the playroom, going to keep the boy some company while he attempted to distract himself from the knowledge that he was going to be sick again just like he had been the last time, if not worse, and in the next couple of weeks that followed, every once in a while, Josh would come back in to see Sam, just looking for somebody to play with until eventually, the both of them ended up getting too sick to so much as leave their rooms let alone have fun.

But ultimately, that was how Lily Adams and I ended up bonding, because while our children bid their time trying to distract one another from the destruction of the disease currently eating away at their bodies, we bid our own time trying to distract each other from the struggle of trying to save them.

Josh's fifth birthday was last weekend… It had coincidentally landed on the exact same day that his doctors had scheduled a double amputation of both of his legs… The word had come in just yesterday that the cancer had been contained, that he was going to be okay…

Maybe that was why Lily Adams was currently rushing into the waiting room that I had currently found myself trapped inside of in order to offer me some words of distinct comfort… She probably figured that because a miracle had happened to her own son overnight, then maybe she could still manage to resonate some of that power onto me and Sam.

I could only hope that she was right.

"Brooke what's going on, I saw a team running into Sam's room. Is she alright?" The woman rushed up to me, embracing me strongly in a motion that I returned gratefully, more than appreciative for this sense of comfort derived from somebody who knew the ropes.

"I don't… I don't know," I answered her truthfully, my words muffled by the fabric of her t-shirt that my face was currently buried deeply into, "She was having some sort of… I don't know, some sort of seizure or something when I woke up this morning."

I continued to hold onto the woman tightly, not so much as even letting up as she continued to rub comforting circles into my back, seemingly unnerved by the fact that I was practically suffocating her with my embrace.

"It's okay, she'll be okay, she'll be just fine." She offered me her own words of reassurance but I couldn't help but feel bad by her seeming sense of obligation to take care of me… After all, this wasn't Julian, or Peyton, or Haley trying to comfort me over here, no, this was a woman who was going through the same hell that I was, who had their own child to worry about… And suddenly, on top of feeling very panicked about what was going on with my daughter at the moment, I was also feeling very, very selfish.

"How's Josh?" I asked in a dual attempt to both ease my guilty conscious and simultaneously try not to dwell on Sam as to keep this situation from becoming the reality that I definitely was not ready to accept.

"He's doing well," She told me, dropping her voice and looking up at me with a sort of awkward smile that let me know that she was feeling bad about telling me that her son was doing so well when it was so clear that my own daughter was not… Of course, I felt the exact opposite… for some reason, her telling me about her son's successes in fact just made me feel that much more hopeful about Sam's.

"The doctors, they were telling me this morning that the MRI showed that the cancer hadn't spread beyond his legs so that when they… when they amputated them last week, they're pretty confident that they stopped the cancer dead in its tracks… A few more weeks of chemotherapy and some radiation and he should be all set… they're setting him up with prosthetics this afternoon."

"That's amazing Lily… really, it is." I flashed her a genuine smile; her story, well it put me into some sort of perspective, it made me remember that maybe life wasn't always so bad after all…

Of course after this thought briefly wanders across her mind, you finally stop, and you really think about everything going on in your life and you remember… yes, yes it really is that bad; but at least one of us was having a little bit of good luck anyway.

"Okay… well, is there anybody here with you, or… or did you call anybody?"

I sighed, shaking my head slowly in order to indicate that I was in on this one all by myself at the moment.

"No… no not yet, I have to call… I have to call Julian and my mother…" I sighed, my stress level rising even higher now that I remembered that it wasn't just me that was going to be affected by this, but a handful of others as well… Somewhere deep down inside of my gut, a quick flash of pain shot up my spine and straight into my brain to remind me that I had more than one child that I had to think of right now.

"Well… well do you want me to call them?"

"No, no," I waved her off of thinking that she had to uphold any sort of responsibility towards performing the tasks that I knew that I needed to perform on my own… She had her own worries to focus on, her own family to consider, her own sick child to take care of…

That's why in the end, I practically forced her to go back to him; I convinced her that I would be fine, I convinced her that Sam would be fine, and I tried to convince the both of us that I wouldn't be permanently scarred by the scene that I had just witnessed firsthand in watching my daughter take such a sudden change for worse.

It was only after I was absolutely certain that I was embellished into the safety of the confines of my own privacy that I allowed myself to go to the payphone in the corner of the room seeing as how I'd left my cell phone in Sam's room, and dialed the number that I had permanently embedded into my memory where I waited only two rings before receiving a response.

"Julian it's me." I thought that I would have been able to keep my cool throughout all of this. I thought that maybe I would be able to at least present as being alright, but the second that I began to speak, my words instantly began to stutter, my voice became laced with a heavy sense of emotion.

"Brooke is everything okay?"

"No," I pushed the single word out of my mouth, presenting it loudly, panicked even so that I could hear Julian's breath hitch in his throat over the phone in an instant.

"Something happened this morning Julian… to Sam… Can you come over here please? I need you right now."

* * *

Eleven minutes… it took Julian and Victoria a total of eleven minutes…

Eleven minutes for them to drop everything that they had been doing before I'd placed my impromptu phone call, eleven minutes to rush out of the front door and gather inside of Julian's truck, and eleven minutes to defy every single traffic law in the book driving here, before they'd rushed up the stairs and located easily in my position, exactly where I had been eleven minutes ago when I'd placed my call.

And let me tell you this… it was easily the single longest eleven minutes that I have ever experienced in my entire life

At the time of their arrival, I had been sitting in a chair at the furthest corner of the room away from the door where I remained curled up into an uncomfortable ball between each armrest, practically lying with my head between my legs and my arms wrapped around my knees as I rocked slowly back and forth in my last desperate attempt to hold onto the little bit of sanity that I still had left.

It was embarrassing for me that I had allowed them to see me like this… After all, I was emotional, I was distraught, and I was just straight up feeling as if I was completely off my rocker at this moment…

I think that most importantly, I felt weak… I felt exhausted from simply trying to keep track of all of my emotions leading me to the biggest problem that I was currently having at the moment in that I knew that I have long since bypassed the point in time where I could simply cry myself to sleep and allow myself to rest, recharge, and wake up feeling much better than I had before…

Instead, these days my body has simply learned to adapt to crying myself wide awake, a defense mechanism established upon the development of this overwhelming paradigm shift that I'd recently began experiencing every time I entered into unconscious, where instead of slipping into a blissful dreamland, I would just go straight into this weird purgatory that just made me feel as if I had officially arrived at the open gates of borderline insanity.

"Brooke… Brooke what happened?"

My world came back into focus with the image of Julian and Victoria's panicked faces rushing towards me as Julian reached down automatically in order to grab me by the shoulders where he practically lifted me into the arms strictly by his own muscle power as he attempted to comfort the both of us into thinking that maybe this wasn't bad as my initial impression had lead him to believe it was, even though all of the evidence pointed directly in front of his face was screaming at him that it was.

"I don't know, Julian… I don't know." My voice shook, refusing to raise above any more than a whisper. In my haze of confusion, I couldn't bring myself to elaborate with details, I couldn't do anything other than emphasize my own cluelessness even though I knew the not only wanted, but deserved many more answers than I actually had to offer.

"Where's Sam" He attempted to rephrase his question with the hopes that maybe some simpler wording would bring him more luck the second time around, but in the end it was all the same. I scrunched up my face, ugly with tears, shook my head slowly back and forth and once again, emitted the same exact answer as before.

"I don't know."

"Well… well where's her doctor… or… or her nurse? Can they tell us anything?" His hands shook with the frustrations brought on by fear, and unsure what to do with them any longer, he attempted to hide the evidence from me, dropping his arms to his side so that his right palm subconsciously grazed across my barely-bulging stomach during the journey.

I envisioned his touch, his unconscious desire to create an invisible shield from the tips of his fingers in order to protect our growing child from the pains of the real world that I was inadvertently exposing it to way before the time in which it should have been, and for some reason, that idea, that notion, well it struck me harder than any other, and in my response, I released a gut-wrenching sob which originated from the back of my throat and threw myself straight into Julian's chest, wetting the fabric of his shirt with the tears spilling relentlessly out of my eyes for Sam, for this baby, for all of us really…

"I… I woke up this morning and she was… I don't know… she was having some sort of a… of a seizure or something. They kicked me out of her room… I… I haven't heard from anybody yet… I don't know what's going on Julian; they won't tell me what's wrong with her!"

"Oh my God… Okay, okay, it's gonna be okay Brooke, she's gonna be okay." Of course, his words of assurance would have been much more convincing if he hadn't said it with a hint of panic behind his voice.

"Brooke, how long ago did this happen? How long have you been waiting out here, Brooke?" Victoria broke her lingering streak of silence… I had been starting to wonder when it was she would actually do that; after all, it wasn't like her to stay so quiet for so long… and honestly, her silence was just starting to make me more nervous.

"I don't know… maybe a half an hour… a little bit less than that." I couldn't find it in my to answer her in any sort of a coherent sentence, the thought of how long I had been sitting out here waiting for the news on whether or not my daughter was okay, whether or not she was still alive for as long as I had been freaking me out more than I already had been…

"Okay Brooke… here, sit down for a second, take a minute." Julian gently pushed me backwards into a seat by my shoulders, and although I knew that his intentions were good, and although I knew that his touch was meant to provide me with comfort, I couldn't help but respond in an exactly opposite manner than which he might have expected, and all at once, something inside of me snapped.

"No Julian, I don't want to sit down!"

I hadn't meant to scream at him, really I hadn't, and in all honesty, I wasn't in any way mad at him or anything like that, after all I knew full well that he was just trying to help… No, this was more like an unfair display of all of my frustrations of the past couple of weeks… no, the past couple of months, all coming together and exploding outwards…

Poor Julian just happened to be the one who had been in my line of fire when all of that actually happened.

I watched with a wide-eyed fury as Julian backed up instinctively in a naturally protective mechanism, displaying his fear that I would get to a point in my blind panic that I would actually start throwing punches at him or something…

I lowered my guard the instant his body separated from my own, relaxing my muscles to the point that my body physically slumped in a display of just how badly I felt for actually yelling at him, for making this worse than it already had to be by alienating myself, by refusing to comply with Murphy's Law of cancer which clearly stated that when things started falling apart, coming together with the people who mattered most was not only encouraged, but vital to survival.

I slackened my jaw slowly, prepared to tell him just this, prepared to apologize endlessly, prepared to tell him just how much his actions meant to me, but then I caught a glimpse of something, something quick, something sudden, and all at once, my words were lost inside of my throat, and I was struck silent…

I turned my body abruptly, squaring it to face the approaching doctor so quickly that my back cracked down the entirety of the length of my spine…

I couldn't read the expression on her face from this distance, but I knew that it wouldn't have matter; I wouldn't have been able to read it even if she was an inch away from me… She was trained as stone, perfected by the experience of delivering bad news to unsuspecting families…

She was ten feet away from me now… nine feet… eight feet…

My breath had suddenly caught up within itself somewhere within the center of my throat. The only thing that I could do was beg this interaction to move faster, pray that Dr. Miller would chose to kill me quickly in order to simply get it over with.

Seven feet… Six feet…

I made the effort to meet her halfway, no longer able to sit in my anxiousness, the thing was, my feet didn't seem to want to move. It was as if somebody had attached a cement block to each one of them, preparing to throw me straight into the river where they planned on allowing me to sink straight to the bottom where I knew that I would land only to find absolutely no way to get back up.

Five feet… Four feet…

If you find yourself ever becoming a mother, even a mother to a girl that hadn't exactly been yours from the very beginning per se, and that girl died before she ever even really had a chance to live, do you still tell people that you have a daughter? Do you simply tell them that you _had_ a daughter? Or did you just stop saying that you ever had a child all together?

Three feet… Two feet…

I guess what I'm trying to say here is this; does that mother-daughter connection still exist even if one half of that equation is gone?

One foot…

"Brooke…"

She was a mere handful of inches in front of me; our eyes face to face, so close that I could hear the sound of my own heavy breathing as the audio waves bounced off of her skin and directly back into my own ears.

"I think that maybe you should sit down."

* * *

**JULIAN**

To be completely honest with you here, the first thought that went through my mind the second that Dr. Miller told Brooke that she should probably sit down was that the poor woman should probably duck and cover right here and now considering I'd just gotten my head bitten off by Brooke for making the exact same suggestion not two minutes ago…

Of course, that thought came and went pretty quickly, because it didn't take very long for the true meaning behind her words to finally settle inside of my head, and once they did, and once I started to realize just what it meant that this doctor was currently telling Brooke to sit in order to prepare for the news that she was about to receive, the only thing that I could actually process was the panic currently racing through my mind, stemming from the acknowledgment of just how serious this entire thing actually was.

I watched Brooke carefully in order to try and catch a reaction to the request, wondering very much so if she would comply willingly or if she would give Dr. Miller a very similar response as she had to me…

She hesitated for a half a second, struck silent the recognition that all eyes were currently pointed directly onto her as we waited for a response… All motions, all sounds, including that of our own breathing, our very heartbeats seemed to stop as time itself slowed around us.

Now, the time between the doctor's words and Brooke's actual response in reality probably wasn't more than ten, maybe twenty seconds; but of course, to me it felt much longer, and I think a lot of that had to do with the silence; so still, so quiet, it heightened the rest of my senses tenfold to a point that everything else surrounding me was almost painfully obvious.

And suddenly, the sound of silence might as well have been the loudest noise that I have ever heard in my entire life.

I began playing with my hands anxiously, tapping my toes against the carpeting floor in a series of nervous ticks that I had to force my body to perform in order to prevent myself from literally clamping my palms against my ears just to block out all the noise, to keep myself from sinking to my knees at the physical pain that the sound caused my body, to stop me from shouting out as loud as I could in pure agony…

Brooke and I were no more than an arm's length away from each other, but all at once, I felt further from her than I had ever been in my entire life… All I wanted to do was to jump closer towards her, pull her body into mine, but it was as if when I'd walked into this room mere moments ago, my feet had landed into a vat of super glue or something… I couldn't move, I just couldn't do it.

And after that, I could only watch; watch as Brooke's knees quivered briefly where she stood, watch as they finally collapsed out from underneath her, and watch as she free-fell downward into the chair underneath her, leaving Victoria and I to follow her lead, sitting ourselves down on either side of her, protective grips on each of her arms just in case we needed to be her physical support system should the news we were about to receive not be that which we wanted to hear… And, as selfish as this thought may be, I couldn't help but allow the idea to sweep through my head that contemplated just who would be there to comfort me just in case that was to happen? Who would be there to pick me up should an unforeseen nervous breakdown be in my very near future?

The doctor sat down across from us slowly, leaning forward until her elbows rested gently on their respective knee just so that she could be as close to all three of us as was humanly possible at the time so that maybe her proximity would make the news easier to hear when it came time for it or something like that…

"Dr. Miller how's Sam… where's Sam?" The plethora of questions that has been building up inside of Brooke since the moment she's been inside of this room spilled almost incomprehensibly out of her mouth all at the same time so that I was actually surprised that the doctor had caught what was actually said.

"Sam is upstairs getting an MRI right now Brooke… They're trying to get a better image of exactly what's going on with her because… well… Brooke, the initial test results, they're showing us that the seizure was caused by Sam's kidney dysfunction getting even worse… What seems to be going on is that she isn't getting any blood flow to either of them anymore… her kidneys are starting to physically die inside of her Brooke which means that dialysis isn't going to be a good enough option to get her healthy again anymore."

"I'm sorry I… I don't really understand…" I could see the pupils within Brooke's eyes literally swirling around within them as her brain desperately tried to come up with an explanation that would convince her that this wasn't actually as bad as how it sounded even though I knew that we all knew it was… I noticed this because the only thing that I could bring myself to do right now was concentrate on Brooke because I knew that if I didn't I would be forced to focus on what was going on with Sam, and I really don't think that I would have made it very far if I did that.

"What it means is that Sam is in an irreversible state of end stage renal failure that's causing her kidneys to enter into a severe state of necrosis so that we're currently looking at a very realistic worst case scenario that this will result in an infection that can turn into sepsis before we even have time to identify it let alone stop it… And if this happens Brooke, you know as well as I do that the only thing that we'll be able to do for her then is to keep her comfortable… Our treatment options are very limited right now Brooke… Sam needs a kidney transplant, and she needs one as soon as possible."

It was the most upfront way that Dr. Miller could have possibly gone about telling us this news without being harsh… a perfectly arranged announcement that ensured that she would be able to get the point across while still allowing us to consider the severity of the issue on our own terms, with our own interpretations.

I would have been impressed with her way with words if those words hadn't just hurt me so damn much.

A desperate ache filled the entirety of my insides, filtering deep into my very bones so that I couldn't help but think if I was hurting this much, I could only imagine how Brook felt…

She was barely even sitting anymore, her body having collapsed out from under her in response to the news she'd just received so that it was sliding so far off of the chair she was almost on the floor… But my head was blank, my ideas were limited, and the only thing that I could manage to force my body to do in response to all of this was to place a sturdy hand on Brooke's shoulder, feeling the motions of her muscles contracted with her heaving sobs underneath my very palm.

I couldn't help but feel terrified, but I also couldn't help but feel that that terror was rendering me useless in my instability.

And all at once my future, Brooke's future, _our_ future was flashing before me right in front of my very eyes.

I thought about what our family would be like if Sam wasn't in it… I thought about the wedding that we had been holding off just to ensure Sam's presence and what it might be like if we'd waited so long that we in fact waited _too_ long… I thought about my child, the child that hadn't even been born yet but had already found itself being subjected to the cruelties of the real world and what it might be like if the only method by which he or she knew his or her big sister by was a few frozen pictures in time and a couple of incomplete stories…

I thought of the high school graduation that I would never be able to attend. I thought of the college that I would never be able to stretch my funds to the absolute limit to pay for. I thought of the aisle that I would never walk Sam down, the grandchildren that I would never hold, and all at once, my brain shut off; each and every neuron in my body fizzling out and disintegrating so that I was left to do nothing but collapse in my complete loss of focus with reality in its entirety.

"Brooke," She spoke again when nobody else did, "I know that we've been discussing the potential consequences of treating one of Sam's ailments over the other and that a lot of her treatment progression has been based off of combining the dialysis and chemotherapy all together, but her kidney problems have progressed much further than any of us had previously anticipated… Sam's sick Brooke; she's very, very sick and I think that it's time we start prioritizing, which is why I want to get her on the transplant list as quickly as humanly possible and continue to focus on her kidneys with the hopes that the cancer will remain under control until it's safe to go back to thinking about continuing her on chemotherapy once again."

My breath returned back to me in a panicked uproar so quickly that I almost choked on it. Brooke and I exchanged a quick glance of shock; our expressions pointing out that we both clearly understood the facts although neither of us were ready to accept them quite yet…

You see, the way we saw it was that we had found ourselves caught up in some kind of ridiculous Catch 22-like scenario… Treat Sam's kidneys but in the end, the leukemia will get her… Treat Sam's leukemia, but her kidneys will be the ones to kill her all the same… And as much as I tried to keep the thought from entering my head, as much as I was trying to stay positive throughout all of this here, I couldn't help but think if it was physically possible for us to ever dig ourselves out of this one…

We've played the game of chance with Sam's life before, and so far, it hasn't really worked out to our benefit… But of course, like all the other times, the options were limited and we had found ourselves in a situation by which we had everything to gain and everything to lose… so with that idea in mind, we'd managed to make a silently collaborative decision with relative ease.

"So what do we have to do?" I spoke for Brooke, because even though this exact question was lingering deep through her very eyes, she couldn't seem to physically bring herself to ask it.

"Well first I'm going to get in contact with UNOS right away. That's the United Network for Organ Sharing, they're the ones who will be responsible for placing Sam on the recipient list based on her prioritization… after that, there's not much more we can do but wait for an organ to become available and hope that we can keep her healthy in the amount of time that it will take until that happens."

My eyes practically forced themselves away from the doctors'… This was all just too impossible, it was too surreal… Sam was just a kid; her body was supposed to be young, it was supposed to be healthy… There was just no logical explanation that I could come up with, even in the deepest depths of my mind, that could possibly explain why a sixteen year old girl could ever get so sick that her very organs were starting to shut down to the point that they became positively disposable.

"My biggest concern at the moment is that the board will deem Sam much too sick to be able to tolerate a transplant right now and that they will either put her on a priority level that may be too low for her to actually receive a kidney in time or that… that they won't put her on the list at all."

Through the corners of my eyes I watched as the entirety of Brooke's facial features widened in response, her head shooting up in order to make direct eye contact with the doctor as she expressed her silent fear towards the doctor that I was currently matching identically…

I mean… they couldn't do that right? There had to be some sort of ethical code or UN treaty or something that stated that you couldn't just deny the one thing that could possibly keep a person alive to them… especially when that person was a mere child…

"How is that possible?" Brooke choked out, expressing her very similar concerns towards the matter.

"Brooke, the list of recipients currently awaiting a kidney transplant is impossibly long… People wait years to find a donor and… well, it will be very difficult to get Sam's name on the top of that list to begin with… combine that with the added factor of her current condition and…"

The doctor trailed off, refusing to finish her sentence although we'd all understood in the amount of time it takes for your heart to skip a single beat exactly what she meant.

"So how long are we talking here? How long do you think it will take if we can't get her to the top?" Somehow, I think I knew the answer to my own question before I'd even received an answer.

"The average is about four to five years."

I released a heavy exhale, running my shaking hand through my short hair as I desperately tried to stop the tears currently stinging at the backs of my eyes from actually falling…

"But Sam doesn't have four to five years…" Brooke whispered the obvious, allowing everybody currently standing in this room to become very suddenly, and very painfully aware of this disheartening reality.

"I know that…" Dr. Miller nodded, not even trying to hide the fact, "That's why Brooke, what I recommend doing for the sake of time is to see if we can get Sam a kidney that is specifically requested to go directly to her… I'm talking about a friend, a family member… Hell, a random stranger on the street would do as long as we had consent and a good enough match.

"I'll get tested!" I practically shouted my contribution before the doctor so much as even finished her sentence; and yeah sure, so maybe I didn't really know exactly what it was that I was signing myself up for over here, but really… what was there to think about? If it was my vital organ that could save Sam's life well then that was that…

Shit, I would give that kid every freaking organ in my entire body if that's what she needed to get better.

"Me too…" Victoria added her consent into the mix with a short nod and a look of fiery determination across her eyes that told me that she too was currently experiencing a very similar thought pattern to my own.

"I'll get tested too…" Brooke shot up out of her seat in an effort to support how much she truly meant this, how sincere her intentions were, but her voice still lacked the confidence it needed to be believable, because I knew that Brooke knew as well as everybody else in the room did that she wasn't going to be the match that Sam needed… Forget the fact that no competent doctor in their right mind would ever even think to take a kidney from a pregnant woman, I knew that Brooke wasn't even so much as the same blood type as Sam…

The reason we all knew that was this; in those early days of Sam's treatment, the ones where Sam would need constant blood and platelet transfusions just to keep her from falling into a state of hypovolemic shock when her counts got to near undetectable levels, Brooke had insisted upon being tested just so that she could potentially take on the responsibility of being Sam's consistent source of body parts if need be.

They had told her flat out in the first week Sam had been admitted that she wasn't a match; they weren't going to take her blood, they weren't going to take her platelets, and they sure as hell weren't going to take her kidney… and up until about the same time that Victoria ultimately came into the picture, Brooke would spend the majority of her days complaining loudly about the fact that her parents had never managed to give her anything in her entire life; including the right blood type.

"Okay," Dr. Miller turned her head constantly, surveying each and every one of her willing donors and nodding towards all three of us; even Brooke… She didn't say anything to the ailing mother, but the gleam in her eye told me that she was thinking exactly what I was thinking; that to go upstairs to test Brooke's blood would be nothing more than a waste of time and money…

Of course, she knew as well as I did that Brooke was currently at a position in her life where her willingness needed to be simply accepted unconditionally, and for that I was appreciative.

"I'll get you guys set up with an appointment in the nephrology lab right away… What will happen for now is that they'll just draw some blood work and test it to see if your blood samples, your tissue type, and your HLA patterns match Sam's, and if the results come back that one of you do… well then we'll just move on from there."

I nodded my head to her but the movement was void of any actual meaning because I couldn't help but find myself suddenly very, very aware of the fact that I knew so little about what was actually going on over here, about what I was about to get myself into, about what all of this could actually mean…

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not like… backing out or anything like that, I guess what I'm doing instead is actually starting to think about all of this… Not necessarily about whether or not I truly wanted to this, but I guess more about the fact that I had absolutely no idea how the hell I had managed to get to this point in my life, and whether or not it would even be possible to drag not only myself, but everybody else that I loved back out of it now that we were in so deep.


	58. Tomorrow's Coming Fast Part I

**Alright guys, so here's the next one which means there's only like seven chapters left which is nuts. Sorry I didn't have this chapter up sooner, I tried to put it up early this morning but they wouldn't let me log in for some reason and I finally got on now so I gotta post real quick until I lose it again lol.  
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**But anyway I'm separating this chapter into two parts for no particular reason other than the fact that it got really long really fast so I hope you all enjoy it!**

**And just to let you all know there's gonna be more of a focus on the baby and Brooke being pregnant in the next couple of chapters to come so I'm not gonna cheat you out here I promise!**

Chapter 58: Tomorrow's Coming Fast (Part I)

**Wednesday, February 8****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

The next morning, for the second morning in a row mind you, I found myself waking up once again, in a very alarming, very unexpected sort of manner…

And considering the fact of the circumstances by which I'd woken up only yesterday, when the sound of Sam positively sobbing infiltrated the barrier of my brain that separated consciousness from unconsciousness, I couldn't help but spring awake, jolt upwards from the chair I had previously been sleeping in, and rush to her side in a split second with the idea in mind that she was currently in some sort of indescribably excruciating pain while meanwhile, I had been sleeping stupidly at her bedside, unaware that my own daughter needed help.

Naturally, the first thing that I noticed was the tears; big, fat, and prominent as they slid down her face, choking her up to the point that I was actually beginning to wonder how it was that she was actually still breathing.

"Sam what is it? What hurts? Do you need me to call Dr. Miller? Do you need me to call a nurse? Hang on, I'll go get one!"

I powered frantically through that feeling of dizziness that was currently infiltrating my skull from having shot up in the air so suddenly from what had previously been such a peaceful sleep, transforming into a state of sheer lunacy in a split second so that I could scramble to identify the cause of Sam's pain, trying to focus all of my attention strictly at her so that I could attempt to hide the fact that I was currently scared shitless.

So with that mentality in the back of mind; the reminder that Sam was hurting, that Sam might be dying, that something was impossibly wrong with her, well, you could only imagine how pissed off I was when Sam simply shook her head towards all of my efforts to help, pushed me to the side, and practically yelled at me to be quiet.

"You're ruining the end of the show Brooke, shut up."

Every single one of my frantic movements froze instantly as I turned to look down at her, my mouth hanging open in an expression of shock, my eyes widening with a combination of both anger and relief, because honestly, I couldn't really pinpoint between the two distinct feelings at the moment.

I turned slowly, swiveling my head over my shoulder in order to catch a glimpse of what it was that she was currently watching so apparently intensely… Hanging from the ceiling directly in front of her bed was a glowing TV, displaying the image of some corny daytime drama; a man with beautifully coifed hair and perfect muscle tone sobbing over the bedside of a young woman, equally as gorgeous despite the fact that she appeared to be playing a character who was supposed to be in some sort of coma or something…

And although I sympathized with this guys pains and sufferings, really I did, I couldn't help the feeling of rage currently seeping through my body, directed straight towards him for forcing me to wake up under the impression that Sam was dying just as much as his fake made-for-TV girlfriend was.

I always have hated soap operas.

With a steep exhale, I allowed my gradually relaxing body to finally let its guard down as I sank back down against my chair, forcing my eyes away from the television because I knew that if I watched this scene any longer, I probably would have just smashed in the screen or something.

"Are you kidding me?" I finally allowed myself to ask her the question only after my pulse had successfully lowered back down to none-life-threatening levels and my blood pressure diminished to the point that I was no longer afraid that I was going to stroke out right here on the very spot.

"It's just… it's just so sad." She choked out her response between tears, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her t-shirt, leaving great big blotches of wet patches along the fabric.

"No… really, you're kidding me right?" I shook my head slowly towards her, at a complete loss for words other than the ones that I just kept repeating to her over and over until finally, my emotional instability skyrocketed me up from my seat, probably a little bit more forcefully than it should have, in a manner that made Sam flinch and made me instantly retreat with the notion that I was letting my emotions get the best of me, that I was overreacting… again…

I hadn't meant to snap at her, really I hadn't, but I had recently found myself to be caught up inside of this deadly combination of hormones, emotions, and a trigger-button that simply needed to be grazed to set me off these days…

"I'm sorry Sam…" I sighed dramatically, my anger settling around me… very, very slowly mind you considering I still couldn't quite believe that Sam would actually do something like that to me even though I knew deep down in my heart of hearts that it really hadn't been on purpose.

"It's okay…" She shrugged, shifting her body so that her back straightened and she aligned upwards against the mattress, striking me with a sudden realization derived from what had seemed to be the simplest of movements… Of course, considering the fact that yesterday, Sam had barely even been able to open her eyes she was feeling so sick, the fact that she was sitting up in her bed, let alone watching TV, that simplest of movements was huge

"So… I guess you're feeling better today then?" I asked the question tentatively with hesitation in her voice, because I knew as well as anybody else that with these things, you can never be too sure.

"Yeah, I guess…" She shrugged her shoulders, bracing herself against the mattress using her elbows so that she could pull herself up even taller in her bed, but almost as soon as I spoke, it seemed, her face contorted into a sudden, involuntary wince of pain, that had been so quick, I almost missed it, even though I hadn't because these days, my trained eye managed to catch it just as it managed to catch everything else about Sam these days.

Something had just hurt her, and by the looks of things, that something had hurt her bad, and I didn't need to be a doctor to know what that something was…

"What is it?" I asked her, my head racing with the ridiculous array of emotions that I had already felt inside of me despite merely being awake for less than five minutes…

She stared up at me hesitantly with that look in her eyes; those two glossy orbs that she couldn't even bring to completely lock with my own in its entirety, leading me to believe that her eyes were lying to be just about as much as her mouth was about to.

"It's nothing,"

Do you see what I mean? Her response had been quick, her eyes averted, her hands intertwining with each other nervously… Everything about her statement positively screamed "I'm lying" and for a brief moment there, I considered letting the situation go… Besides, Sam was sick, she was destined to get aches and pains every once in a while… How sad was it that this was actually considered to be normal for us?

But of course, the half of me that wanted me to push her in all of this won out in the long run…

"It's your kidneys." It was a statement, not a question.

"I'm in renal failure Brooke, are my kidneys allowed to hurt every once in a while or not?"

For a second there, my mouth actually opened so that the word "no, they're not" literally formulated on the tip of my tongue, but it was a statement that I had never actually delivered because the last thing that I needed right now was a raging argument to break out between the two of us over me saying something completely stupid.

So as much as I wanted to tell Sam that no, she wasn't allowed to hurt, that if I was protecting her at all like I should have been doing, she shouldn't have to hurt, I never did.

I guess she'd noticed how quickly my face changed in the midst of this internal struggle that I was currently conducting within myself, because she changed her tune almost instantly…

"I'm fine, really," She spoke with a gentle seriousness but I knew that this had a lot more to do with the fact that she had gotten quite good at putting a convincing tone behind her voice despite the fact that all of it was only lies.

I looked down at her cautiously. I wanted to believe her, really I did; I wished more than anything else in the entire world that I could, but I'd seen way too much shit in these past couple of months to ever believe that Sam was anything close to "fine, really," or that she would be anything close to "fine, really," anytime soon.

"Where's Julian?" In my brief moment of silence, I had let my guard down just long enough so that Sam managed to jump on an opportunity to change the subject while she could, and I had to say, I appraised her swiftness, she was pretty good; and I knew this, because all of her moves, she'd learned from me.

"He's out," I responded vaguely, refusing to meet with Sam's eyes for fear that she would catch the lie in my eyes as I had managed to catch the one in hers before… The thing was, saying he's out was a lot easier than elaborating and saying that he was out looking for every and any source for a potential kidney for Sam considering hers were obviously not doing what they were supposed to do at the moment.

The thing was, after Julian, Victoria and I had learned about what was going on with Sam, after she'd returned from having test after test performed on her already ravaged body only to be moved into the ICU, and after she was pumped with enough drugs to kill a small animal, Julian and I made a collective decision to hold off telling Sam the news until just the right moment…

Of course, we haven't really found that exact moment quite yet… in fact, I was quite sure that we wouldn't even know if there could ever be a right moment to tell anybody something like that…

"What about Victoria?" She asked, relentless in her questioning although I knew that she was probably more curious to see whether or not I could actually sustain the same lie twice in a row to stop messing around with me and straight up let me know that she knew when I wasn't being honest with her, and this time was no exception.

"She's… she's out too." I stuttered the second time around because I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew.

She stared at me closely, her eyes somehow acquiring this remarkable capability to find mine no matter how hard I tried to actually avoid them.

Her eyebrows were raised, her face wrinkled with fear towards the acknowledgment that the only possible reason that I would be acting so strange… this strange at the least, was because something was wrong.

"Brooke, what's going on with me?" She stopped playing around with me almost instantly, deciding that it would be easier for the both of us to skip the awkwardness involved with beating around the bush and just be abrupt with one another even though I wouldn't have complained if she'd taken the long route.

I opened my mouth with an initial quickness in order to tell her that there was absolutely nothing going on with her; that she was, and would continue to be just fine as long as I had anything to do about it, but the words never came out; instead, my mouth stuttered opened and closed several times as if I was a dead fish or something for a couple of minutes as my brain scrambled to find a potential answer that I could give to her without scaring her too much, without making these things sound as bad as we all actually thought that it was.

"Sam… I… I…" I stuttered stupidly, sounding like a straight up fool as Sam continued to stare me down determinedly in a move that, if even possible, actually made me feel even more nervous about all of this than I already did.

"Jesus Brooke, can you just cut all the crap and let me know what's going on already?" She exploded in a quick burst of rage, but the way her face… no, the way her entire body fell the instant that the words had finally escaped out of her mouth, I knew that she regretted getting sharp with me which is why I chose not to hold it against her, hoping to God that this was more a rage that was stemming as a direct result of her frustrations and not of me…

"Listen Brooke," Her voice was emitted much quieter the second time around, confirming my initial suspicions that this wasn't about me so that it made me feel at least a little bit better about what I was about to tell her and about what it could possibly result in, "I know what's going on, I know I'm not doing as well as I should be, and I know that I'm just getting worse and worse okay?"

"You heard us talking to the doctor this morning?"

"No… but I'm not stupid Brooke. I can tell that this is a lot worse than what you told me yesterday… I mean, why else would I be stuck in the ICU being constantly watched 24/7, why else would people be tiptoeing around me like I'll shatter if they walk past me too hard, why else would I be feeling like this!"

"Okay…" I took a deep breath, nodding slowly in recognition of Sam's comment because I knew as well as she did that she wasn't stupid… I'd known that from the very beginning, from the very first day that I met her… Yup, Samantha Davis sure as hell was a lot of things, but stupid definitely wasn't one of them.

I stood from my seat besides her bed, using my motions not only to buy me a little more time to think about exactly what it was that I was going to tell her, but also to provide her with a larger basis of comfort for when the words finally did come and they hurt her, or they terrified her more than she had ever felt in her entire life.

I sat against the mattress directly next to her, swiveling my legs so that I was in an extended seated position, barely even thinking about it as I reached around her shoulder and pulled her body closely into my own, squeezing probably harder than I needed to just to make sure she was as far into my skin as she possibly could go.

"You're right Sam…" I finally nodded to her, a descent introduction I though, even if she already knew that she had been right this entire time, "We didn't tell you everything about what's going on with you."

She nodded slowly against my shoulder; a gesture of appreciation towards my honesty, but otherwise she made no motion to speak, leaving me an open opportunity to continue speaking as hard as she knew this was for me… for the both of us really.

"Listen Sam… you need to know that I don't know a lot about everything that's happening right now… and to tell you the truth, I'm starting to get the impression that the doctors don't really know very much about it either," I'd decided to say that as some kind of little joke or something, you know, just an effort for me to lighten up the mood a little bit, but when the words finally came out of my mouth, and I realized how true they really were, I think that if anything, it just made everything worse…

"Anyway… yesterday, while everything was… you know, going on with you and stuff, Dr. Miller came out to talk with me and Julian and Victoria, and basically what she told us was that the dialysis isn't working like they thought it would and that because of this, your kidneys are not only not doing anything that they're supposed to be anymore, but they're also starting to kind of… die inside of you. Sam… I'm so sorry honey but everything we tried before, all of that extra medication, and the dialysis and everything well… it isn't going to work anymore…"

I could only hope that it had been the right thing to say, could only pray that I hadn't terrified Sam too much or made her think that I wasn't about to do everything in my power to make things right again…

"So what do we do now?" She asked me quietly, the determination that had been prominent in her voice mere moments ago suddenly gone; replaced with something that sounded strangely to me like a sense of fear; a sense of fear that made me feel weak at my knees…

But I knew that I needed to stay strong for Sam. I knew that that was the one thing that Sam needed right now; so I paused for a moment, I took a deep breath, and I answered her question, because that was just what I had to do.

"You're going to need a kidney transplant Sam…" She nodded her head slowly, her actions indicating to me that this was exactly what she had expected me to say the second that the question had left her mouth, but of course, expecting something to happen didn't make it any easier when that thing actually came… trust me, I knew.

"It's where Victoria has been all day… She's been trying to take care of pushing you to the top of the transplant list and you know as well as I do that Victoria usually gets what she wants," I smirked, but the sudden reminder of why we needed to resort as far as Victoria's intimidation factor just to get Sam's name on this list wiped it away from my face in an instant, "Dr. Miller warned us that it might be… difficult to get you too high up on that list in priority because you're already so sick… Actually, she told us that things might go much quicker if we find a specific donor, you know, somebody who will donate directly to you… me, Julian and Victoria have already been tested and Julian… well he's been rounding up the calvary looking for anybody and everybody he can to get tested."

"I can't ask somebody to give their kidney to me Brooke."

Her voice was, if possible even lower than it had been before when she'd spoke, and if I wasn't too busy fearing that her defiant humility would interfere with her getting better, than hell, I would have applauded it… Hell, after all, I hadn't even considered the fact that any potential candidate for Sam's donation would be agreeing to rip out one of their own body parts…

Even further, I hadn't even thought about the fact that as random a stranger as a donor might be, that they would have to die before Sam got her transplant… that a mother would have to lose their child just so that I would be able to save my own.

Leave it up to my sixteen year old daughter to teach me a lesson about life I guess… Well, it wouldn't be the first time, and you know what, I was willing to bet money on the fact that it wasn't about to be the last either.

"You're not asking Sam," I attempted to assure her, trying to pull her mind out of this idea that she couldn't accept the gift of a new chance of life should it be offered to her on a silver platter, "There are a lot of people out there who just want to see you get better again, and those people are more than willing to do this for you if it's what you need… We have all been through this way too long, and we've seen you go way too far to give up on you now… Trust me Sam; this is something that every single one of us wants to do to help."

She glanced upwards towards me skeptically as if for me to say that somebody wanting to donate a kidney so willingly was absolutely the most ludicrous thing that she had ever heard of in her entire life and I guess that when I thought about it that way, well maybe it was… But other than that simplest of motions, Sam didn't do much of anything, she didn't say much of anything; instead she fell silent, defeated even, and to me, I think that was the worst reaction I could have possibly received.

"Are you okay?"

It was the only thing that I could think to actually say, and as lame as that might have been, I at least expected to receive some sort of response, even the vaguest of them… but I guess I had thought wrong, because Sam said nothing; in fact, I was starting to get the impression that she hadn't even heard a word I'd just said.

"Sam?" I tried again, speaking louder this time, clearer so that I knew that there was no way in hell that she could have missed it this time. Watching he reaction carefully, I saw the smallest of flashes deep in her eyes; the quickest of responses that my natural lie detecting skills picked up, immediately letting me know that she had heard me, she was just ignoring me for whatever that reason may be.

"Can I tell you something?" I spoke again, approaching the situation differently in an effort to receive an answer as I pushed my body just a little bit closer into hers in a motion that I knew she would have no choice but respond to as I reached downwards and clutched her hand tightly.

I turned my head, watching her carefully for a response, relieved when I saw her, amidst her stubborn silence sneak a quick glance upwards towards my general direction as she offered me the slightest nods of her head which served to me as a clear signal that it was safe for me to continue.

"I get scared too sometimes Sam… well a lot of the time actually… And I know that I'm supposed to sit here and tell you to stay strong, and I know that I'm supposed to stay being this fearless parent, but yeah, I'm afraid… and I think most of all, I'm afraid that I can't be as strong as you need me to be with all of this change going on, and the reason that this scares me so much I think is because I never want you to think of me as any less of a person just because I'm not as strong as you may have originally thought.

She sniffled upwards towards me slightly in her response, reaching the hand that wasn't firmly clamped inside of my own upwards in order to wipe a tear from her eye as she opened her mouth in an initial attempt to speak, mouthing wordlessly for a couple of seconds in her inability to come up with actual words before finally emitting some in a hoarse, croaky whisper.

"I don't think that I could ever think anything less of you than being my mom, Brooke." She mumbled her words into her shoulder so that I'd barely caught them but of course, I had, and when they finally processed across my brain, I couldn't help but allow the small smirk that formulated across my features in a natural reaction towards hearing Sam what I already loved hearing… But of course, that expression faded away from my face just as quickly as it had appeared when Sam's didn't even so much as lighten, let alone lift to completely match mine; a gesture that indicated to me that that wasn't her trying to compliment me in order to make me feel better but it was her trying to complement me to leave e with some closure that she obviously thought that I needed.

"You shouldn't be worried about things like this all the time Brooke… there's a million people working their asses off to get me better and besides, you have the baby to think about now… It might not be born yet but you have another kid besides me to take care of… I can't be taking up all of your time and all of your energy anymore Brooke, and don't bother trying to lie to me saying that you're taking care of yourself because I know that you're not… I can see it in your eyes Brooke…"

"I know Sam…" I sighed softly, feeling my shoulders sink with a momentary feeling of defeat towards the fact that my actions were so obvious that they were even apparent to my daughter who should have been focusing all of her attention on her getting better and not on her taking care of me… So with this idea in my mind, the idea that my problems were interfering with Sam getting better, the idea that I couldn't get over myself to take care of her caused my body to instantly stiffen… I took several loud breaths in a row, turning my head upwards towards her once again as my eyes contorted into a determined look of rage not towards Sam, but towards myself as that familiar urge to simply stand up and scream for no other reason than the fact that I was sick and tired of Sam and I being continuously shafted by every single bad thing that the world could ever possibly offer a human being consumed me so much that I couldn't help but act on it.

"I know that Sam! I know!" I screamed repetitively so that my efforts to express my point seemed almost cumbersome, completely useless; so just to make sure that Sam understood the feeling behind my words, I leapt upwards to my feet, tears stinging my eyes as I carried out with this fit of rage that Sam simply watched on without so much as a twinge of change behind her facial expression, and I think that was because she understood; she understood what I was feeling, she understood my inability to express myself currently in any way other than screaming and carrying on, and she understood that intense feeling of shame that comes naturally alongside the realization that you have been defeated… and I think that that's the main reason as to why she just let me keep going, as dangerous as I knew that could have been.

"Don't you think that I don't know that everything that I have ever done wrong shows itself all over my face Sam? Because trust me, I know that it does and I know that I can't keep it from you and I know that whatever I do I can't keep you from being in as much pain as you're in, and it shows… I know that it all shows."

"Then Brooke," She sighed calmly after a couple of seconds of silence, her mere voice soothing me in a manner that calmed my ranting almost instantly and instead forced me into a fit of silence as she took a deep breath in order to motivate herself and finally spoke, "Why don't you just let it all go?"

* * *

**SAM**

I don't think that I'd ever possibly seen Brooke's expression so well… horrified before this moment; and trust me; I'd seen Brooke look pretty scared before…

Of course, I hadn't particularly meant to spew those words out so abruptly even though it was everything that I had been thinking all along, but it had been necessary; she needed to know that fighting for me the way she was simply wasn't working anymore… as much as I appreciated it of course… The point of the matter was, it wasn't me that she needed to be focusing the brunt of all of her attention on anymore; it was Julian, it was her friends, _our_ friends, it was my little brother or sister as well…

We had a little bit of a stare down for a little while there, Brooke unable to come up with anything to actually do in response to all of this beyond looking down at me with an expression of pure shock displayed prominently across her features that quickly melted into a look of confusion hat let me know that she knew exactly what I had meant to say but just didn't seem to want to believe it.

"Sam what are you talking about?" She spoke slowly, emphasizing her every syllable in her care to formulate a safe sentence and not let it slip that she in fact knew exactly what I was talking about.

"I've told you this once before Brooke, and I'm gonna stick to it here… Being with me, it doesn't always have to hurt like this okay?" I reemphasized my original point so that there was no way in hell that Brooke could miss, or even pretend to miss the point this time around.

"Sam…" She mumbled back up to me briefly because she didn't know what else she could say, so instead, she just moved; walking back towards my bedside from her abrupt departure, gathering me up into her arms and pulling me close into her so that her shoulder nearly smothered me, pulling what little breath that I had left straight from my lungs, but at least doing it in a manner that was much more comforting than my failing organs were doing, "Sticking around with you has never felt anything less than the best decision I'd ever made in my entire life… Don't you ever think that you're hurting me just by being in my life okay? Because the truth was, you're just about the only thing that I found that was actually able to make it better."

I bunched my face up unpleasantly in an effort to block the tears that were formulating around my eyes because I wanted more than anything to stay strong for Brooke, to make sure that she knew that I would be okay, that I could handle this…

More than anything, I'm terrified that Brooke will never be able to find out for herself exactly what it is that's good for her… I mean, I knew what it was; it was Julian, it was this baby, it was her friends and family all surrounding her… But as I watch her struggle in this frantic cesspool day after day, tapped out on stress and exhaustion while meanwhile her pregnant stomach bulges out bigger and bigger… at least subconsciously anyway, I start to realize that whatever else might be on this list of things that are good for Brooke, well maybe it's just that I am not one of them.

I released my body from hers, feeling as the energy drained from my body and this brief moment of lucidity that I had woken up to this morning faded faster as my body became accustomed to the morphine flooding through my body at dangerously high amounts so that not even that was enough to block out the pain any longer…

It must have been the exhaustion; I mean, God knows I had plenty of it; the emotional stemming from the pressures of dying, the physical from actually dying, and all at once, I felt like not even I could control my own body any longer.

I sunk down slowly, the weight of my upper body bringing down the rest of me so that I landed right back where I'd started into Brooke's arms, attempting to use the comfort of her body as a makeshift pillow as my eyes closed in on themselves and I felt my mind fade into that limbo between that familiar state of being awake and being asleep…

Of course that didn't last very long, because it was only seconds later that I felt Brooke begin to shake me awake in a manner that made my head spin and my stomach feel as if it was about to empty right on top of her.

"Sam? Sam come on, wake up. Sam!"

I guess that she had gotten nervous or something; afraid that I was slipping into a state of unconsciousness for a reason more terrifying, more obscure than the simple fact that I was absolutely exhausted.

"I'm okay Brooke…" I muttered tiredly, my words so distant that even I was barely able to make them, "Just tired."

In an effort to prove my point, I attempted to lean backwards against my pillow, but my body was still feeling so unbelievably heavy that I couldn't even bring myself to lift it out of Brooke's arms… And sensing my desire to move like only a true mother could, she assisted me in my endeavor, lowering me slowly from the safety of her arms no matter how much I knew that it pained her to do so.

"Then go back to sleep honey, I'll be right here waiting for you when you wake up okay?" She accepted my bid for a much needed rest understanding full well that despite the fact that sleep seemed to be the only thing that I ever did these days, I still couldn't seem to get enough of it to prevent the exhaustion that was constantly plaguing me.

"Can I tell you something first?" I muttered to her through closed eyes, contorting my body deeper into the mattress so that I was almost afraid that I would fall asleep right here on the spot before I could so much as get the words out of my mouth.

"Of course you can honey." She whispered to me in her response, and I could feel her fingertips positively grazing across the top of my forehead so that I couldn't help but shudder underneath the sudden warmth that they provided me with.

"It's more like a promise… I need you to promise me something…" I wasn't really sure what it was that was pushing all of these words out of my mouth right now… Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was my subconscious desire to express all of my feelings before it was too late, but I can at least tell you this much; it sure as hell wasn't my voluntary speech doing it, because if those puppies were in any sort of control at the moment, well they sure as hell would not be telling Brooke anything even close to what I was currently telling her.

"What is it Sam?" She asked me, slowly repeating the slow movements that she was making with her hands over the top of my head so that her motions drew me to continue talking despite everything inside of me screaming at me to just shut the hell up already.

"I need you to promise me that if this doesn't work out the way that we all want it to that you won't just think only about what have could have been for the rest of your life okay? You have too much to look forward to just to give it all up now okay? Way too much… so don't live the rest of your life worrying about me, because no matter what happens, I'll be okay… I need you to promise me that you believe me when I tell you that."

"Sam I don't… I…" She started her sentence but stopped halfway through with the understanding that she was about to ask me for an explanation towards something that I knew she already knew deep down in her heart of hearts… And then there it was; that confirmation shown to me in the form of an expression across Brooke's face that made it look as if she'd just been slapped or something…

She didn't know what it was that she should say, she didn't know how it was that she should respond to the logic that I was completely forcing upon her against her will, but you know what, I understood the fact that Brooke simply couldn't make herself feel like she'd ever gave up on me, now it was my turn to help her understand that failure in this sense wasn't synonymous with giving up…

For a split second there was silence; the only noise in the room being that of Brooke's muffled splutters as she desperately attempted to make sense of everything that was currently happening to her, to the both of us and why that everything had to destroy the one thing that we'd finally found in our lives that could actually be described as good.

I snuck my closed eyes open to half lids; all that I could manage at the moment, just to make sure that she was still okay, just to make sure that my word hadn't put her into a sudden cardiac arrest or something which, consequently would defeat the every purpose that I was trying to make over here…

I watched her pupils as they swirled aggressively back and forth within her eyes, spinning from the shear confusion as to what exactly it was that she should be thinking right now until finally, that notion settled, her entire body stopped fidgeting, and she realized exactly what it was that was starting to turn her into the mere shell of the person that she once was… it was herself.

The brief second of still didn't last very long; just as suddenly, I could literally see her limbs begin to shake under the pressure of her own body weight so that finally, her own two legs couldn't even hold her up anymore and she collapsed under the pressure, falling against my bed so that the mattress jolted with the addition of the extra weight added not only by her body, but by her heavy heart as well.

Tears fell freely from her eyes, and although normally she tried to hide it when she was crying in front of me, this time she didn't even bother, allowing each falling droplet to represent just another thing in her life that misfortune and a little bit of bad luck had taken away.

"It wouldn't be the same without you here Sam." Her voice shook as she spoke, and although it had been my intention to hear her say that all along, my stomach still sunk alongside her words.

"You'll be okay mom," I mumbled softly to her, licking at my chapped lips in an effort to build up the smallest amount of moisture that I needed in order to continue speaking, "And I will be too; no matter what happens."

I offered her the one promise that I knew that I could actually keep for once, instilling this sense of comfort in her to hold onto just in case this moment passed to quickly and left me behind for good.

"I'm still not gonna give up on you Sam… I'm still not gonna stop fighting. I can't, I know what you're trying to say to me right now, but I can't go on thinking that I never at least did something to try." She made her position clear, but in all honesty, my intentions were never to get her to quit on me cold turkey because trust me, I didn't want her to that, but no, instead my intentions were to simply make sure that should her command efforts in this valiant battle fail, she wouldn't stop her life completely just to beat herself up over it, killing herself slowly with the idea that maybe she just didn't try hard enough even though everybody around her would know that she did.

"I already knew that…" I spoke with a laugh because I wasn't sure whether or not Brooke actually thought that me saying a couple of poetic words amidst a drugged up stupor would actually get me to think that she would just drop everything and leave on the spot because trust me, she had done a pretty good job of pounding the notion that she would never ever do that into my head at this point, "I guess all I'm trying to do here is make sure that you're thinking about yourself for a change and that if this thing goes South as quick as they're saying it is that it's not your fault… it never was."

I used the advanced knowledge that I had on Brooke's psychological views on life and used it to my advantage because I knew that Brooke's basic logic towards this kind of thing was that she merely needed to help me jump over this one last hurdle in order to make it home free, and I also think that she thought that as long as she was able to carry me there on her own shoulders, I would be able to make it no matter what happened.

But she'd carried me over a million hurdles so far, and at this point, the only thing that we'd found on the other side were bigger ones, and no matter how long the race may be, it's gotta end sometime; I was slowly beginning to understand that, and it was time that I helped Brooke try to do the same.

She looked over at me for a split second, her expression so blank that I couldn't even tell the difference between whether or not she was actually taking my words to heart or whether or not she was angry at me for one reason or another…

But whatever it was, I guess that I would never know, because before I could get so much as a visual cue from her, a firm, sharp knock at the door pulled us both out of our deepest depths of concentration long enough so that it was lost forever.

"Brooke?" Julian was standing in the doorway, crammed inside of the small space between Dr. Miller and Victoria, motioning with his arm for her to come out and join them, using mere body language so that he stay as vague as humanly possible.

"I'll be right back okay Sam?"

I nodded slowly, watching carefully as Brooke stood from her position at my bedside and walked with her back towards me without so much as a glance back, leaving me to simply gulp with fear alongside the acknowledgment that this didn't sound good at all.

I sighed and leaned back heavily against my bed just as Brooke disappeared across the other side of the door, closing it behind her, closing my eyes as my mind began infiltrating with the ridiculous idea that maybe if I just sat here in my own oblivion for long enough, all of this would simply just go away on its own… as impossible as I knew that idea to actually be…

But here's what actually spawned this idea; and you see, if you think about it in these terms, it doesn't really sound as crazy anymore because the thing is, I'm still pretty convinced that there has to be somewhere in this universe that I actually belong and I don't know, maybe that someplace was never here in Tree Hill, or in North Carolina, or even on this planet to begin with… But then again, maybe the reason that I ended up here was because I didn't belong in the first place… if that made any sense.

Alright, so maybe it didn't make any sense… ugh, I don't even know anymore; who the hell can tell me the answers to all my damn questions because I can tell you one thing for damn certain; I can't… In fact, the only thing that I can tell you for sure, the only thing I definitely know that is true deep down in my very heart of hearts is this; this sucks.

* * *

**JULIAN**

I think that I already knew somewhere deep down inside of me the second that Dr. Miller found me roaming aimlessly around in the hallway and approached me with a less than enthusiastic look on her face, responding to my inquiry of what was wrong with the announcement that she would much rather prefer if Brooke was present before she said anything that something was wrong.

And now, as I stood here outside of the door to Sam's room, forming ¼ of a tight circle that consisted of me, Brooke, Victoria and Dr. Miller just waiting in silence for the doctor to actually start speaking, well let's just say that initial feeling didn't go away… in fact, if anything, I think it got worse… something was wrong; something was very wrong.

"So I've been on the phone with the advisors from the United Network of Organ Sharing all morning Brooke, but as it turns out, I'm starting to think that getting Sam in a position on the transplant list that would benefit her in any way is actually going to be a lot harder than I had previously anticipated on it being…"

Well, judging by the fact that she had already been very verbal about her beliefs of this to be a hard, if not impossible task before all of this, I was starting to get extremely worried about what "a lot harder than I had previously anticipated" actually meant…

You know, I've been seriously considering taking up acting or something like that lately; particularly acting for some juicy soap opera or one of those made-for-TV Lifetime movies or something because I was starting to get so experienced in responded to situations like these, and I had so much real-life material to work with over here, that my scene would be nothing short of positively flawless… hell, I'd probably win a fucking Oscar or something.

"They received Sam's medical file and copies of the most recent scans that we performed on her kidneys yesterday but what they're telling me now is that Sam is too sick to even be considered for transplantation anymore, that the surgery would be too risky… Basically, they would feel much more comfortable giving somebody stronger, somebody who has a much higher chance of a successful surgery and a less chance of rejecting the organ that position on the list… I've been fighting with them all morning but so far they haven't budged but that doesn't mean that I'm going to stop trying to get her name on the list Brooke, it's just that I need you to know that this plan might not be the one that works.**"**

She was gentle, her words were laced with a sensitive expertise but that didn't stop them from stinging as hard as if she'd positively screamed them…

I was trying over here, God knows that I was trying desperately hard to continue to cling to what little amount of hope that I had left, but with each passing day and more and more consistently flowing bad news, I was quickly starting to learn that that statement was much easier said than done.

I felt broken, I felt positively defeated, and when I turned towards Brooke, I could tell in an instant by the way that every muscle in her face twitched and how her eyes scrunched wrinkled in a manner to try and stop the tears, that she was thinking the exact same thing… But Brooke was different than me; she tended to go about this sort of thing in a different manner so that when I felt free to clearly accept defeat, she would usually take an entirely different approach, and in this case, that different approach apparently included screaming her very head off.

"But they can't do that!" She yelled so loudly her voice carried down the entirety of the length of the hallway… the strangest part of it all was that nobody even tried to stop her… I guess we all just understood a lost cause when we saw one, and trying to get Brooke to relax after being told that her daughter was being denied the last measure that could possibly save her life… well that was a lost cause if I've ever seen one.

"They can't just keep her from having this transplant… Did you tell them that this was the last chance that she has? Did you tell them that she's going to die unless she has this surgery!" Her voice grew progressively louder with each word that she spoke but I don't think that even that was the worst part of it all; no, the worst part was the desperation laced in every syllable of her voice, the begging for help, the plea for mercy…

"They know Sam's situation Brooke, they know that –"

"Well then maybe you're just not trying hard enough!" She cut off the doctor harshly, criticizing her actions despite her just spending her entire morning putting her best efforts forward to help… I just hoped that Dr. Miller wouldn't take Brooke's words too personally; I hoped that she knew Brooke well enough to have understood at this point that she had a tendency towards lashing out on the closest person next to her when her frustrations were running high.

"Brooke, I can assure you that there are currently a lot of people in this hospital who are doing everything in their power to make sure that Sam is receiving all of the care necessary to get her better again." The doctor tried her best in the seemingly worthless plot towards assuring Brooke but I doubt very much that Brooke even heard her because she was way too busy at the moment slipping her jacket back around her torso and pulling her bag higher onto her shoulder so that it looked very much so as if she were preparing to go somewhere…

And not five seconds after this idea had entered my mind, Brooke turned on her heels, her back facing each and every one of us as she began to power down the length of the hallway in the direction of the exit.

"Brooke!" Victoria called after her in an effort to stop her dead in her tracks by merely using her voice but her efforts were half-assed at best because as a person who had been at the brunt of the majority of Brooke's anger-induced tirades, Victoria knew as well as anybody else here that once Brooke had an idea in her head, there was little to nothing that anybody could do to get her change her mind again.

"I've got her okay?" I spoke to nobody in particular, merely talking to make my intentions clear, but not even waiting for a response before I took off after her, moving in a swift jog just so that I could catch up with her as she continued to haul ass down the length of the hallway, moving so quickly that I had almost lost her completely; catching up with her just as she was jostling with a thick crowd around the elevators so that she could secure a position inside of the awaiting cart.

"Brooke!" I took one final jolt forward and grabbed her by the shoulder, stopping her in her motions just in time right as she attempted a single step inside of the elevator; an action that I silently thanked God for because I knew that if I'd lost her now, if I'd missed her by that half a second, that fraction of an arm's length, well it would have been one of the most devastating things to happen to either of us at this point.

I couldn't leave Brooke; not now, not like this… I had made that commitment to her long before I had asked for her to spend the rest of her life with me, long before I asked her to share the child that was already hers with me, long before I'd discovered that we'd have another child all our own together, and if there's one thing that I'd learned throughout the course of all of this, it was that in this life I'm going to live, and I'm going to die, and something might come after that happens, and something might not, but I still have to live as if it won't so that when I invest my life into loving Brooke, I invest my life directly into her as well… and that wasn't something that I was about to give up on anytime soon.

"Brooke, where are you going?" I practically forced her to turn around to face me, but when her eyes matched mine, her expression looked so motivated that it made her look positively livid… but I guess now that I thought about it that way, she probably was pissed… Pissed at the situation that she'd found herself in, pissed at the situation that Sam had found herself in, and pissed at the fact that there was seemingly absolutely nothing that anybody could possibly do to fix any of it.

"Where the hell do you think I'm going Julian? I'm going to save Sam's life!" She spoke as if this was the most obvious statement in the entire world, not even waiting for me to respond to her before she attempted to rip her body out of my hands so that she could continue on her journey… But luckily for me, I had a very firm grip so that when she did attempt to turn out of it, I managed to maintain a solid clutch on her shoulder.

"Brooke you can't do this!" My words stopped her from struggling instantly just as I knew they would because if there was one thing that Brooke hated, it was being told what she could and couldn't do and I knew this, so for all intents and purposes, I decided to use it to my advantage in this case. "You need to stop Brooke! Sam needs you right now and she needs you here, not running around looking for something that isn't there! Think about Sam Brooke, please!"

I knew that I had crossed the line with my words just a little bit too late because the second that my sentence was completely out of my mouth, Brooke gave me a look that I was surprised didn't absolutely kill me on the spot.

"I am thinking about Sam, Julian! I am always thinking about Sam; why the hell do you think that I'm doing any of this to begin with? I'm doing it to save her life because nobody else around here seems to give enough of a shit to do anything other than accept the fact that she might die!"

I vaguely noticed the large amount of people that had paused briefly, stopping whatever it was that they were doing in order to stare at us in response to Brooke's violent, rather loud outburst, but I didn't linger because I was too busy focusing the brunt of all of my concern towards Brooke at the moment.

"I know that it's important for you to feel like you never gave up Brooke, trust me I know, but Brooke… there's a whole world out there all around you, and I know for a fact that Sam wouldn't want you to miss it… She wouldn't want you to walk around like this with your eyes half closed all the time… I know that it's hard Brooke, but I think that it's time that we start considering… together I mean, the possibility that… that there might come a time where we have to realize that there's a time that can come when we have to let go."

The words spilled subconsciously out of my mouth, but the second that they did, I froze with the fear that the context of this message that I was trying to convey here might become misinterpreted…

And in that moment, I had come to expect a lot of reactions to stem from Brooke Davis… I expected her to emit rage, I expected her to release tears, hell, I even expected her to throw a punch or two at me… but the last thing that I had expected was that look of utter defeat that blanched across her face, that gleam in her eyes, the eyes I knew so well that was one of unmistakable hopelessness.

My eyes forced themselves away from her, my senses closed off around me but still, there was no mistaking her next words; the ones that echoed off of the very walls straight into my ears, sending a shiver run across my body where it reverberated deep down into my very bones…

"But what if I can't, Julian?"

I didn't say anything. I couldn't even think of anything to say, and to be completely honest with you, I didn't really think that Brooke was expecting much out of me at this point…

"Sam said the exact same thing to me before… about letting go I mean." Brooke continued talking, rambling dreamily into thin air, apparently not caring whether or not I was actually listening… She spoke with the smallest of laughs behind her voice, but it was a different kind of laugh than the one that I loved so much… this one was unnatural, it was sad… it made me feel as if she might as well had just doused me with a bucket of ice cold water and I would have felt similarly.

"And Julian," She addressed me directly this time, her eyes narrowing with defiance, losing that dream-like quality with the blink of an eye, "I'm going to tell you the exact same thing that I told her… I can't give up on her; not now, not ever… I just can't."

"Letting go and giving up aren't the same thing Brooke," I muttered under my breath, but still clear enough to hear me, which I knew she did, because she stood spine stiff, staring directly into my eyes for not ten more seconds before finally turning away from me, spinning on her heels and stomping with exaggerated motions into the elevator… and this time, I didn't even bother trying to stop her.

Our eyes never so much as left each others as she waited for the cart to begin its descent, not once, and even after the doors slid closed, and Brooke was gone, it still took me an extra moment or two to finally force myself to step away from the scene…

The walk back from the elevator to where Dr. Miller and Victoria were still standing outside of Sam's room, apparently waiting for my return felt like the longest of my entire life, and once I finally did arrive the expressions on each of their faces, the silence that I was met with told me that they weren't the slightest bit surprised to see that I was returning without Brooke at my side…

I couldn't even bring myself to stand here anymore. Whatever other news that Dr. Miller had to offer us I didn't want to hear it; whatever emphasis on Sam's prospective death she wanted to tell me, I couldn't so much as believe it, so instead, I just took a steep exhale, shaking my head slightly towards the two woman as I walked straight past them, slowing my movements but never stopping completely until I was back inside of Sam's room where I lingered beyond the doorway briefly, just trying desperately to come to terms with the fact that Sam was lying in her bed, staring right at me with an expression on her face that told me that she was waiting for an explanation towards all of the things that she had just heard.

"I heard Brooke yelling."

It was the first thing that she said to me, and I tried to give her a look that was supposed to be translated as a smile, but I knew for certain it didn't so much as even resemble one.

"She wasn't yelling…"

"Trust me Julian, I know what it sounds like to hear Brooke when she's mad… she was yelling."

"It's nothing," I sighed, trying to keep her hidden from the cruelties of the world as best as I could, figuring if I couldn't protect her from the worst of it, I might as well try my luck with the simpler things, "We're just… we're just trying to bring her back that's all."

"Where'd she go?" She asked me hastily, her face contorting into an instant look of nervousness as she lifted herself further up into her bed, darting her head back and forth sporadically as if she believed Brooke to be playing a mere game of hide and seek so that if she looked hard enough, she'd be able to spot Brooke's hiding place from her position tethered to the spot on her bed that she was too weak to so much as move out of these days.

"I don't know Sam…" I admitted to her honestly, allowing Sam to accept my answer with a simple nod of her head, satisfied in the belief of my explanation that I truly had no idea where the hell she was.

"It's enough to make you just wanna give up sometimes isn't it… all of this I mean." Sam laughed at her own words, but in a stark contrast, they just made my heart seize up with fear as I stared at her, completely unable to reciprocate her movements, terrified that that sort of use of humor was a gateway to something deeper.

"Relax Julian," She corrected herself, her face down-turning upon me not saying anything in response, simply staring at her with a deep frown and my arms crossed tightly over my chest, "It was a joke."

"That's not funny Sam…"

"I know," Sam shrugged, "But it's true and you know it."

I stopped for a second, pausing for a moment in my analysis of her features, ultimately deciding that the best way to go about this topic was to simply change the subject completely.

"You should try to get some sleep Sam… you need your rest." She gave me that look, the one that told me that she was smart enough to know exactly what it was that I was trying to push here… but she wasn't in the mood to push it; in fact, she didn't seem to be in much of a mood to do anything, so instead, she complied; flopping down against her mattress, squeezing her eyes tightly closed.

"Can you do me a favor?" She delivered her request towards me, her words emitting in barely a whisper so that I'd almost missed them.

"Sure Sam; anything."

"Can you take Brooke home? When you find her, I mean." For some reason I had expected Sam to ask me that… These days she's been worrying about Brooke more than herself, but to be completely fair, Brooke was running around wearing herself thin lately, trying desperately to come up with any and every mean to save Sam's life, "She hasn't been home in a while now and even when she is, she's still trying to take care of me from a distance so it doesn't really count… Just make sure that she gets some sleep… or at least eats okay? She has that baby to think of now… you both do."

"I'll take her home Sam," I nodded in agreement, not about to back down from any request that Sam had to make towards me at this point… even if it involved running barefoot across a fiery tray of razor-sharp nails I would do it… As it was, I was already formulating a plan to force feed Brooke a five course meal laced with sleeping pills if that's what I had to do as we spoke.

"Can you do me another favor Julian?"

"Sure Sam."

"Can you tell me about L.A.?" This time, her request had caught me off guard, forcing me to release an audibly shaky breath as I forced my eyes away, unable to face her as a chill ran up my spine at the mere memory of the time not too long ago when we had been sitting in a very similar position, albeit the factor of Sam dying, and I had promised her a Los Angeles vacation… the second that she was healthy again.

It was a time that seemed lifetimes ago; a time that I was feeling very foolish about now considering the prospects of her actually achieving such a stage of health seemed much less likely than it had at the time I'd made her that promise…

"You're gonna love it when I take you there Sam." My body began to shake when I spoke, but I relied on the fact that Sam's eyes would remain closed throughout the entirety of this conversation so that my actions would remain hidden… I prayed that she wouldn't notice that hint of skepticism which I thought to be blatant across my voice over the fact that I was no longer sure whether I would even get an opportunity to ever take her there… but as luck would have it, I don't think that she did, because the smallest of smirks had appeared across the corner of her mouth and she leaned her entire body into my words, so much so that for a while there, I think that she actually started to feel that warm California sun slowly running through her skin.

I got so caught up in watching her that I hadn't even realized that I'd stopped speaking… but apparently, neither did Sam, because the next thing that I knew she was fast asleep; a look of relaxed comfort across her features that I could only be glad that I had been a part of.

Very quickly, I rubbed my sturdy palms across the length of my face, hoping to wipe away any ounce of emotion that I had left across it and I fell backwards into the seat behind me, burying my head into my hands as I took a deep breath, feeling the heat radiating off of the gust of air as it bounced off of my skin and back into my face.

I guess it's just starting to get pretty hard to just sit here, a mere observer watching as Sam lingers on the absolute doorstep of death itself… But you know, it's weird; it's not hard from watching her in so much consistent pain, it's not hard because I'm terrified that if she goes, I will too… but it's hard because I can no longer take sitting here and watching her innocence fade away faster and faster with every dwindling breath that she takes while meanwhile there's absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

But as hard as it was I knew that there was no way in hell that I could ever back down, that I could ever make her feel like she was alone… because with Brooke gone; out on this wild goose chase trying desperately to save her life, I had suddenly been transformed into the role of the person that would be here to stand with her if something went wrong, to hold her hand all the way up until the end, if that's what it came down to…

I lifted my head up from the darkness created by my own palms, gazing over her sleeping body as meanwhile, my own form merely fell further into the chair that I was sitting in, prepared to wait for as long as I had to because let's face it; these days, that seemed to be the only thing that I was actually good at doing anymore.


	59. Tomorrow's Coming Fast Part II

**Hey guys, so I'm not gonna be around this weekend so I've been writing my butt off these last few days to get this next chapter up before I leave tomorrow morning to give you all a special little present and post this one a bit early just because you've all been so kind to me! So anyway, I'll be back on Tuesday and try to get the next chapter up soon after tat so I hope you enjoy!  
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Chapter 59: Tomorrow's Coming Fast (Part II)

**Wednesday, February 8****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

Maybe I'm the only person who has ever done this before, and maybe I'm not, which is why I have to ask; have you ever laid in your bed late at night, completely silent and just staring up at the ceiling praying to God that everything that you were begging him to do for you was simply too big a request, too meaningful for him to ever possibly deny you?

I only ask because that was exactly what I seemed to be doing right now…

Actually, that's a little bit inaccurate mainly because it wasn't really that late at night, and I wasn't actually laying in my bed staring up at my ceiling… In fact, it was quite bright outside in the middle of a beautiful Tree Hill afternoon, and I was actually driving my car, my foot barely on the gas pedal as I crawled at a place slower than what a normal person could walk, my eyes scanning all of the addresses adorning the doors of the string of houses lining the south side of town.

I guess to reiterate my previous statement, it seems as if the only thing that I was really doing that had anything to do with what I said before was praying.

You see, these days I have found myself fighting this very distinct, very narrow race against time itself, and through all of that, it has lead to a severe case of tunnel vision in which the only thing that I could ever manage to think about, the only thing that ever really mattered to me, was the fact that it was apparently up to me now to get Sam better again…

But that was okay, because I had established a plan; a very quickly thrown together, lacking in the details kind of plan, but a plan none the less; one that I believed was absolutely fool proof…

I came to a grinding halt abruptly the second my eyes scanned across the correct address that I had been searching for at least for a solid twenty minutes now… and as shocked as I was to admit this, the house that Sam had first shown me in that picture; the house that she'd described on that fateful day that she had left me to go live with her biological mother, well it looked exactly like the one that I had currently found myself directly in front of as we spoke…

I'm not sure what I had been expecting… I mean, I guess I've spent the past couple of months merely stereotyping, but you know, that whole concept of a teenage mother abandoning her child at birth thing generally associates itself with things like trailer parks and overweight middle-aged hairy women waddling out onto their front yards in a dirty night dress or something… But apparently I had been wrong; too quick to judge, because in fact, Rebecca Dennis' house was actually kind of… well… nice; as much as I really did hate to admit it.

I never even managed to accurately parked my car; instead feeling satisfied with the crooked angle it made with the curb so that I could concentrate on a couple of those deep breathing exercises I've been studying and performing vigorously in order to ease the mounting stress I was constantly feeling…

I tried to put all of my emotions directly behind me as I stepped out of the car door, slamming it in my wake as I began to march up the stairs, standing at a swift attention directly in front of the main door of that stupid little house that I'd grown to hate so much, begging my mind to cut out all emotional ties with it but unfortunately finding myself failing rather quickly in those endeavors before I knocked firmly against the wooden frame, relentlessly beckoning for her arrival as I tapped my toes eagerly against the concrete porch and waiting for Sam's mother to appear…

Christ, I'm not even sure why I still even bother torturing myself calling her that, especially when I couldn't even find myself to look past the woman for ever considering her child, the child that I had grown to love and raise as my own, as the worst mistake that she had ever made in her entire life.

No… stop this Brooke, you can't do this; not here, not now. You cannot let your personal beliefs, your frenzied emotions get in the way of this because after all, this might just be the last option you have…

You see, here's a little background on the situation at hand here; upon the revelation that Sam most likely would not be receiving a kidney from the standard means of organ donation and receiving, when Dr. Miller basically told me that Sam's only hope at this point would be to find an outside source; a direct donor willing to rip out a vital organ to give to my daughter, I had immediately decided that I would go about this by any means necessary, and by any means necessary, I really meant any means…

Sam's mother… or at the very least, Sam's biological mother was the first on my list of these potential donors because, and I'm not really sure how accurate my education is here, but I heard this rumor that the best possible organ donors were those who were blood related to you… I'm not really sure, something about blood types and immune system configurations, and a bunch of other things I don't understand… But anyway, Dr. Miller made it a very serious point to let me know that in Sam's weakened state, her risk of rejecting the organ should she actual get it was much higher which meant that the precision of the match was even more important than it already was.

And that's about the same time that my mind went straight to Rebecca Dennis.

I mean, sure she had denied the vague invitation I had offered her to be a part of Sam's life at the beginning of all of this, but this is the way I figured it; what kind of human being could ever possibly listen to the sob story that I had to offer, especially when the direct protagonist of that story was their own child, and still deny the proposition that I had to offer to them…

I guess now the only thing that I could do was wait and pray that even though this woman didn't seem to care that her own daughter had cancer a few months ago, maybe she'd have enough of a heart to open her eyes and realize that her kidney might be the only thing in this entire world that could possibly keep Sam alive.

Her response to my inquiry at her doorstep came almost instantly, leaving me suddenly very much so aware of the fact that I hadn't had anything prepared in terms of what I was going to say.

"Hello?" The woman asked me cautiously, opening the front door a mere crack in response to finding a complete stranger parked outside her door… So as not to appear hesitant and unconfident, I stuck my hand straight out into the open in a gesture of polite introduction that was really just my means of ensuring that she wouldn't slam the door on me with the barrier of my forearm blocking it.

"Ms. Dennis, hi…" I babbled stupidly, free-styling every word I spoke, stuttering on my own lack of knowledge towards exactly I should approach this situation, "I'm, uh… My name is…"

"Brooke Davis." She finished my sentence for me, taking my hand to shake after only the slightest hint of a pause that I had barely even caught, "Um… why don't you come inside?"

She extended to me a surprise entrance into her home amidst a brief tone of surprise as to why I was actually here paying her this visit right now, and I became the first to drop our handshake in my response, following her into the house where the only thought that I could really process was the fact that I wish I could have said that the place was as nice on the inside as it was on the out…

"So… how has Sam been doing lately? I mean… how has she been feeling?" She hinted towards the idea that she was indeed aware of Sam's persistent struggle, and that she did actually care about the fact of whether or not Sam was dead surprising considering the last time that I'd spoken to her, I had been telling her the news that her daughter had cancer only receive a… well let's just say a less than expected response.

She pointed me towards a small couch within her living room right inside of the front door and I lowered myself carefully down, biting my tongue against instantly spitting something that I would regret out of my mouth in response to her question although the words "like you care" were lingering bitterly on the edge of my tongue.

But I had to act smoothly; I knew that. After all, I couldn't just go barging inside of this woman's house unannounced, start insulting her, and then demand that she give me one of her body parts… right?

"Actually Ms. Dennis…"

"Rebecca, please…" She cut me off in an attempt to erase all formalities… I guess that it was only fair; after all I was the person that her daughter was currently calling mom.

"Um… okay… Rebecca… That's kind of the reason that I actually came here to see you today… You see, Sam… well she hasn't been doing very well lately."

Her expression barely changed in response to what I thought would be a rather shocking announcement. Her brows furrowed briefly and her eyes narrowed ever-so slightly, but other than that, I wasn't really sure if she truly was getting the hint towards how bad I was actually talking about over here.

"I… well I know that you know that Sam has been fighting leukemia for the past couple of months…" I tried to use a tone of voice that wouldn't make it sound as if I was judging her even though I was as I stated the obvious and hinted towards the idea that despite this knowledge, she hasn't made so much as a gesture to do anything about it, "But recently she's been diagnosed with kidney failure as well and they thing… well what they're saying is that Sam's gonna need a kidney transplant and if she doesn't get one soon… she's not gonna make it."

"That's terrible," She stated simply, but still, she clearly didn't understand what I was trying to get at here that being that when I said that Sam needed a new kidney in order to survive, I actually meant that Sam might need _her _kidney in order to survive.

"Listen Brooke, I know that I've been well… distant towards Sam in these past couple of months that she's been sick, but if it's any consolation towards what the two of you have been going through, I have been thinking about her a lot lately, hoping that she gets better and all… and… and well I really do appreciate you coming over here to update me about her condition, especially after everything that's gone on between Sam and I…"

I took her expression as an apology, one that could be classified as lame at best but still at the very least, it displayed some sort of a hint towards remorse, and even if I had only imagined that hint to have actually been there in my last desperate act to get Sam well again, well it seemed good enough for me, because I wasn't exactly in any sort a position to get held up on specifics over here.

Of course, despite this emphasis of her appreciation towards my actions, she still continued not to make anything close to a motion towards rectifying the issue, and I was starting to see this as a hint that although she really did appreciate me coming over here in order to give her an update on Sam, she still didn't want to have any part in helping her embark on her long, painful healing process.

"So when is this transplant happening?" She continued to question me when I refused to affectively come up with a good follow up in order to progress this conversation along, her words confirming to me the belief that I had previously suspected towards the idea that she had absolutely no idea the extent of the question that I was trying to ask her over here.

"Well… actually…" I took things slowly, trying to carefully formulate a series of words that would hint without being too obvious, "What they've been telling us lately is that she's actually too sick to be put on the transplant list so that it's become quite difficult to actually find her a kidney… Her doctor… well her doctor has been saying that at this point our best bet might be to find somebody willing to directly donate to Sam… and she also said… well she also said that this might work best if that donor was a direct relative to Sam… you know, so that there's a better chance that there will actually be a match."

I watched her for a reaction carefully but she didn't give me much, and I won't sit here and pretend that that didn't surprise me, especially considering I had formulated this elaborate image in my head of her jumping up instantly in order to drive over to the hospital and give us her kidney right then and there… I don't know, maybe now that I think about it, that had been a stupid assumption, but it made a lot more sense in my head in the moments right before this one…

Maybe I just hadn't been clear enough… maybe I should try and be more abrupt… maybe I should include a little bit more details as to what I was actually asking for over here.

"Oh…" She responded to my comment after about a minute or two of silence and the second she did so, I understood that I didn't have to be clearer; Rebecca understood exactly what I was getting at over here, and all at once, my heart fell with the realization that maybe this wasn't going to go as well as I had originally planned it on going.

"So the reason that I actually came over here today Rebecca is to ask you if you would possibly consider getting tested to be Sam's kidney donor." She set me up in a manner that forced me to say those exact words out loud because that's what she wanted, and I did just that because she had something that I wanted more than anything else which meant that I had to abide to her ever request at the moment.

Her silence, combined with the expression on her face told me Rebecca's answer before her mouth actually did, and in the lingering quiet that was currently siphoning between us, I think that I literally heard the sound of my own heart as it free-fell from its position in my chest cavity down to the very pit of my stomach below.

"I'm sorry Brooke… I don't think that I'll be able to do that." I was suddenly experiencing a very strong sense of déjà vu, my mind flashing back to the exact moment that I'd told Rebecca that Sam had been sick to begin with when I'd asked if she would like to come visit her only for her to say something very similar to what she was telling me right now.

Honestly, I'm not sure why I had been expecting anything different really; I mean, if Rebecca hadn't found it in her to be so much as a physical presence in Sam's life throughout the course of her, and I hate to say it, easier phases of her recovery, well then I didn't know why I thought that she would want to be an actual contributor to that recovery either.

But still, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, I decided that maybe I'd simply heard or wrong, or that she'd just misinterpreted my question… So simply to make things harder on myself when Rebecca gave me the exact same answer that I knew she had before, that I knew she would again, I built up a new-found confidence and I forced myself not to stop, telling myself that I would not fail Sam in such a manner that her biological mother was currently doing to her.

"No… no, I don't think that you quite understand…" I said it, but I knew perfectly well that she very much so did understand, "Sam doesn't have the time that she needs to go through all of the normal processes of being put on the transplant list… the doctors are giving her a couple of weeks at most if she doesn't get this transplant soon… the point is; you might be the last chance that Sam may have."

I hadn't particularly meant to raise my voice at her, after all, I'd promised myself at the very beginning of this day that I would keep my calm throughout the entirety of this because I knew that losing my temper wouldn't do any good for anybody…

But then I started to think about Sam, and then about this unborn child growing inside of me, and I thought all about how I would do absolutely anything to protect either one of them and that idea just left it harder and harder for me to possibly understand how it was that Rebecca was so blatantly denying life to a child that had been physically a part of her for nine whole months not as long ago as she may think and that; well that just made the rage surge through my body.

"I'm sorry Brooke, really I am…" She stood, taking a couple of steps over towards the front door in a silent indication that she was trying to tell me to leave without physically telling me to leave, "I can't be the person that helps Sam with that… I can't… I can't give her one of my organs…"

She spoke with the hint of a laugh as if I had been crazy to even think about asking her such a ridiculous question; and honestly, I think the only reason that I did stand up and follow her to the door, the only reason that I didn't keep myself firmly planted into my seat refusing to move until Rebecca finally accepted my offer was because when I started screaming at her, which trust me, I planned on doing, I wanted to be directly in her face just so that she knew how much I meant exactly what I was about to say.

"What the hell do you mean you can't be the one that helps her? That's your daughter? She might die if you don't help her!" My voice carried progressively louder with each word that I spoke, my face reddening as I pressed it right up close into Rebecca's.

"I told you Brooke, I'm sorry…" She opened her front door, trying desperately to strategically use her body to shuttle me outside before I could linger and continue reminding her of how much of a worthless excuse for a parent, for a human being she truly was.

"Sam doesn't need you to be sorry she needs you to help her!" Rebecca boxed me out onto her porch while meanwhile, I carried on like a raving lunatic in such a manner that made passerby stare and people to actually come out of their houses in order to investigate just what the hell was going on out here for fear that there was an active assault or maybe even a freaking murder going on over here.

Of course, the way that I was feeling at the moment, both of those possibilities were seeming like more and more of a possibility with each passing second than one may think.

"You've never given Sam one thing in her entire life Rebecca, not once in sixteen years; why can't you think about somebody other than your fucking self for once in your miserable life?" I was starting to get angry to the point that I was starting to lose any sense of the self-control that I thought I'd had left… I knew that, the neighbors currently crowding the sidewalks and the front yards knew that, and Rebecca sure as hell knew that, judging by the blank look of shock that had suddenly appeared across her face and that faint, "I'm sorry" that she managed to mumble towards me one last time before she finally closed the door right in my face, signifying that this conversation was over.

But this conversation was far from over; in fact, I was just getting started, so I threw my body against the door and pounded my fists like a crazy person against the wood, daring for her to open it again and come out here and face me, face her problems…

But of course that didn't work, and to be completely honest, I hadn't really been expecting it to… So after about five minutes or so, when my arms just started to get so tired that I couldn't even hold them up anymore, and my brain slowly started to accept its defeat, I lowered my guard, delivered one final swift kick to the door, and pressed my body close up against the house, deciding that I would deliver what I hoped would be the final message that I would ever have to waste my breath on towards this woman ever again.

"You stay away from her do you hear me?" I made sure to yell it extra loudly just to ensure that no matter where she was inside of that house, she would be able to hear me, "Sam doesn't need you Rebecca, she never did so you better stay away from her, stay away from my daughter!"

I spoke with a tone of animosity behind my every syllable, emphasizing the part where I was sure to acknowledge Sam as my daughter rather than her own before I finally turned from the house and headed back to my car, suppressing the urge to break a window or something in my rage as I went.

I forced myself to walk forward and continue on this seemingly endless path of getting absolutely nowhere, begging for my shattered heart to stop weighing me down and that absent God that I no longer even believed in anymore to just guide me a few more paces forward… if that even made any sense.

I hadn't even noticed Peyton sitting on the hood of her Comet on the other side of the street, looking as if she had been sitting there long enough to have heard every word that I just said, until I was about halfway down the path of the house towards my own car.

"What are you doing here?" My question came out with a much ruder tone than what I had initially anticipated on but I was still heated from my previous conversation, and considering the fact that Peyton had apparently been out here watching the entire thing, I could only hope that she would understand the source of my anger and not take it too personally.

"I was on my way to your house to check up on you… and to let you know that Lucas and I just got back from the hospital in order to be tested to see if we were matches for Sam…" Her explanation cleared the air for me, but of course, it also made me feel kind of bad that I had just been so snippy with her while meanwhile; she'd been spending the past few hours or so trying to save my daughter's life.

"I was just about to go over to your house when I saw a very familiar car tearing down the street like a mad woman… I followed you just to make sure that you weren't about to go do anything stupid but apparently I didn't reach you in time…"

"Yeah well at least I wasn't driving off to go and kill myself or something like that then." I muttered, watching as her face turned down with instant displeasure towards what I thought hadn't been the worst joke that I had ever told in my entire life…

"That's not funny Brooke…" She told me indicating that that was probably exactly what she thought I was driving to go do, "Brooke you need to relax, you need to take a minute or two and just regroup… You have to think about this baby, how much it needs you, and Sam… You can't be running around driving yourself insane over something that's not even sure yet… One of us could easily be a match… between you, and me, and Julian, Victoria, Lucas, Nathan, and Haley… well one of us have got to be it right? We don't even know if Rebecca is even a necessity and Brooke… well you just bit her head off over there… and I don't know what that conversation was like directly in the line of fire, but I've gotta say; it looked pretty harsh from all the way out here."

I blushed sheepishly at the acknowledgment towards the fact that I had just exploded at Rebecca in a manner that I never before had really experienced…

"Telling me to relax right now is like trying to tell the world to stop spinning Peyton…" I sighed with the understanding of just how overdramatic as my statement might have sounded; I meant every word of it, "It's just that everything I seem to be doing these days is completely about getting Sam better but the harder I try to do something about it, the further she gets away from me… I've never seen her quite like this before Peyton… Sam and I, we've already been through so much together but still… I've never seen her so tired… I've never seen her spirit so… I don't know… gone before."

"I know Brooke…" Peyton nodded her head in such a manner that expressed that she understood, but still, she knew that that understanding was quite limited, and I think that that's why she's so good at this, that's why she always manages to make me feel better, "But Brooke, I think that might be the reason why you need to be with Sam right now, at the hospital, not running around like a chicken with your head cut off doing nothing other than placing more stress on yourself than what you already have to be in."

I looked at her but I didn't say anything simply because I knew that she was right, and I knew that she knew that I knew that she was right…

"So come on…" She motioned her hands towards me, arms outstretched in such a manner that I knew that she was trying to signify her attempting to get me to leave, which I did; always grateful to be granted that extra sense of comfort… especially considering the fact that I had just been shut down so harshly by Rebecca, "Let's drop your car off at home before you get on the road and freaking kill somebody with that thing, okay? I'll drive you over to the hospital… everybody else is already over there waiting for the results of the blood work…"

She spoke with a laugh, but it was a grim one mainly due to the fact that she couldn't help but bring herself to look past the seriousness behind the words… but I ignored them; I ignored her, and I just nodded, realizing the truth in her statement, realizing courage in her words, and the fact that she was right when she told me that if I were to be doing anything right now, it needed to be spending time with Sam.

* * *

**JULIAN**

A long time ago, I used to be the type of guy that wouldn't be caught dead crying in public… An even longer time ago, I was that guy that locked himself in a dark closet for a week just to prevent people from ever thinking that I was even capable of emotion, because the thing was, as much as I tried to hide it, and as much as I said that I wasn't, I always knew that I was "that guy" from the very beginning… I just had to put on a brave face to try and hide that fact… and for a while that would actually work.

I guess that this was just another sign of the times towards how much things have changed for me lately, because as time continued to slowly pass me by and I continued to count the minutes that it's been since Brooke stormed out, and the seconds from the time that Sam started feeling so sick that she couldn't even keep her eyes open anymore… well let's just say that those numbers added up together so high that I didn't even want to think about it; so instead, I wept, and I wept like the weakling that I knew I was, suddenly very much so aware of the fact that I definitely hadn't been feeling as brave as I had been at the beginning of all of this anymore.

I had been walking around in circles for almost an hour now, unable to sit still any longer for the fear that I would lose my mind in the isolation of it all… but even walking got pretty old pretty quickly, so in that time frame, I had also managed to organize Sam's room to a nearly spotless perfection, I had restocked myself up on the supply of soda and coffee and junk food that always sustained me during our long stretches of hospitalizations, and I took care of Sam as much as I possibly could, trying desperately to provide her with a sense of comfort despite her being at a stage in her illness that I couldn't even possibly comprehend, let alone understand.

I had just been lifting one of the extra blankets that I had found in the closet high up over Sam's shivering shoulders when I caught a quick flash through my peripherals; a shadow at most, but all I needed to know in order to tell me that Brooke had returned and was currently lingering inside of the doorway.

I paused where I stood, turning away from Sam for the first time in I don't even know how long in order to face Brooke as her body sunk and her expression stayed blank so that her features, if anything, just looked much older than they had when I'd seen her last no more than an hour or two ago now.

"Where the hell have you been?" My eyes narrowed while meanwhile, my voice started coming out as much harsher than I knew that I should have allowed it to, but my emotions have been out of my own control these past couple of days and I could no longer hold myself responsible for the things that were coming out of my mouth, a feature that I hoped Brooke would understand considering we were both in very similar places at the moment… but I wasn't so sure… hell, I couldn't even really know what Brooke so much as perceived as a reality anymore so I knew that I couldn't assume anything…

Of course, I do think that it was safe to assume that she was mad… I mean, I was mad; I was mad that Sam was getting sicker than I could even keep up with anymore, I was mad that the only thing these days that seemed to be able to take her away from all of this pain she was in was for her to just lose her battle all together, and I was mad that I had to sit here and watch it all happen with no relief in sight and the one person that could possibly understand me being nowhere to be found for hours on end.

"I've been out trying to find Sam a kidney Julian… you know that." She spoke in a slow, soft manner but she might as well have been screaming at me with the force that presented behind her voice.

"No you weren't!" Somewhere deep down inside of me, I could feel that teetering string that had been loosely holding all of my frustrations to the inside snap and I lost any sense of control, any sense of myself that I still had left and I took it out on the first person that I saw, who unfortunately for the both of us, was Brooke.

"I have been the one here taking care of Sam while you were gone, Brooke! Victoria was the one here taking care of Sam while you were gone! Jesus, you're best friends were all sitting here getting tested to see if they were a freaking kidney match for Sam while you were gone and all of us have been sitting here worried sick about you because you've been running around like a lunatic for over an hour with nowhere to be found!"

For a second she faltered, looking slightly taken aback by everything that I had just said but in all fairness, it had shocked even me so I couldn't really blame her too much, but of course, when that second was over, and after my words finally filtered down straight into her very bones, her eyebrows furrowed, her posture straightened, and her body loomed over me dangerously to the point that she appeared to be almost as tall as me even though I was close to having a solid foot over her.

"No Julian, I was the one that was actually trying to do something! I was the one that was actually trying here while meanwhile you and everybody else are all just sitting on your asses willing accepting the fact that everybody is telling you that Sam is going to die! Well let me tell you Julian, that's not going to happen, she's not gonna die because I'm not going to let that happen; so yeah, maybe I am running around like a lunatic, but at least I'm doing something… All of you have given up on Sam, I haven't."

Tears of determined fury strung at every corner of her eyes but she refused to drop her guard that she had against me through her words.

"Everything you need to help Sam is right here Brooke... She's been asking where you were all day, she needs you to be here with her, she doesn't need to have you running around all day when you don't even know that's what Sam needs… There are plenty of people around here who are doing everything that they can to save Sam on the outside, but while that's happening she needs you right here okay?"

"Oh that's bull shit Julian and you know it!" She yelled back at me, her finger pointed threateningly at my chest with those tears that had only been glistening before rolled freely down her cheeks, "Those doctors aren't doing crap for Sam, all they're doing is telling us that they can't even do the last thing that they can to save her life which just means that they aren't trying hard enough…"

I sighed deeply not even knowing how it was that I should respond to that; I mean, here was Brooke basically telling me that she truly believed that everybody around her just wanted to see Sam dead when it was clear to me that that couldn't have been the further from the truth.

"I went to Rebecca's…" Brooke's latest revelation was ultimately the thing that pulled me back into a state of utmost attention rather quickly as my head snapped up and my eyes widened towards her announcement.

"Rebecca… as in Sam's mom, Rebecca?" I asked for a confirmation although I already knew that that was exactly who she was talking about while meanwhile, she offered me the smallest nod of her head, her face desperate to display confidence while meanwhile, the softness behind those features displayed how much she knew that she probably shouldn't have done whatever it was she just did.

"Brooke… I… you… why would you even think of going to do that… Rebecca made it clear months ago that she wants nothing to do with Sam; not then, and sure as hell not now."

"I thought that maybe she could be the kidney donor that we needed…" She spoke with a sniffle, lowering her eyes away from me for the first time since she'd yelled at me for not caring enough about Sam minutes ago now, "Dr. Miller… she kept saying… I remembered her telling us that finding a donor might be easiest if it was through a blood relative so I went over there and… and… it didn't really work out."

Well that news didn't exactly shock me… Finally, something that Brooke was telling me that wasn't taking me totally aback in surprise, I guess…

"Brooke you need to stop this…" I muttered towards her, not particularly meaning to say it but realizing just a little bit too late that I had indeed let it slip.

"What is that supposed to mean Julian?" She asked, her eyes narrowing inwards towards me so that her stare could have shot a hole straight through my brains and killed me right on the spot so quickly, that I would have died instantly without even feeling a damn thing.

"Sam told me that you guys talked today Brooke… she told me everything that she told you and I think that she's right… It's what she wants Brooke, it's what she needs right now."

"I don't think I can do it Julian… I don't think that I can just sit here and watch her die without even doing anything about it… That's what I told Sam before, and it's what I'm gonna tell you now." Her face reddened with every word that she spoke and her lips quivered with tears, but I think that the worst part of it all was the expression of pure defeat that slowly began to sneak its way into her voice, "Maybe you've accepted what everybody's been telling you but I haven't… I thought that you of all people would have at least a little bit more faith in Sam, Julian… I guess I was wrong."

Her words stung and they stung me hard; so much so that I literally had to take a step backwards in my shock that she would directly call me out against something so harsh, something so untrue… There had never been any less amount of truth in a word that Brooke Davis had ever said until now because the truth was, I was hurting just as much as she was, I was watching Sam getting sicker and sicker every day just like she was… The only real difference now I guess was that yesterday when Dr. Miller had told us what she had, I understood… I understood that she was just trying to prepare us, I understood that there might come a time where even the best of doctors simply run out of methods by which they could help Sam…

Now, I wasn't so sure whether Brooke simply didn't get that fact or if she just didn't want to believe it, but either way, I was more worried about her than I had ever been before, because I knew that if God forbid something actually did happen to Sam, and she really didn't make it, then it was just going to kill Brooke even more than it already was.

The two of us had the briefest of stare downs; a couple of seconds that felt like it could have lasted hours in which there wasn't so much as a single noise throughout the entire room before finally Brooke made the first move; her body sinking down flat before finally making a complete about-face, turning back towards the door and literally stamping her feet back out of it, her intentions of leaving immediately obvious before she actually did.

"Brooke… Brooke, where are you going?" I called after her alongside the smallest of sighs produced by the realization that this was the second time in only a handful of hours that I was chasing after her in the halls.

"I just need some air Julian," She responded to my question without so much as even turning to look at me, "Unless this counts to you as abandoning Sam like everything else that I seem to do these days does."

She stormed down the hall, turning sharply around a corner into a desolate section of the ward, disappearing for a mere second as I carried on determinedly behind her, after all, I couldn't leave her; not now, not like this… it would be the worst decision that I would have ever made in my entire life; leaving the two of us thinking that we both hated each other during the one time that we needed to stay more closely together more than ever… After all, this was the woman that I loved, the woman that I was going to marry one day, the woman that was carrying my child as we spoke… There was a distinct reason that I wanted, that I needed Brooke Davis to be a part of my life until the day that I died, and it wasn't so that I could leave her in the one time that she needed me the most.

I found her easily as I rounded the same corner she had just disappeared behind, but when I did, I almost wished that I hadn't because if anything, the scene was even more devastating than even I could have possibly imagined it to be.

Brooke hadn't made it further than a few paces down the otherwise abandoned hall before she'd had to stop. Her body was pressed firmly up against the wall, her thighs bent in an uncomfortable looking squatting position that made a steeper and steeper angle with the floor with each passing second as her body slid further down the wall and closer to the floor, and her face was buried in her hands in a failed attempt to hide the tears that were freely flowing no matter how hard she tried to stop them.

"Brooke…" I whispered in a strangled voice as I walked towards her, sinking myself down directly next to her, trying to wrap my arm around her shoulder in an effort to provide her with at least a little source of comfort, but all she did was push away from me.

"Just leave me the hell alone Julian, alright?"

"I can't leave you here Brooke… not like this." I tried to pretend as if her efforts to push me away weren't hurting me although they were; instead I stood defiant, recognizing that as much as it hurt right now, it would hurt a lot more if it was simply left at this.

"Why not Julian? Why can't you leave me all of a sudden, because you know what, you already did, you left me all by damn self just this morning, you made me think that there was nothing that I could do to save Sam when I need to think that I can because it's the only thing that's keeping me going right now!"

"Brooke that isn't what I meant and I know that you know that." At the very least I hoped she knew that that was what I meant, because there's no way in hell that I could ever live with myself thinking for one second that I didn't support her, "You know how much I want to see Sam get better again Brooke… I… I don't even know how to put it into words how much I just want her to be healthy again… but Brooke, all I'm saying here is that I think it's time that we have to consider the possibility that that might not happen… It's what Sam wants from us Brooke. She doesn't want to leave us sitting here for the rest of our lives trapped in our own heads thinking about everything that could have happened and… well I think she's right. That wouldn't be fair to her, it wouldn't be fair to us, and it sure as hell wouldn't be fair to this baby…"

I was starting to think that that probably should have just been exactly what I told her all along… it probably would have made this a lot easier on all of us, because finally, after hours of trying, I got a reaction out of her; and for once, it wasn't a bad one.

"But what if I can't do that Julian? Because I don't think I can… I really don't think I can." She turned her head, but this time towards me instead of away, and I couldn't help but release that sigh of relief that escaped past my lips with the realization that I had finally done the right thing.

"I know Brooke, I know…" I told her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her body close into my own, squeezing it tightly, "But whatever happens the two of us are gonna get through it together okay?"

I felt her nod her head against my shoulder, her motions sending a flash of comfort, of sheer hope right up my spine that I hoped could reverberate across to Brooke, but before she could even think to release any sort of a coherent verbal response, a third voice infiltrated in between the two of us, sending us jumping against one another's bodies.

"Brooke… Julian?" I had been so focused on Brooke that I had completely forgotten that the two of us were in the middle of the hospital's hallways and that it was more than possible that somebody could have seen what I would have easily considered a very private interaction between the two of us.  
"Dr. Miller…" Brooke wiped her eyes quickly, her surroundings coming into focus much more quickly than mine did as she transferred all of her attention onto the doctor in front of us, pushing off my shoulder in order to achieve a sturdy standing position that I followed suite very quickly.

"Are you alright?"She asked, her head swiveling back and forth between the two of us as to indicate that she was asking the both of us the question, although Brooke answered for not only her, but for me too as I seemed to have suddenly lost my ability to speak in the moment.

"Yeah… yeah we're fine sorry…" She tried desperately to avert the subject without having to get too much into detail, and luckily, the doctor accepted her push towards avoidance, quickly changing the subject onto that by which she had initially approached us for to begin with.

"Listen, I've been looking for you two because I need to tell you something; I have some good news." She spoke gently but still, our bodies stiffened and our heads raised with the news that she had something to tell us that wouldn't want to make us positively die with grief for a change.

"What is it?"

"We found a match." I felt my heartbeat stop dead in my chest, and to my left, the way that Brooke clung onto my harm so tightly her nails were starting to dig through my skin, let me know that she felt the exact same way.

"W… who is it?" Brooke stuttered, her eyes wide and her body shaking with the adrenaline of the sheer anticipation that was currently coursing through her veins.

I watched as the doctor shifted the entirety of her body weight towards me, her eyes motioning in such a way that caused my heart to come back to life with a shuddering force so sudden, that it made me feel as if it was going to explode straight out of my chest… because suddenly, I knew exactly what it was that she was going to say before she actually said it so that my head went blank with emotion and I barely heard her anyway when she finally turned to me, opened her mouth, and confirmed each and every one of my original thoughts.

"It's Julian."


	60. Everything But Beautiful

**Alrighty, so I've got a lot of little things to say before this chapter so skip ahead or read as you please sorry about all this. Anyway, first things first, I skipped a day because I accidentally had this for the 9****th**** and then realized it took place at like 2 a.m. on the 10****th**** so I'm sure nobody would have noticed but I'm real OCD about that kind of thing and it would have bothered the crap out of me so I'm extended my streak of doing things in parts and putting this as a double. I also decided to mix it up with the POVs a little bit in this chapter because I feel like I've been doing the same ones over and over again and I was in the mood to spice things up.**

**So anyway, my original plan was to make Haley Sam's donor (which I was actually starting to lead up to) but then I realized that it didn't quite fit with the way I want to develop the story into the end so I changed it kind of last minute so I hope I didn't disappoint anybody too much with all of that and I'm gonna try to throw in a little bit of extra Brooke/Haley moments because I really do love them so much.**

**Alright, so I think that's about all I have to say, this is the chapter where things really start to set up the end of the story (which is only five chapters away AHHH!) so I hope you enjoy it and as always, thanks for reading! And one more thing real quick, I'm coming up to the end of my semester in the next few weeks and on top of that, I'm graduating in about a month so things are starting to get kind of hectic so I apologize if updates don't come as fast as they usually do but I'll try not to make it too long especially being so close to the end and all.**

* * *

Chapter 60: Everything But Beautiful

**Friday, February 10****th****, 2012**

**(Part I)**

**LUCAS**

As it turned out, after they'd sent Sam home from the hospital early Thursday afternoon with the assurance that there was nothing that they could do for her there that Brooke couldn't do for her at home, she was barely out of the hospital for less than twelve hours before Brooke had been forced to bring her right back in again.

It was approximately 3:00 in the morning when my cell phone went off; a ring that sounded like a gunshot across the otherwise silence that that had been pervading the air around my house for a solid five hours or so at this point…

I rubbed at my eyes as they quickly began to tear up; a product of being so forcefully and so abruptly ripped out of what had, mere moments ago been a very peaceful sleep, and I grabbed at my phone, pressing it instantly up against my ear.

"Hello?"

"Lucas?" Whatever level of pissed off that I had been due to being awoken so early thirty seconds ago vanished in an instant upon hearing the quivering, tear-filled voice of Brooke Davis so clear on the other line that she might as well have been standing right next to me.

I scrambled in an instant, reaching blindly across the bed, fumbling for the lamp switch next to me for a couple of tense seconds before I managed to turn it on; the shearing light blinding my unadjusted eyes briefly as I continued to move about wildly with quick, jerky reflexes while meanwhile, I could feel Peyton slowly beginning to arose from her position next to me.

"Brooke? What is it? What's wrong?" I struggled to straighten myself up as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and forced myself into a completely upright, fully alert position so that I would be ready to spring into action at a single moment's notice because I was fully aware of the fact that whenever the phone started ringing at 3:00 in the morning, it usually wasn't because somebody was calling me to make Saturday night plans…

I rubbed my hands nervously over my face, feeling Peyton as she came up from behind me and wrapped her arms around my chest, leaning her head in close to my ear in a desperate attempt to listen in.

"It's Sam," Brooke muttered nearly incomprehensibly, but I'd already managed to figure that much out for myself anyway, all I really wanted were the details, "Can you come over?"

* * *

Seven minutes.

That is the exact amount of time that it took for me to fully wake myself up, convince Peyton to stay behind and watch Sawyer, because we both knew that there was no way in hell that we could bring her with us to Brooke's; not with all of the commotion that was bound to be happening over there at the moment, and wander out to my car both barefoot and shirtless in order to drive myself over to Brooke's house.

Of course, on any given normal day, the drive to Brooke's would, on average, probably be anywhere between ten to fifteen minutes… but luckily for me, Tree Hill didn't have a particularly heavy traffic congestion problem at three o'clock in the morning which, in a nutshell, granted me unwritten permission to go double the speed limit and run all of the red lights I hit without it really being that big of a deal.

"She told me earlier tonight that she wasn't feeling well but she wouldn't say exactly what was wrong… She had a slight fever though, it was 99.3°, but she took all of her medication like she was supposed to and I gave her some Tylenol and her fever broke by 10:00'ish… I just woke up a few minutes ago to check up on her but I was having a hard time waking her up and her fever was back… I got it in at 104.2° the last time I took it."

That was the exact scene that I had managed to walk in on the moment I stumbled through Brooke's front door; dazed, disoriented, and half naked as I attempted to shuffle through the plethora of emergency workers to get to somebody that I actually recognized for a change…

I paused briefly, suddenly very overwhelmed by the sense of déjà-vu that had suddenly overcome me due to the fact that after all, it had been less than two months ago today where I was at this exact point, practically in this same position when Sam was being rushed to the hospital upon being plagued with the infection that had damn near killed her and that she was clearly still feeling the lingering effects of…

At that particular point in time, I can still vividly remember praying to God that that would be the last time that I would ever have to witness a scene as horrific as that one was… but of course, somewhere in the back of my mind I had somehow known that that had just been the beginning of it all… And what do you know, here I was now, unfortunately right about everything I had thought.

"Brooke!" I darted to her side the second that she'd managed to pull herself away from the paramedic who had previously been plaguing her with his relentless questions, "Brooke what happened?"

I didn't even bother waiting for her to answer before I wrapped my thick arms around her much thinner body, pulling her into a hug with such force that I practically crushed her so that the only response she could manage was a slight shake of her head amidst fearful tears as she positively trembled in my arms in her fear.

At any point in my life since the moment I had met her, and probably even before that, if you were to ever ask me about strength, I wouldn't even hesitate before using Brooke Davis as a synonym for the word… God, she was such a strong women; so brave, so endlessly selfless that in moments like this, moments where she could barely even manage to hold herself upright, I couldn't help but feel as if the world was positively collapsing to pieces around not just her, but around all of us as well…

If you wanted to see devastation, well just picture this; picture your every image of strength, of independence, of devotion, crumble all around you and disintegrate into fragments so small, they could barely even be identified anymore… yeah, that's devastation.

"I don't know Lucas… she was sick earlier tonight but she told me that she was fine, that she was just a little tired so I told her I'd wait until the morning to see how she was feeling but when I went in to check on her a little while ago she…"

"Brooke!" The voice called for only one name, but somehow every head in the entire room managed to turn in response as the door barged open and a new-comer to all the madness entered as I had just managed to do moments before; clueless as to what it was that she was getting herself into simply by walking through a doorway, unknowing towards what exactly it was that she should be expecting right now…

I had heard a lot of rumors about Victoria Davis in the years that I'd known Brooke… hell; I'd even had a few personal encounters that I'd rather forget about from those months when we had been dating… The point is, those stories, well they were all pretty wild, pretty numerous, and pretty eccentric, but above all; they were angry, they were terrifying, and I knew, they were all 100% true…

And no matter how much of a positive influence that Victoria finally seemed to be having on Brooke's life in these past few months, I couldn't help but allow my cowardice of experience take over the control of my body so that I backed up slowly away while meanwhile, Brooke ran forward, meeting her mother at the center and hugging her tightly in a manner that I still didn't think I was used to considering all of the things I'd heard Brooke say about the woman in the past.

So instead of concerning myself towards Brooke and what was going on in her personal life, I turned towards the main reason I had found myself here in the first place, focusing all of my attention on Sam even though the girl seemed to be in pretty good hands at the moment… and I'm not just talking about the plethora of paramedics currently frenzying themselves over her like mad men, no, I was talking about Julian who, for all intents and purposes was probably the most important person with her right now…

I mean, the guy was in every way Sam's real father, and now that I saw it that way, well… well let's just say that this isn't the first time that I was trying to put myself in his shoes. I pictured this being Sawyer, I pictured what it might be like, how hard it would be to sit there by her side as she sat on my couch positively dying, all the while keeping my composure, keeping my hold onto her simply because that was all she needed from me… But the more I thought about it, the more downright impossible that it seemed, and honestly, even though Julian and I had had our fair share of differences in the beginning, for obvious reasons, seeing him here, seeing him with Sam, it made me respect him beyond anything that I had previously thought possible.

There were two paramedics that I had never seen before surrounding them, unusual considering at this point, with all the times that I've been involved with them and everything, I knew every single paramedic on call within the Tree Hill city limits for the past ten years or so… I couldn't help but stare at them, watching as they tried their hardest to do whatever they could for Sam, but she was a defiant kid; a stubborn mule if you will… she resisted them in every way that she possibly could.

And I mean, of course I knew that this was a trait that she had already had long before she ever met Brooke, but I had a pretty definitive theory that that trait had just grown stronger with the influence of her mother… she was determined in her insistence that she was fine despite everything screaming that she wasn't… just like Brooke would have done had the tides been turned.

In the briefest of moments, our eyes met; my piercing blue ones latching onto her terrified brown ones and maybe I made it up, but I had a feeling that I saw a shimmer of relief flash across her eyes upon knowing that there was at least one other person that she knew around her in this moment… But of course, that shimmer barely held on a few seconds before it left her face so suddenly that I'd almost actually missed it.

"Hey Sam… Julian," I greeted the two of them awkwardly because I didn't know what else it was I could possibly say right now.

"Hey," Sam managed to mutter back to me, using all of the strength she had left while meanwhile, Julian barely came up with a short nod towards my direction, his mouth currently unable to produce any words; but I didn't hold it against him, really I didn't… I understood; or at least, I tried to.

"How are you doing?" I continued my streak of coming up with the stupidest possible things to say, realizing the second that the words were out of my mouth, that they probably shouldn't have come out at all.

"Real good," She nodded up towards me sarcastically, "I was in the sudden mood for a party and I figured that the only way I could get people here at this hour was to make a real scene."

Despite still feeling like an idiot, I smirked in my appreciation of her sarcasm with the recognition towards the fact that as long as that was still intact, it wasn't quite time to completely worry just yet… But just as that thought ran through my mind, I was proven wrong, just like always, as I watched the girl release a sharp wince of pain in response to a paramedic jabbing at her arm with a needle for the third time since I'd been present to watch alone before he withdrew it just as rapidly in acknowledgment of his failure to actually insert it properly.

"They've been trying to start an IV line since they got here… Paramedics around here aren't trained to work with her catheter so t hey always try and start an IV but her veins are shot… they'll never find a good one…" I hadn't even noticed that Brooke had walked away from Victoria until she started talking behind me, and I swiveled around to face her impressively as she continued to spew out a bunch of words that made her sound like an actual doctor or something; wise beyond her years with a concern behind her tone which somebody with the grace and poise of Brooke Davis should never have to experience.

I wasn't quite sure whether or not Brooke wanted me to say anything in response to this, if she expected me to, so I assumed not, and simply remained silent, instead expressing my compassion towards her by reaching up and around her shoulder, pulling her closely into my body because I knew how much Brooke used to love turning to my arms for comfort in those days so long ago… sometimes it seems like almost a lifetime ago… Now, the only thing that I could hope for was that my body still had those same powers that they used to in order to make Brooke feel at least a little bit better than she had felt before.

The world seemed to positively slow down… well, at least to me anyway, I couldn't speak for Brooke, I couldn't speak for the massive amounts of people shuffling back and forth across her house right now, and I sure as hell couldn't speak for Sam, or for Julian, or Victoria… But I had learned a long time ago that there is a still involved in the midst of an emergency that could never last very long so that even though things felt like they lasted forever to me, it couldn't have been any more than a minute or two in the real world until we were broken up by one of the EMT's.

"Ms. Davis? I was just wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions." I released Brooke only in my effort to allow her to respond to this kid; a hesitant, nervous teenager who had just been woken up in the middle of the night in order to take care of a girl who couldn't have been much younger than he was but who still appeared to be at the very threshold of death itself… But Brooke didn't let go of me; in fact, she didn't so much as ease up… actually, if anything, I think she might have even leaned in closer to me.

It was her silent confirmation that my attempts to make her feel better were actually working; an idea that helped to settle my mind considering the fact that I had been so nervous in my lack of knowledge on what to say or do… But I guess with the fact that her fiancé was currently busy caring for her dying daughter combined with her mother being clearly busy trying to use her intimidation factor to get these paramedics moving faster, well it seemed like I might have been the source of Brooke's next-best option.

So I took my self-assigned job seriously; re-establishing my stance around Brooke's arms as she nodded her head against my body in response to the EMT's question and gave him the all clear to continue.

"She was brought into the hospital with pneumonia over Christmas time… um… that was on December 21st… She was in the hospital for a little over a month then and she had chemotherapy during that time just like she was supposed to but by early February her doctor informed us that her kidney problems had worsened to the point that she actually had to start dialysis… She just started her latest round of chemotherapy but they decided to discontinue that since her kidneys just kept getting worse and worse."

Brooke read off of her list of purely vital information, her mouth spewing off statistics like a well oiled machine, and do you remember everything that I said about Brooke sounding like a doctor before? Well I definitely meant that now.

I knew for a fact that people used to always stop her and question her about things like this; asking her how it was possible that she could ever remember so much information all at once, and I also knew that that pissed her off consistently to no end because to be completely honest, she never really had to try too hard…

They say that traumatic events have this uncanny ability of storing themselves deep into your long term memory banks much, much more readily than your average, every day memory… It's why your grandparents can still tell you exactly where they were the moment that they heard about what happened at Pearl Harbor. It's why your parents, who couldn't have been more than ten years old at the time, can rally off their exact feelings that they had experienced upon hearing that JFK had been assassinated… it was the same thing really; all of it.

"Okay Ms. Davis, we're going to try to move Samantha as fast as possible, do you have a preference of what hospital we take her to?" One of the actual good things about living in such a rarely congested area of North Carolina, which, I admit, was a rare instance, was that there was about five hospitals all within twenty miles of us… the thing was, I don't think that any of us ever really saw any of those other ones as a viable option.

"Tree Hill Memorial Hospital please," She didn't hesitate; it wasn't even a question; everything that they had, everything that they needed, it was already there… Hell, sometimes I wondered why any of us even bothered to buy houses or apartments anymore considering the ratio of time that we spent in the hospital compared to at home.

"And her primary oncologists' name is Dr. Lauren Miller she should be at Tree Hill Memorial when we get there." Brooke added quickly, knowing full well from pure experience just as much as I did that they'd need her name for the endless amounts of paperwork that they'd probably still be filling out long after Sam was safely dropped off in the Emergency Room… It was the single main reason why I knew that Brooke always felt so bad when she was forced to call all of the EMT's in for assistance, because it always came with a lot of writing, a lot of technicality, and a lot of attention to detail… I mean with Sam's extensive medical history and all of the medications that they had to pick through with a fine toothed comb, missing or even so much as misspelling a single word could result in a lot of problems for these volunteer Tree Hill EMT's who rarely saw this much excitement in their duties.

There was this one kid I was talking to one night; he was young, working with a crew who volunteered to drive Sam back home in an ambulance from the hospital one day when she was too weak to so much as walk to Brooke's car after a particularly difficult chemotherapy round that Peyton and I attended… He was young, a senior in high school who had simply joined the squad because it looked fabulous on college applications… Anyway, he told me that the most action that he'd ever seen before Sam's little predicament came up was at five o'clock in the morning when all of the elderly people woke up for the day because guaranteed every day, at least one of them would fall out of bed and break something.

Anyway, the kid who was in front of me right now, a different boy but probably about the same age, had been jotting things down with rapt attention for the past several minutes and didn't seem to be much in the talking mood… It probably had to do with the fact that he was currently developing carpel tunnel with all of the information he had to write down combined with the idea that I guess if somebody had woken me up at three a.m. to drive them across town to the hospital, well… I probably wouldn't have been in much of the mood to talk to them either…

But the point was this; he seemed to be out of questions, which was a good thing, because Brooke seemed to be out of the mood to provide answers; after all, she had other much, much more important matters to attend to…

As it was, Sam was starting to get restless if anything… fighting against anything and everything that these poor paramedics were trying to do in order to help her in her insistence that she was fine when it was so clear to everybody around her that she was anything but.

Sam had never one for attention, that much had been clear ever since day one, but you'd think that she'd be getting used to these kinds of things by now… Clearly I thought wrong, because Sam was just as stubborn now, if not more so than ever, and honestly, for that I had to respect her.

It was the first time that Brooke had so much as shifted away from the comfort that I had been steadily providing her with my arms for a while now, but it was clear to me that in this moment, Sam needed a lot more than what even Julian could provide for her, and, well, if it was clear to me, then there was definitely no way in hell that it would be possible for Brooke to have missed it…

And just as this thought ran through my mind, I felt Brooke completely detach herself from me abruptly, moving so quickly that the wind that her practically sprinting body made against the spot previously teeming with warmth left my positively shuddering I was so cold.

But once Brooke got there, she didn't actually have to do much; these days, her physical presence seemed to be enough to make Sam comfortable, because as I watched carefully as Brooke crouched in front of the couch in the area directly in front of where Sam was sitting, I noticed that she hadn't even said a single word to the girl before Sam's muscles visibly relaxed, she stopped struggling, and she allowed willingly for everybody around her to do whatever it was that they needed to in order to get the girl better again.

I continued to fulfill my duties as the careful observer surrounded by a bunch of people that were all trying desperately to do whatever it was that they could, and I suddenly felt very so out of place… I mean, I clearly couldn't do anything that all of these cops and paramedics were doing, and as for Brooke and Julian and Victoria, all trying to do their best to keep the poor girl calm amidst all of this, well I couldn't help but feel as if that too were something that I just couldn't be a part of… This was their family, these were the people that meant the entire world and beyond to them, and I couldn't help but think that my presence in that pack would be considered nothing more than an absolute intrusion.

So in an effort to do something more than simply stand around here and feel like a fool, getting in the way and probably doing more harm than good, I slunk away slowly, my motions going generally unnoticed as I snuck out of the open front door so that the freezing cold February wind hit my body, making me suddenly very aware that I still wasn't wearing a t-shirt from having been in such a rush to get out of my house before.

I brought my free arm up and wrapped it around my chest in my only true attempt at staying warm, but needless to say, it didn't really work out very well… Using my free hand, I dug deep into the pocket of my pajama pants and grabbed my cell phone, my teeth chattering as I dialed the familiar number before bringing the device up to my awaiting ear.

"Lucas?" Peyton answered the phone on the first ring so that I knew that she had been waiting anxiously by it for my phone call ever since the moment I left, "What's going on?"

"I think that you might want to start getting Sawyer ready Peyton," I spoke with a sigh knowing how much we'd wanted to avoid this, but realizing that that seemed to be an impossible task at this point, "Meet us in the Emergency Room okay?"

* * *

**BROOKE**

I didn't think that it was even possible for your body to physically process this many extremes in emotions all within a forty eight hour time period before today.

The past two days had proven to be a rather strange day, one that even after hours of thinking about and contemplating at my most intense state of concentration, I still didn't really fully understand…

All that I knew for sure is that in those two days I had gone from a state of anguish, to one of fiery determination, to rage, to pure elation all within a very short matter of time, and that elation, the one that stemmed from the announcement that Julian was a kidney match for Sam, that he was going to be the person to help Sam get better again, well that all managed to shatter away very quickly around me starting at approximately 2:45 this morning.

I couldn't help but think about everything that happened yesterday… I mean, it felt so long ago now but yesterday when they'd finally begun putting Julian through a battery of tests in order to see if he was strong enough for surgery, yesterday when the doctor's decided to send Sam home with a permanent IV line that I would have to change twice a day and an oxygen tank that we'd have on call just in case Sam's pain got so bad that she couldn't even breathe any more, and yesterday when my world had been so bogged down with the good news that I had so desperately clung to on those rare occasions that I actually got it, I forgot to remind myself that reflecting on things like that was never a good idea because it rarely lasted as long as I wanted it too.

I remembered thinking it the instant that they told me that they wanted to send Sam home… I remembered telling her nephrologist that I wasn't so sure about that, and I remembered that very same doctor assuring me that it was okay; that it would be stupid for them to keep Sam hospitalized for the week or so that it would probably take to get Sam ready for the transplant when she could be cared for just as effectively and much more at ease from the comfort of her own home.

So much for that I guess…

I knew that she wasn't ready to go home before. I knew down in my deepest heart of hearts that she wasn't ready, that something would go wrong…

Jesus, why had I let the doctors release her yesterday? Why had I given into their characteristic games of trying to shuffle people out of those doors as quickly as possible simply to clear out some of those limited bed spaces? Why couldn't I ever be a good enough mother to Sam in order to protect her from what was happening to her?

This was my fault; I knew it… all of this.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Davis?" I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was standing smack dab in the middle of a very busy ambulance bay at the same spot that I'd stepped inside of not five minutes ago when I'd arrived via the ambulance that had carried Sam, doing nothing more other than completely getting in the way.

I turned so suddenly in response to my name that the small nurse who had just called it jumped backwards slightly in her alarm… She was young, couldn't have been much older than I was although in terms of appearance I probably looked as if I had at least ten years on her… The poor kid was probably right out of college or something; fresh, naïve, and burdened with absolutely no clue what it was that the world had in store for her quite yet.

"Um… I just have some paperwork that you need to fill out if you wouldn't mind following me I can bring you into a private waiting room to wait for news on your daughter if you'd like."

I just nodded my head wordlessly towards her request, taking a step forward in order to do something that would indicate my willingness to comply to her direction as she took the lead and guided me through the deep, confusing maze of the emergency department, making me painfully aware of the fact that with every step I took, I was that much further away from Sam until finally, she paused in front of a closed door at the end of a relatively empty hallway and pushed it open, holding it for me politely as she gestured with her free arm for me to enter.

I walked past her obligingly, entering the empty waiting room, mumbling something in my wake that was supposed to be a thank you but actually came out as more of a low growl so that I couldn't help but worry that it had actually done more harm than good.

"I'll be right back with that paperwork Ms. Davis." She made her quick announcement, and this time, I simply chose to remain silent lest I chose to release another incomprehensible, potentially offensive grunt to her once again so that she would think that I was more crazy than what I actually was… Instead, I responded with my body, throwing myself downwards into the seat below me so as to quietly let her know that I wasn't planning on going anywhere anytime soon.

With a quick nod, she turned herself away from the door and back towards the open hallway, allowing the thick wooden slab of wood to swing slowly shut on its own accord until finally, it clicked shut with a resounding, final boom that sounded to me as loud as a gunshot.

My eyes didn't seem to wanna leave the image of that closing door in front of me… I was the only body in a relatively large room, there were a million different things that I could have possibly looked at, but for some reason, I just couldn't rip my eyes away from that stupid little door; that portal to the other side, that real world that could actually tell me what was happening, why it was happening, and what we could do to make it right again… if there was anything that we could do to make it right again.

I slowly felt my peripheral vision beginning to disappear around me, the corners of the projected image in front of me gradually fading to black until the only thing that I could still process with any sort of detail was that stupid door.

The walls felt as if they were closing in around me, the dry wall pressing in and crushing every crevice of my body so that even though I knew that this was all in my head, even though somewhere deep down in my conscious mind, I really did know that I was still sitting in this chair within this large, very open room, I couldn't bring myself to pull in a full, decent breath of air, I couldn't help but feel with excruciating detail, my every bone being crushed underneath the pressure of these four enclosing walls.

I could feel a thin layer of sweat beading across the surface of my forehead, my chest felt incredibly tight, my head heavy with the pressure of lack of oxygen… I tried to call out for help, I tried to beg somebody to come here and do something before I positively died, but I couldn't get enough air into my lungs to utter so much as a single sound.

My entire body went numb all at once, falling completely limp as I slid off of the chair that I had previously been sitting in and onto the floor, landing on my knees first before the rest of me slowly teetered sideways until I was flat on my back.

My heart was pounding between my ears at such an alarmingly fast rate that I couldn't even distinguish the spaces between the different heartbeats.

Great… it would be just my luck to sit here all by myself in an empty room and drop dead of a freaking heart attack or… whatever the hell this was. That's what this felt like… or at the very least, it's what I imagined a heart attack felt like… Either way, one thing I knew for sure was that I was dying; there was no doubt in my mind that I was absolutely dying…

That tunnel vision that I had been previously experienced began to fade even more than it already was until my eyes were barely open so much as a crack and the rest of my senses, well they just shut off completely. I couldn't hear anything around me; I couldn't even feel my own body anymore.

In front of me a blurry image, a sudden motion infiltrated the otherwise still that seemed to be the only thing that could have possibly caught my attention.

In the end, it was once again that stupid fucking door; that door that had put me in this very position to begin with that swung open again, inspiring me to hold out for just a little while longer…

It opened slowly… or at least, I think that it was slow; but at this point, my entire world was moving in slow motion so I couldn't be too sure about any of that.

From my position from the floor I could only make out a few feet, although through my blurry vision, I couldn't actually see how many there were, and of course, that task wasn't made much easier when those feet started running towards me, making identifying and counting them even harder than it already was.

"Brooke?" The voice sounded distant; it was like when you watched all of those intense documentaries where the guy being interviewed doesn't want to be identified for one reason or another so they black out his face and skew his voice into this deep, elongated drawl that you can barely understand.

I vaguely recognized the fact that the source of this mysterious voice had dropped to his knees besides me, and I sure as hell had no opportunity to identify who it was as that blurriness clouding my vision quickly faded from a vague dismantling into a complete, total darkness…

Darkness… I hated using that word, truly I did. It was harsh, it was brutal, and some days, it seemed to be way too honest a depiction of my life for comfort… but recently it's been hard not to use it considering how much it dominates just about every feature of my life these days… and of course, at this point I'm speaking quite literally as first my vision failed me, and then the rest of me did as well so that I dropped; oblivious, unconscious, and probably more still than I had ever been in my entire life.

* * *

**PEYTON**

My feet were stockinged in nothing more than the oldest, rattiest slippers that I owned as I power-walked in an urgent, yet careful fashion down the length of the ER entrance, surprisingly crowded for the time of night that it was, looking for any signs of anyone that might look anything close to familiar to me.

I'd had a permanent map of Tree Hill Memorial embedded painfully in my mind since about the age of 8 or so, so that the second I passed through those obnoxiously familiar doors, I found myself not even hesitating before I turned down the hallway and straight to the receptionist desk.

Sawyer was fussing relentlessly, twisting and turning in my arms as she wailed so that every head in the place started turning towards me as we walked past… I've already pushed my luck at trying to get her to quiet down as best I could for the past half hour or so since I'd woke her up but she was pissed at me for rousing her at 3 a.m., subsequently disturbing the sleep cycle that Lucas and I had just managed to establish with her, and was currently deciding to punish me by splitting my eardrums in half with her incessant sobbing.

I trudged tiredly to the desk at the end of the hall, exhausted and completely out of breath from having just practically sprinted alongside the additional weight of my daughter, who was currently performing some sort of weird gymnastics routine in an effort to tumble out of the grip of my right arm, combined with Sawyer's diaper bag and my purse draped across the left so that by the time I reached my actual destination, I was huffing and puffing so much that I could barely speak.

"Excuse me; I'm looking for somebody who was just brought in here… the last name is Davis."

I didn't give the woman behind the desk so much as an opportunity to realize that there was somebody even in front of her before I started to speak, and although I felt slightly badly about my urgency at first, that feeling dissipated rather quickly after she gave me a glare that instantly caused me to classify her as a bitch. Without so much as a word, she turned back towards her computer, typing away what was hopefully the information that I had just given to her so that we could all get on our merry way over here.

"We have two individuals with the last name Davis in the ER right now," She responded in a monotone voice after a couple of seconds, her eyes never leaving the faint glow of her computer screen, "Are you looking for Brooke Davis or Samantha Davis?"

My heart seized up instantaneously inside of my chest… why the hell was this woman telling me that Brooke was in the hospital? No, better yet, why the hell was Brooke in the hospital at all? What had I missed in the last 20 minutes or so since Lucas had called me that had landed her here too? Because I'm more than certain that Lucas would have mentioned something about both Sam _and_ Brooke being carted off to the ER in ambulances rather than just Sam…

"Um… both?" It came out as more of a question considering my confusion, and with a bored-sounding, exaggerated drawl, Ms. Receptionist of the Year over here continued to answer my questions with merely vague interest, clearly uninterested with the fact that this frazzled, panicking person was struggling for answers directly in front of her.

"Samantha Davis is still in a trauma room; Brooke Davis is in exam room 308 in area B. Go down this hallway, make the second left, and the room will be on your right."

I didn't even bother to give her a thank you because I was too busy holding a grudge towards this woman that I was certain would last forever before I turned quickly and darted down the hall, following her instructions to the exact, not even realizing how exhausting this run was making me in my hour of panic.

I found the alluded to exam room 308 rather quickly, exactly where that woman told me it would be so I guess that she wasn't as completely worthless as I'd originally thought her to be.

I didn't even bother knocking; the idea that Brooke could have been naked or dying or else in some other obscure, compromised position not even crossing my mind as I barged inside, running forward like a mad woman, stopping only after achieving several paces into the depths of the room.

Naturally, the first and the only thing that I noticed upon my entry was Brooke… She was laying delicately against a hospital bed, her back raised into a 45° angle and her feet slightly elevated as she leaned into some unknown medication through the IV in her upper forearm, and staying obediently still as to not interfere with the doctor hovering over her as she read ever one of Brooke's vital signs that were currently displaying themselves sporadically across a computer hanging above Brooke's head.

"Oh my God Brooke, what happened? Are you okay?" I rushed forwards, waddling awkwardly against the cargo still firmly clamped between my arms, throwing my bags against the ground but holding Sawyer closer to my body as I leaned into her and pulled her into an awkward embrace given our positions.

"I'm okay Peyton, I'm fine," She sighed against my shoulder in a response that was meant to represent her trying to tell me that my concern was unwarranted, "I just got a little… overwhelmed, that's all."

I pulled away from her with wide eyes, confused as to what she meant, terrified that something was desperately wrong with her although the results of my initial, superficial assessment of her allowed me to conclude that although she did look just as overwhelmed as she was telling me she was, she appeared to be otherwise fine.

"Ms. Davis?"

It was only after the woman standing right next to me without me barely even noticing her presence spoke that I recognized the fact that I had just interrupted something with my intrusion, something that was probably rather important considering the circumstances… Now that the details of my surroundings were finally starting to get clearer, I noticed the fact that Brooke's hospital gown had been pulled up around her flat stomach, the characteristic ultrasound gel smeared across her skin as the doctor hovered close between the two of us holding the arm of the ultrasound scope into the air, indicating that she was waiting to continue what I had apparently just interrupted.

"I'm sorry; it's just easier to get an image when you're still."

"Oh… um sorry… I'm sorry…" I responded awkwardly, backing slowly away from Brooke and the doctor, my feet never stopping to move once until I hit something very solid, something that felt very much so like a body…

I swiveled around quickly as to identify what else I was throwing into disarray here in this room in the two minutes or so since I'd entered, locking eyes with Julian whose forehead was wrinkled with a permanent state of worry, his eyes unnaturally saddened; devastated by everything unfair that this world had done to him in such a small period of time.

"Julian what happened?" I asked, speaking slowly through a long breath of air, careful to whisper just to ensure that I wouldn't interrupt the doctor again, who had gone back to her duties of swiveling the transducer of the ultrasound diligently across Brooke's stomach, her eyes glued professionally to the screen that projected Brooke's insides.

"The doctor said that she thinks it was probably a panic attack."

"Oh my God…" It was the only thing that I could think to mutter as I unconsciously began bouncing Sawyer on my hip through my jitters, bringing my free hand up over my mouth to cover it in my shock; I couldn't understand it, I couldn't so much as believe it… After all, it's very difficult to describe in words a grief so severe that if physically manages to render you completely unconscious… Those streamline fight or flight responses being triggered so rapidly that the only response that your body can come up with is to shut down completely…

"And the baby? Is the baby okay?"

I watched as Julian nodded his head slowly amidst a heavy sigh so that at least the slightest relief managed to lift itself up from against my chest… I couldn't imagine what would have happened to them, what would have happened to all of us if something were to happen to this baby… It was as if this child, my future niece or nephew wasn't just a piece of Julian and Brooke, but it was a piece of all of us… the final symbol of hope that we had to hold onto in these past desperate weeks.

"They said that the fetal heartbeat sounded fine, that it was strong, normal… they just wanted to do an ultrasound to get a better look, you know… just to be completely positive." Through my intense, relentless stare down of Julian, I could distinctly see his eyes glistening with the image of pre-formulating tears… he didn't even bother to wipe them away, or even try to hide them.

"And Sam?" I felt bad grilling him relentlessly in his time of utmost vulnerability but there were so many questions that I had, so many answers that I needed, and each and every one of them spewed out of my mouth in a consistent, if not stupid manner.

He paused before answering so that my heart seized up once again for what seemed like the millionth time in that night alone… and this time, there was no mistaking the single tear that actually slipped from his eye, sliding in a organized path along the bridge of his nose before rounding over his chin and falling gracefully to the ground below.

"I don't know…" He shook his head slowly, the motions of his head sending the various tears flying in every which direction, "Nobody's come out to tell us anything yet."

"Oh Julian…" I acted on pure impulse, pulling the much taller, much larger, and seemingly much more macho man who had suddenly become smaller than a child in his defenselessness into my body, squeezing Sawyer between us who leaned into the warmth of claustrophobia, too young to ever understand what was going on around her.

For a second, maybe more, Julian clung to the comfort of my arms; his body so close to mine that his tears seeped through the fabric of my shirt without so much as a second thought, before he pulled away, the sudden display of comfort from me serving to him as sort of a indication that it was safe for him to start talking; emitting everything that he had been holding in out in a manner that I never even thought Julian capable of until this moment.

"Brooke told me she thought we should have brought her back into the hospital right after dinner…" He choked out, trying desperately to control his voice into a whisper to prevent Brooke, just a few arms lengths away from hearing, "She had a fever but it wasn't bad, and me and Sam told her that it would be okay, that we should wait a few hours for her fever to break before we took her back to the hospital, and when it did, I thought… I thought that she would be okay."

"Julian it's not your fault…" I knew what he was trying to hint at with his story in an instant, and I begged him vaguely not to think like that, that it wouldn't do any good for him, Brooke, or Sam right now…

"I should have brought her in earlier! I should have listened to Brooke!" He raised his voice slightly, but still not enough to attract the focused attention of Brooke, who was concentrating solely on the image of her child displayed in front of her, "Brooke went into check on her at around 2 but she couldn't… she couldn't wake her up so she called me, and the two of us at least got her sitting up but… but Brooke felt her forehead and she was burning up and then she got Sam's temperature in at 104.2 so we called 911 but… but it might have been too late."

"Oh Julian… it's okay, she'll be okay… Sam's a strong girl, she's beat the odds before, okay, she can do it again, I know that she can… Trust me, she's a Davis, and listen, I have a bit of experience with Davis'… they're an entirely different breed, believe me."

I watched as the corners of Julian's mouth turned upwards in response to my assurance, probably out of the acknowledgment towards the fact of just how true he knew that statement to be…

"Lucas went outside to try and call a few people…" He spoke again after a couple of seconds, changing the subject in an effort to give himself a rare opportunity to stop dwelling on Sam before he ended up in the empty hospital bed right next to Brooke.

"Oh…" it was a lame response but the only one that I could think to come up with because to be completely honest, I had completely forgotten that Lucas should have even been there so that I hadn't even noticed, let alone been alarmed by his absence.

My words… excuse me, my word hadn't given Julian any space to respond, so instead, we just sort of fell off into an awkward kind of silence that I could only thank God didn't last very long before Brooke's doctor managed to turn her body in an attempt to address all three of us and bridge the gap between the quiet with her analysis of the situation at hand.

"Okay…" At the sound of her first word Julian and I, previously standing at a lazy attention, snapped our spine's stiff-straight in a perfect posture, our eyes focused with a rapt attention, our ears poised waiting for the news that we could only hope and pray would be good, "Everything seems to check out alright… as I mentioned before, the fetal heartbeat sounded fine, and the ultrasound shows me that the fetus is at a normal stage of growth for being at about seven weeks or so… of course, we'll want to monitor you extra closely for the next couple of weeks or so but your vitals are starting to lower back to baseline, the initial assessment is good… there's nothing that I see here to indicate that this attack will have any sort of negative side effects…"

I released an audible sigh of relief, and right next to me, Julian matched my expression of gratitude to the identical, the two of us more than ecstatic that Brooke and this baby were going to be okay.

But in a totally opposite fashion, Brooke didn't make any visible expressions towards the news, she didn't smile, she didn't laugh, she didn't cry… in fact, she didn't do much of anything…

Instead, she took her doctor's words as a form of an unwritten discharge; and without so much as another word, she took her self-presumed release into her own hands. Reaching upwards towards the leads that had been stuck strategically to her chest in order to monitor her heartbeat, she ripped them off of her skin as rapidly as she possibly could, simultaneously swinging her legs up and over the bed in an effort to stand up on her own accord and rid herself of this room, of this burdensome task of being a hospital patient as quickly as possible.

"Brooke…" Julian was the first person to truly recognize Brooke's intentions for what they were, which was a good thing considering Julian was probably the only person in this entire world that could ever be able to talk her out of this insanity that was going to do nothing other than land her exactly back where she started.

"Brooke what are you doing?" He asked her, rushing to grab her arms by their fragile wrists, attempting to stop her sporadic motions with a strong, yet gentle grasp.

"Let go of me Julian!" She shouted at him, thrashing her body from side to side maniacally in a frantic effort to push herself out of the confinement of his arms.

"No Brooke," Julian was upfront with his relentlessness, refusing to let up on her, overpowering her easily due to her continuously being so weak from the whole ordeal she'd just been through so that she tired quickly, falling limply into Julian's arms below, "You need to calm down and relax; you just got yourself so worked up that you made yourself pass out for Christ's sake! Jesus Brooke, do you have any idea how terrified you made me… When I walked into that waiting room and found you on the ground Brooke I thought you were… I thought you were going to… Listen, I know that you don't think that you have to take care of yourself Brooke, but please… do it for me… and for our baby and for Sam… please Brooke!"

He said all of the right things… straightforward without being too harsh, dominant without being overbearing, and for a second there, it seemed to have worked because Brooke's muscles visibly relaxed within Julian's as she pushed herself up against his chest, dug her face into the crook between his shoulder and his neck, and positively shook with that fear, that worry that I was only able to identify because I was a mother just like she was… I knew that feeling all too well.

"But Julian, what about Sam," She mumbled into his body, "How will they know to come and find me here?"

"Ms. Davis I assure you that your daughter's doctors will be able to find you right here once they have an update on her condition." Brooke's doctor attempted to play the coveted role of those final words of wisdom; of that educated voice that actually knew what she was talking about so that Brooke's chances of believing her were a lot higher than they were of believing us,

"And listen, I understand that times like these can be very stressful, but I would be much more comfortable with you being on complete bed rest until that time comes which is why I'm going to recommend that you stay here for the next couple of hours… At the very least I want to make sure we completely rehydrate you and have all of your blood work back in before I'll start to feel more comfortable with releasing you. Until then, what you need to do is rest, and to try and relax as much as you can and meanwhile I'll make sure that any information on Sam comes straight here to you first."

It seemed like more than a fair deal to me, but apparently that wasn't exactly how Brooke viewed things, because she looked less than enthusiastic about the conditions as she sunk back down onto her bed in pure defeat, crossing her arms across her chest with a blank look and an expression of silence that was representative of the very, very long wait that we all knew without a doubt that we were about to face.

* * *

In the time that followed, I managed to find myself sinking down into that familiar, yet silent frustration that I couldn't really understand but that lasted for… well, I had absolutely no idea how long…

It was minutes, who knew, maybe even hours, but all I knew for sure was that with every second that passed, even the simplest of things grew more and more into nothing beyond a source of pure agitation not only for me, but for everybody else around me as we all sat in a tight, yet completely silent circle around each other, trying desperately to feed off of any kind of positive energy that we could although we all knew that there wasn't really a lot of positive energy to be had around here… not in this room anyway, because if there was one thing around here that was for damn certain, it was that there were a lot of emotions currently filtering throughout the air around here, but none of those emotions ever seemed to be positive…

For one thing, it was 4:30 in the morning and we were all still awake… even Brooke who had been through a much more harrowing ordeal today than the rest of us had by far was sitting continuously expressionless, emotionless, in her hospital bed, with her knees folded up to her chest and her arms wrapped securely around her legs while Julian sat beside her and did the best he could to comfort her with an assuring word every now and then or a soft squeeze of her shoulder underneath his hands…

But unfortunately for us, the fact that we were all still awake right now was probably the absolute least of our concerns.

No, the biggest problem that we were currently facing was this; it was the fact that Sam had been carried through those ambulance bay doors a little over an hour and a half ago, and in that hour and a half, we had heard from Haley and Nathan who had arrived delayed after struggling to get in touch with Deb in order to drop off the too-exhausted-to-even-understand-what-was-going-on Jamie at her house, we had heard from Victoria, who managed to get here only after the ever-lingering police officers and EMTs finally had gotten everything settled back at Brooke's house and left, and we'd heard from Brooke's doctor who assured her that her blood work came back clear, that she was okay and that the baby was okay although they were still very, very determined to keep Brooke hospitalized until further notice…

But in that hour and a half, we hadn't heard so much of a whisper on Sam, and I think that I could speak for everybody here when I said that Brooke's tiny emergency room hospital suite was starting to get very small very fast… I just didn't think that I'd manage to hear, to positively feel so much silence, well… ever.

I haven't so much as taken my eyes off of Brooke for about a half an hour now… ever since Sawyer fell back asleep in my arms and I found myself with nothing else really to stare at, because I was worried about Brooke… I was really, really worried about her.

It's just that I've never seen her quiet, I've never seen her so scared; and that was the truly terrifying part of this all. I was afraid that this reaction, that this stress that she was continuously bogging herself down with, with no end in site was just going to end her up somewhere bad, somewhere where not even the fact that she was already in a hospital could help her.

When the door finally clicked open slowly, I could tell by the tentativeness behind her movements that Dr. Miller was trying to be as quiet, as careful about her entrance as was humanly possible so as to not cause a riot with her mere presence… Of course, the room had been so silent upon her arrival that she might as well have ignited dynamite in front of the door before she came inside for all of the difference it made…

"Dr. Miller," Brooke was the first to speak… Hell, from all the way across the room, the furthest person from the door, I think that Brooke might have actually even been the first person to spot the woman.

She flew to her feet so quickly from her previous spot resting against her bed that she ripped the IV needle that had still been embedded deeply into her arm clear out so that the skin that had previously housed it bled freely, sending a small trail of red down the length of her arm, pooling in the crevice between her hand and dripping steadily from her fingertips… Of course, I didn't think that she even noticed it… or else, she acted like she didn't; instead she just stood spine stiff, eyes straight ahead, watching unblinkingly as the doctor advanced even further into the room and towards her.

I stood myself, aligning myself perfectly alongside Brooke, automatically darting to reach my hand downwards to grasp onto hers in support while meanwhile, on her other side, I caught through my peripheral vision Julian as he did the exact same thing.

"Brooke… I heard about what happened… How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," She blew over the question quickly, refusing to linger so that she could quickly get down to the details that she so desperately wanted about what was currently happening to her daughter, "How is she?"

The space between Brooke's question and Dr. Miller's answer lasted days, and in that space, I felt Brooke instinctively clutch onto my hand just a little bit tighter in a natural response to her body responding to the adrenaline as it began dumping steadily into her veins, preparing her for the worst just in case that was what was about to come.

"Brooke… I think that you already know that what happened to Sam tonight has everything to do with her kidneys… We're still not completely certain exactly what caused this to happen to her tonight but I can tell you this much for absolute certain… Brooke, if we wait any longer, Sam isn't gonna make it past the next day or two… If we still want an opportunity to give Sam this kidney transplant and have her actually benefit from it… we're going to have to do it now… right now."

I think that you probably could have cut the anxiety in the room with a knife… There was this still, this silence, this sense of absolutely nothing that I'd never felt before ever in my entire life… But gradually, slowly but surely, the heads began turning until finally, every single eye in the room was focused directly on Julian.

We all knew what this meant. We all knew what this was. And we all sure as hell knew that it wasn't no coincidence that Julian had just been deemed clear to be healthy enough to make it through kidney transplantation with no problems mere hours ago from this very moment.

His eyes were focused determinedly ahead, never leaving the doctor, or even so much as blinking once… He looked ready, he looked fierce, and in a single movement, he took a step forward so that he was directly in front of her so that there would be no mistaking his movements when he set his jaw steady and nodded his head, giving her the consent that she had been looking for this entire time.

"What do I have to do?"


	61. Sleep Pretty Darling Do Not Cry

**So this chapter was starting to get really long really fast and I considered turning it into three parts instead of two but I decided against it so instead I shortened it a bit (even though it's still long as hell)… maybe I'll have a deleted scenes section at the end haha. **

**And to all of you crazy folks out there that keep shouting sequel, well I didn't have any plans for anything like that but I'm a spontaneous person so you never know with me!  
**

**Anyway, that's all I've got for now but I'm all done with school and everything like that so I've got nothing but time so hopefully that means I'll be updating a lot more! P.S. anybody who can find the Pink Floyd reference wins a prize.**

* * *

Chapter 61: Sleep Pretty Darling Do Not Cry

**Friday, February 10****th****, 2012**

**(Part II)**

**BROOKE**

Yeah, leave it up to me to be the one to have been given the absolutely squeakiest wheelchair in this entire hospital bright and early in those precarious couple of minutes before the clock struck six a.m. right smack dab in the middle of that time period between the changing nursing shifts so that the hallway was left abandoned, amplifying every rotation of these stupid wheels, every step forward that me, and of course, the nurse chauffeuring me around the hospital took… In lament terms, the pair of us sounded like a bucket of lab rats being slowly tortured and killed.

But I wasn't really in the complaining mood right now, believe it or not; after all, I wasn't really sure how the hell I had managed to convince my doctors to allow me to do this, but I had… I mean, a couple of minutes ago, they were hell bent on barely allowing me to move around in bed let alone get out of it completely…

I mean, it was clear to them and obvious to me, although I would never admit this much, that I was more exhausted than I had ever been in my entire life, and I was terrified; now not only for Sam, but for Julian as well, and aside from all of that, my head was still swarming with the residual pain of the panic attack that had put me in this situation to begin with…

But I guess my case was just special or something; obscure in a way that they've never really seen before so that when I begged them to release me from the hospital so that I could go up and see my daughter and my fiancé, both destined for a surgery for one to save the other, they obliged, knowing full well that it would have just been heartless beyond heartless to do otherwise.

The nurse in charge of my bid for freedom was pushing me down the length of the hallway all the way on the top floor of the main hospital building that was surprisingly one of the only floors in this place that I had never been to before… It was the inpatient surgical pre-op unit, the unit that Julian had been admitted into no more than an hour or so ago now…

She'd been moving at a gruelingly slow pace ever since we'd left the emergency room so that I couldn't help but think to myself that I probably could have crawled to Julian and gotten there faster, but I didn't say anything on the matter because actually, just between you and me, I kind of preferred it that way…

The thing was, I didn't even know what I was going to say to Julian once I got in there to see him… what could I possibly say that would accurately express the amount of gratitude that I was currently feeling towards his efforts to save our daughter's life? I couldn't help but feel that simply thanking him until I was blue in the face would be a relatively lame gesture, after all, I could have thanked him every single second of every single day until the day that I died and I still didn't think that I would be able to properly express to him just how much this meant to me.

"Do you think that maybe we can wait outside for a second?" I asked, marking the first thing that I'd said to this nurse since we'd left my room as she pulled up in front of a closed door that I knew out of pure gut instinct held Julian right on the other side.

"Of course Ms. Davis, just let me know when you're ready to go in." She answered my request politely, leaving me very grateful towards the fact that she wasn't asking for an explanation for my hesitancy because I truly don't' think that I would have been able to properly put into words the reasoning behind why I didn't want to, why I couldn't' possibly go in and see Julian without first mentally preparing myself for at least a minute or two.

My body was physically trembling with the stress, the anxiety, and what I needed to do right now was to regain my composure, was to calm myself down because I knew for a fact that if I went in there freaking out, it would just freak him out too and that was the absolute last thing that either of us needed right now.

I used my standard deep breathing exercises; the ones that had been failing me for months now but the ones that I continued to use any way simply as a sense of moral support… or something like that. Deep down in the back of my head, I began promising myself that everything would be okay; that Sam would be okay, that Julian would be okay; and that when this was all said and done with, that our entire family would be okay too.

The biggest problem that I was currently facing however was that every time I got so much as even close to convincing myself that the words filtering across my subconscious were right, my mind would immediately go back to everything that was currently screaming at me that they weren't… It was all of the warnings, the risks, the possibilities of failure that none of us could afford…

It couldn't have been any more than an hour ago now that Sam's nephrologist, the man that would be performing her surgery, Dr. Nguyen came into my hospital room in order to tell me about all of those things he'd strategically waited until the last minute to let me know about in an effort to keep my panic to a minimum… He spoke of a lot of technicalities, a lot of details, but the one thing that stuck out at me the most was when he let me know exactly how high of a risk this operation really was, and the strong possibility that Sam might be… what were the words he used? Oh yeah, "much too weak to sustain the pressures of such a major operation."

After that, there had been more paperwork for me to sign than I think I had ever even seen in my entire life combined… and that was saying a lot when you were the CEO of a major corporation… Anyway, there had been your standard forms; an acknowledgment towards the fact that I knew the exact reason why these doctors believed that surgery would be Sam's best option, and that they had come out to explain the situation to me, one to be sure that I understood what and why everything that was happening was indeed happening… even though I really didn't, one to ensure that I was prepared to perform the extensive post-operation care that Sam would require in the weeks that followed the operation, one that made sure that the various risks of organ transplantation were properly explained to me… Honestly, the list just went on and on and on so that eventually, I lost track of what exactly they were all meant for and my hand began to cramp from signing my name so many times…

But then they'd given me one final sheet; a single piece of paper all the way at the bottom of the pile; a consent form that left me in charge of deciding whether or not this group of doctors that I barely even knew would be allowed to take Sam into an operating room, and exchange a couple of her vital organs for ones which would actually work for her for a change…

Dr. Nguyen was careful about my decision; making sure that I thoroughly knew both of the possibilities towards my consent; that if I were to decide to actually go through with this surgery, there was more of a chance of it doing harm than good, but if I decided not to, well there wouldn't be much more that the doctors could do other than make her comfortable for the next couple of days… who knew, maybe even weeks until Sam finally succumbed to her illness…

Basically what it boiled down to was the question of whether or not I should put all of my cards on the table right here and now, or play the safe route…

In the end, the decision was easy; I mean, was there really any other option? Doing nothing didn't seem like an alternative, not to me anyway, and I sure as hell knew that it wouldn't be for Sam either…

So in the end, I gave him the signature that he needed, I extended to him my okay to follow through with this, and then, immediately following that, I kicked and screamed and begged half of the ER staff to allow me to be taken upstairs in order to visit my family… just in case it was the last time that I had the opportunity to so…

And in the end, I guess that's the story of how I ended up here.

"Are you alright Ms. Davis?"

I guess I had allowed more preparation time to pass than I had initially planned on doing, resulting in my zoning out just long enough to make this poor nurse afraid that I had gone deep into another fit of anguish or something.

"Um… yeah," I nodded, simultaneously attempting to shake my head from the daze that I had allowed myself to fall into, "Yeah, I'm ready to go in now."

Of course, I wasn't really sure just how accurate my own statement was, but with a jolt, the nurse began pushing me forward once again through the door that she was holding open with her free arm so that I knew there would be no turning back now.

The simple trip from the door to the opposite end of the room where Julian was laying flat on his back in bed seemed to have last a lifetime, but in that lifetime, my eyes never left his form once, especially after he finally recognized my presence in the room and lifted his body up slightly so that his eyes met mine, leading that characteristically dopy grin to form across his entire face.

"Brooke…" His voice was groggy; his single word slurred obscenely so that I knew in an instant that the doctors had already began pumping him full of the drugs that would eventually help to knock him out cold in order to have one of his kidneys taken right out of him.

I returned his expression genuinely, the idea that he was so drugged up that he probably wouldn't have even been able to notice how worried I was at the moment actually making me feel better, more relaxed as I was pushed directly up against the side of his bed, leaving me free to reach over and pick up one of his hands inside of my own; the appendage massive as compared to mine, but still somehow fitting inside of it perfectly all the same.

"I'll leave you two alone for a few minutes okay?" The nurse leaned in close to me and spoke quietly, allowing me to nod my head slowly in a silent expression of gratitude towards her statement as she turned and left the room, closing the door slowly behind her so that I was left very aware of the fact that Julian and I were currently all alone.

"Hi," My voice cracked feebly as I offered him my best greeting; quite lame as compared to all of the things that I actually did want to say to him in this moment.

"How messed up is this?" Julian seemed to have ignored, or else completely missed my statement so that I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow up to him, genuinely confused about what exactly he meant and whether or not that had been a product of all of the drugs they were currently pumping him full of, or if he was actually trying to get at something here.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that our entire family is admitted into Tree Hill Memorial Hospital right now… How messed up can the three of us get, right?"

I couldn't help the smirk that produced itself across my face amidst the seriousness of Julian's statement because as right as he was, as messed up as this situation might have been, one of the things amongst the millions that I have always loved about us was how much we made dysfunctional work… And Julian was right; this was about as dysfunctional as dysfunctional could possibly get… so much so that it was almost comforting; if that made any sense.

"Are you feeling okay Brooke?" He asked me after I chose not to respond to his comment and was forced to remember that I was here for Julian, that I couldn't get trapped up inside of my own thoughts… So I put a smile on my face through a set of watery eyes and I nodded my head, opening my mouth in an attempt to physically answer his question… The words "I'm fine" had just begun rolling off my tongue, honestly they were, but just as suddenly, I was choked up by them and they never came out, instead being replaced by the only thing that I could truly think to say to Julian right now.

"Thank you Julian." I spluttered wildly, my words so incomprehensible amidst all the emotion that I was surprised that Julian was able to understand them at all.

"What do you mean?" Now it was Julian's turn to be confused, apparently alarmed by why it was exactly that I was thanking him; an action that was surprising to me considering what it was that he was about to do not only for Sam, but for me as well.

"For doing all of this… for giving this to Sam… I just wanted you to know how much it means to me before… you know… they take you into surgery."

He fell completely silent for a moment, but I quickly learned that that wasn't for his lack of having something to say… Instead, his silence was procured as an effort to build up his strength as he focused all of his energy and his limited power at the moment to push his exhausted body upwards and into a seated position looking directly at me so that he knew that whenever he said whatever it was that he had to say right now, I would know just how much he meant it.

"Brooke you don't have to thank me, you know that." He mumbled, trying desperately, but only achieving limited success, to remove the cloudiness of medication out of his voice so that I knew that I was serious when he spoke, and I knew that he was… honestly, I did.

"Julian… God, I can't thank you enough… I can't think of anything else to say that can let you know how much I love you for doing this… And don't you dare say that I don't have to thank you, Christ Julian, you're giving my daughter your kidney… of course I have to thank you." I waved off his sudden desire to achieve a sense of modesty because it wasn't warranted, not from where I was standing anyway.

"No… I'm giving _our_ daughter a kidney, and believe me when I tell you that there isn't a single other person in this entire world that I would rather be doing this for… Except maybe you, but that's why I have two kidneys right?"

I laughed heartily, mostly out of Julian's ability to make me smile and to make me feel better no matter how seemingly hopeless this situation that we had currently found ourselves in seemed to be, and he managed to match my expression with the softest of smiles that lingered briefly, before slowly fading into that same look of seriousness that he'd been giving me before; that look that told me that he wasn't quite done with me yet.

"But really Brooke, I'll be fine, and so will Sam… I'll make sure of that one, I promise, so you don't have to worry about the two of us, okay?"

"I'll always worry about you Julian… and Sam too; that's my job." I could feel the tears start to reform a thin layer across my eyes for what seemed like the millionth time in the past five minutes alone, and I couldn't help but think that if this was any indication of what the next couple of hours were going to bring, well then I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, "But do you think you can do me one more favor?"

"Sure," He responded dully, falling back down onto his mattress, no longer able to hold himself completely upright amidst his exhaustion.

"Can you take care of Sam for me while you're up there? I mean… watch out for her and all... make sure that she stays okay?" It was a stupid request; pointless really and I knew that. After all, not only did I know that Julian would be positively unconscious and not capable of much of anything while he was in surgery, I didn't even know whether or not he would even be in the same room as Sam… Hell, I didn't even know whether or not they'd be on the same damn floor… At this point to me, his answer would serve strictly as a sense of comfort; the one thing that would be able to get me through these next couple of hours.

"I'll take care of her Brooke… I promise."

It was a promise that I think we both knew that Julian had absolutely no control over, but still, I somehow believed him, and I knew that in his promise, he would do absolutely everything that he could while trapped away in that la-la-land of anesthesia to make sure that Sam was taken care of, and that she would be just fine.

"Um… excuse me, Ms. Davis, Mr. Baker?" It was the same nurse that had taken me here standing in the doorway except this time, she wasn't alone… Instead she stood amidst a large group of scrub-laden individuals who all looked identical in that I couldn't even see their faces behind those sterile surgical masks and goofy looking hats that you always saw surgeons walking around wearing, an indication of their readiness to take Julian away from me.

"They're ready to take you upstairs to surgery now Mr. Baker."

I turned back over towards Julian, my face frozen with fear, my blood suddenly stinging with an icy chill through my veins at the reality of this all, and I could tell that my reaction resonated clearly across my very face because Julian responded quickly, his expression contorted into a small frown as he reached an unsteady arm slowly upward and grazed a finger across my cheek in order to wipe away one of the tears that had fallen down it.

"It will be okay Brooke. Everything is going to be okay." He nodded his head firmly in time with his voice, trying to filter some of his own assurance onto me as the multitude of nurses and orderlies began filtering around him in an attempt to prepare him for the move, making my continuing presence by his side more of an obstruction than anything else.

"I love you Julian." I mumbled my endearment into his ear, pulling my body up and out of the wheelchair that I had been previously sitting in just so that I could lean over his bed and wrap my arms firmly around his neck. I held on tightly, for a relatively long time, trying desperately to store some of the comfort that I was currently feeling from his mere arms into my veins so that I could use it to sustain me for the next couple of hours until I got to experience it again.

"I love you too Brooke… I'll see you in a couple of hours, okay?"

I nodded in time with the familiar echo of his bed being unlocked from the burden of its breaking mechanism as it rang through my ears, a wordless indication that everybody was ready to continue on with this, at this point, they were just waiting for me…

So I forced myself to move quickly as badly as I wanted to slow down, my hands grazing gently across either side of his firm jaw line, pointy with the beginning shadow of a short stubble, as I leaned forward, just barely skimming my lips against his own in the best act of gratuitous love that I could manage while still obliging to the ever-important rules of hospital sterility…

The bed jolted out from underneath me before I even had time to lift myself back into an upright position, Julian being pushed forward and out from the room while meanwhile I was stuck firmly behind, my fingers clutching persistently to his own until the joints of my arm could no longer sustain the strain placed on our increasing distance from one another and our hands slipped from around one another's with a rush of wind, symbolic in its finality of my being left alone as Julian rounding the corner and straight out the door, disappearing right before my very eyes with a gulp and a sudden uncomfortable awareness of just how empty this place actually was.

I took several carefully regulated, almost painfully deep breaths in my effort to calm myself down as I forced myself to cut out all conscious thought towards the physically world so as to actually give myself an opportunity to regain a sense of myself again and stifle the thousands of different emotions that were currently running frantically amok inside of my very own head.

But I didn't have time to linger, I didn't have the capacity of space or time to waste; I knew that… because I knew that if Julian was being taken up to surgery right now, well then it would only be a matter of time before Sam would be too, and I needed to see her before that happened… I just had to.

From my position safely secured back down into my own personal transportation device, I swiveled my head around into a complete 180, facing back towards the nurse standing directly behind me who I was sure was probably starting to seriously regret the fact that she had been assigned the unfortunate task of carting my ass around this entire hospital all morning, hoping that she wouldn't mind that I had just one more request to make of her before she was relieved of all of her duties.

"Do you think that you could maybe take me upstairs to see my daughter?"

"Of course Ms. Davis," She didn't seem particularly annoyed by my request from the outside, but you never can tell with these people; if I've said it once, I've said it a million times before; they all have fantastic poker faces.

I started to feel those same nervous jitters that I had been from before I'd gone in to see Julian the second that we began our short journey three floors downwards to the medical ICU where I knew that Sam was currently being held… Of course this time, they were probably about a thousand times worse than before judging by the fact that I had absolutely no idea what the hell state Sam would be in once I did actually get in to see her.

The mood inside of Sam's room couldn't have been more different than it had been within Julian's… For one thing, it was bright inside; almost overwhelmingly so… but that was something that I had already learned from the unfortunate fact that Sam had been spending a lot of time in the ICU these past couple of months; they always kept all of the lights on because you never knew when something was going to happen that required one to act fast, and the split second required to stop and turn on the lights could have meant the split second between life and death.

For another thing, we weren't exactly alone in the room either… there was a young nurse alongside Sam, injecting some unknown drug into one of the seemingly millions of lines that were currently hanging above her head… She was muttering something incomprehensible from her position on her bed, rambling up to the nurse as was so characteristic of Sam when these doctors pumped her full of drugs like this so that I just had to pause for a moment and take it all in.

My heart swelled with an instant feeling of relief... Besides the fact that it appeared that Sam was being well taken care of she was awake, and she was talking, and at this point, that was all I could have really asked for to help all but banish the previous notion that I'd had that Sam had been existing with one foot positively in death's door since the last time that I'd spoken to her.

I locked eyes with the nurse that had been taking care of Sam briefly before, with a short nod of her head to acknowledge my presence, she turned back towards Sam and whispered something softly towards her that I couldn't hear, but the way she pointed towards me as she spoke let me know that she was talking about me… a thought that I had confirmed when Sam's head turned towards me slowly, our eyes meeting, her expression remaining unchanged, her being much, much too weak to achieve much more of anything else.

In my eagerness to be by her side as quickly as possible, I grasped the large back wheels of the chair that I was sitting in and propelled myself forward, successfully completing no more than two full rotations before the nurse that I had been previously pushing me interrupted my brief bought of independent movement and overtook the rest of my journey, bringing me straight back to Sam's side.

Her eyes had closed again already, her being completely unable to leave them open for more than a couple of seconds at a time as I reached down and carefully picked up one of her hands, gently cradling it between me own as I strategically studied the taut skin, scarred artistically with the lines and marking of the multiple needle sticks that have added up over the months and the remnants of all of her chemotherapy treatments that had eventually gotten so intense and so numerous that they had begun to physically eat away at her very skin.

I flipped her small hand over within my own so that her palm faced upwards towards me, making me wish more and more with each passing second that I could properly read that lifeline precariously sliced down the middle of her skin so that I could make a prediction towards how exactly all of this was gonna go… or if not, at the very least, learn how to edit it so that I could make it just a little bit longer.

And all at once, that familiar pang of fear stabbed once again at my already painfully aching heart.

"Brooke… what happened to you?" Her words strung together in an endless stream that made it difficult to distinguish between them, but I'd learned to speak Sam's language a long time ago… even when that language was fogged by a mind clogged by drugs and disease… I guess that's why I knew in an instant exactly what it was that she said, and that she was asking me why it was I had just been rolled up to her in a wheelchair although I'm not gonna lie, I was counting on the fact that she'd be so incoherent that she wouldn't even notice up until this moment…

"Nothing Sam," I spoke as convincingly as I possibly could, tightening my grip on her hand as to try and resonate at least a sense of truth amidst the lie to her through my fingertips in order to make it more likely for her to actually believe me, "I was just a little bit dehydrated, that's all… but I'm fine, I'm gonna be fine, and so is the baby, so for now, I just want you to worry about yourself alright?"

I sugarcoated the story as much as I possibly could; not really wanting to go into too much detail with Sam about my ailments at the moment considering the fragile state that she was already in.

"How about you, how are you feeling Sam? Are you in any pain at all?" I changed the subject quickly without so much as giving her a chance to respond to my previous statement so as to not give her an opportunity to wrap her head around the fact that I was currently in the hospital just as she was.

"No," Sam mumbled with a shake of her head, succumbing to the trap that I had strategically placed her in just like I knew that she would, "No, I can't really feel anything…"

"That's good," I nodded absently, wondering how much detail I should go in with her, wondering how much she already knew, ultimately deciding that she deserved the truth; all of it, "Well it's because they're getting ready to take you up into surgery Sam, so that's probably your feeling so… well… loopy right now."

"Surgery?" Her confusion was apparent, and I couldn't help but think that either these doctors told her absolutely nothing about what was happening to her or short term memory loss was just one of the many side effects of the combinations of all of these medications being relentlessly driven into her veins… It was probably a little bit of both now that I really thought about it.

"Yeah honey… Do you remember when I told you that Julian was going to give you a new kidney to help make you feel better again? Well they're gonna do that tonight, and when you're all done, you'll be better again… you'll feel better again, alright?"

I ended my mini-speech as an open response, hoping for an answer from her that I never got as Sam retained a strict silence which I knew was warranted for a multitude of reasons… the biggest source of my worry at this point was that I couldn't quite identify what exactly that reason was.

"Sam… Are you okay?" My biggest concern at the moment was that her silence was provoked by some sort of unbearable pain, but she didn't give me much; in fact, the only thing that she did was close her eyes and relax backwards into her mattress, leaving me just as clueless as ever towards what she was actually feeling.

"Brooke… Am I dying?" Her words hit me over the head from so far out of the blue that I literally stumbled backwards.

"No Sam, you're not dying…" I hoped that she was too incoherent to catch the stutter of uncertainty that presented itself inside of my voice… The thing was, somewhere in the back of my mind, Dr. Nguyen's voice telling me the possibilities of Sam being put to sleep for surgery and never waking up turned on in a repetitive loop like a broken record, choking me up even more than I already was, "You're going in to get better again… you'll be fine, you're gonna be just fine."

"I'm sorry Brooke…" She mumbled up to me, her short attention span not allowing her to linger for too long on a single topic, instead simply choosing to move on to the next one with her eyes hazy with exhaustion, the whites now red with the combination of emotion and the fact that just about every blood vessel in her entire body, including the most miniscule ones within her eyes were currently collapsing under the pressure of her depleted blood supply.

"Sorry for what, Sam?"

"For this," She sighed and I felt my response formulate in the image of my mouth turning into a steep frown as wrinkled worry lines spanned across the length of my forehead, "For everything…"

"Sam… you have nothing to be sorry for, do you hear me honey? So don't you dare be sorry for anything," I spoke sharply, practically forcing her to accept the terms of my statement, "Besides, you shouldn't be worrying about any of that stuff alright? For now all I want you to focus on is getting better."

"Will you stay with me?" The mere meekness of her voice was enough to nearly cause me to lose what little emotional stability that I had left, but I choked back the tears, bit back all of my hesitation, and gave her a believable nod of assurance.

"Of course I'll stay with you Sam." I promised her, clutching onto her hand even tighter than I had been before as I reached up with my free hand to rub soothing circles back and forth across the top of her head.

"The entire time?"

I sighed, pausing briefly in a manner that I could only hope Sam wouldn't notice, mainly because I didn't want her to pick up on my hesitancy brought on by the fact that I knew that there was absolutely no way in hell that they were going to allow me to stay with Sam the whole time… I didn't want to lie to her, but at the same time, she was already in such a vulnerable state…

"I'll stay with you for as long as I can Sam, but I don't think that I'll be allowed to go into surgery with you… But I don't want you to worry okay? Julian is going to be with you the entire time, and he's gonna take good care of you."

"And you're sure that I'm not dying?" Her insistency towards returning to the topic of her potential death was leaving me with an uneasy feeling deep in the pit of my stomach… I kept thinking back to all of those stories from all of those news reports and TV shows and things like that about how people acquired this paranormal ability, this sense by which they knew the day, the exact second even, that they were going to die… I just couldn't help but fear that that was exactly what Sam was feeling right now…

"I'm positive Sam… you'll be fine… And while you're upstairs, I'll be waiting for you right down here; me and all of the people already waiting downstairs in the waiting room to see you… Victoria's down there, and Peyton and Haley and Lucas and Nathan… you've got an entire army pulling for you kid… And then, right after you wake up, I'm gonna be right here at your side with you…"

"Promise?"

"Yeah Sam," I breathed with assurance just to prove that there was no way in hell that I would be anywhere other than directly at her side the second that she came out of surgery… whatever state she may be in when that happened, "Yeah I promise."

The softest of knocks at the door caused my head to swivel back behind him towards the direction of the hallway… Dr. Miller was standing in the door frame, a small transport team so similar to the one that I had just seen mere moments ago with Julian standing right behind her so that I knew that they were ready to take Sam away from me…

My face fell so dramatically downward that you could have seen it from a mile away… It was too soon. I wasn't ready to leave her, I wasn't ready to send her away; I wasn't ready to accept the fact that this could very well be the last time that I saw Sam alive…

"Brooke, how are you feeling?" It was the first question that she asked but I couldn't help but wish that she'd just skip over all of the technicalities of it all and cut straight to the point.

"Better, I feel better." I spoke quickly, wishing to pass this part as quickly as humanly possible, but I couldn't help but notice that as I spoke, my heartbeat began to quicken once again in that familiar feeling of overwhelming terror just like before so that I was starting to get nervous that my lie would physically display itself with me once again passed out face down on the floor… Of course this time it would be much, much worse considering I was right in front of my daughter and seeing that was definitely the last thing that she needed right now…

So I begged myself to relax for the sake of Sam if nothing else, leaning back into my wheelchair so that my tense muscles and the thin layer of sweat that was currently beading off of my forehead wouldn't be too obvious.

"Okay good… good…" I could tell by the awkwardness behind her voice that she didn't quite believe me, but she probably knew that if she didn't start talking about what was going on with Sam soon; I would probably explode with anticipation… So in the choice between self-destruction and another panic attack, she concluded that the panic attack would be least detrimental to my health and she prioritized, cutting to the chase immediately.

"We're going to move Sam upstairs so that we can begin her pre-op now Brooke… I tried to convince Dr. Nguyen to let you stay with her until they were completely ready to take her into the OR but both him… and your OB had very… well let's say… strong opinions against that."

I exhaled in my disappointment, still nodding in an effort to profess my understanding towards why they were trying to prevent me from staying with Sam, but I think that the way that I continued to clutch onto Sam's right hand expressed the fact that I didn't really understand it… I didn't understand it at all.

Still, I decided to move on my own accord, taking matters into my own accord as I wheeled myself out of the way and into the corner of the room, but still close enough to Sam to maintain my hold onto her hand as a small group of four or five people filtered in and around us, getting ready to move her up and towards the surgery that would either save her life or end it… whichever came first I guess.

"How long will she be up there?" I asked airily, my eyes staring determinedly at Sam as I watched her struggle in her weakness to help the orderlies as much as she could as they attempted to transport her into a more mobile straight while, through my peripherals, I could see Dr. Miller approaching me slowly from the side.

"That's hard to say," She sighed, coming to a complete stop directly at my side, standing with her arms crossed, looking straight ahead just as I was, straight towards Sam, "She won't go into surgery too much longer after Julian so they can be up there for anywhere from four hours to seven or eight hours… But the second that they're done Brooke, Dr. Nguyen and I will both be down here to find you… I can assure you that much."

"Will you be up there with her?" My head swiveled to face her immediately with her announcement that she would be here to inform me of both Sam's and Julian's fate at the end of their surgeries, filling me with a sense of relief that that must mean that she would be in the operating room with them, that they would at least have somebody that they knew, somebody that they trusted to be there with them.

"I won't be in the actual room with her Brooke, no." My heart sunk, that brief feeling of joy dissipating immediately before it even had so much as time to settle, "But I'm going to check up on her as much as I can, and I'll come down to update you… She's gonna be taken good care of Brooke, I can promise you that much."

There was a jolt, a tremendous shift whose reverberations I could feel from underneath my seat as Sam's bed was pulled away from its previous resting place and slowly inched closer and closer towards the door so that my heart began to pound harder and harder than it already was with every step forward that the orderlies took.

"Thank you Dr. Miller." I spit out my expression of gratitude randomly and abruptly, the idea being that I felt as if I had to let her know just how much I appreciated everything that she's been doing for me now considering that if she came back out here in the next couple of hours telling me news that I absolutely did not want to hear, I might be singing a very, very different tune, "For everything that you've done… for me, and for Sam."

She gave me a quick look, accurately assuming that my words were serving as almost a last will and testament to all of the hard work she'd put into my daughter just in case her best efforts just weren't enough.

"They're gonna do everything that they for Sam, Brooke," She spoke gently, attempting to transfer at least a little bit more hope than what I was currently expressing towards the situation into my body, "I have a lot of faith in Sam… She's proved to us more than once just how strong she can be… And just for the record, you don't have to thank me for anything."

I kind of just stared at her blankly for a couple of seconds as Sam was wheeled right past me closer and closer towards the door… Her modesty fascinated me to no end; I mean… of course I had to thank her…

But amidst our different feelings on the situation, I just nodded, unable to establish much more of a response as my mind began to shift away from my desire to thank this doctor and towards my desire to keep the promise that I had made Sam mere moments ago to stay with her for as long as I was possibly allowed to before I was physically ripped away from her.

I stood abruptly out of my wheelchair, my immediate intentions of following Sam straight out into the hallway apparently obvious considering the response I got; a vague expression of protest from the nurse that had been pushing me around all morning, and a brief moment of tension between Dr. Miller and I as her muscles firmed and her face contorted into a look expressing her confusion of just how she should respond…

"Brooke, wait…" The gentleness behind Dr. Miller's words was ultimately the only thing that stopped me, and I turned to face her, ready to actively fight against whatever she could dish out to try and stop me, ready to physically push past her and run right out the door if I had to, but much to my surprise, she never said anything else…

Instead, she took several steps closer towards me, much to my surprise, continuing her motions right past my standing form and towards the empty wheelchair where she strategically removed the IV bag from the pole that had previously been dangling right above my head, increasing my mobility before I ripped the entire needle right out of my arm… again.

She turned to walk alongside me, picking up a blanket en route to my side, draping it across the backs of my shoulders in an effort to protect the modesty that I clearly didn't even care about considering the fact that I had been about two seconds away from darting into the middle of the hallway in a hospital gown who's only cover to my otherwise exposed as was my damn underwear… And despite the fact that it had only been mere seconds ago now that this woman was telling me that I didn't have to thank her for everything that she's ever done for me in our short time of knowing each other, I was suddenly overwhelmed with my desire to do it all over again.

But I remained silent, completely unable to properly formulate the words that I needed, instead hoping that my eyes would express my gratitude towards her understanding before I ultimately looked away, continuing what I had started as I took several more steps towards the door, the doctor following close behind me with one hand on my shoulder to support my shaky steps and the other dangling that damn bag of saline slowly dripping into my veins high above my head so that it would actually be affective in getting to where it needed to go.

"Hey Paul," She addressed the man at the head of Sam's stretcher that I didn't know, watching as he paused at the sound of his name, "Do you think you can just give us a minute or two before you take her?"

He nodded his response, politely taking a couple of steps backwards, signaling for the rest of his orderly team to follow suite so that I was left with a descent amount of space to advance towards Sam while meanwhile Dr. Miller stayed several paces behind in order to give me as much privacy as I could get at the moment.

"Hey Sam," I acknowledged her again, reaching down to maintain that former grip that I had on her hand as she opened her eyes and craned her neck upwards so that she could look at me while I spoke to her, "They're gonna take you upstairs now and I'm not gonna be allowed to go upstairs with you, but I need you to remember that I'm gonna be right down here waiting for you when you get out so when you wake up feeling all better with your brand new kidney, I'm gonna be the first person that you see, okay?"

I offered her a watery smile alongside the best words of wisdom that I could offer her, watching as she responded with a single nod of her head, the only thing that she could really force her muscles to do in her weakened state.

I paused in my thoughts, unable to properly come up with anything else that I could say, instead just watching her carefully, battling with the confusion running rampant through my head towards the idea of how much I didn't want them to take her away from me even though I knew just how much they had to.

"Brooke," The finality behind Dr. Miller's soft utterance of my name told me that it was time; that I had to let go, that I couldn't hold onto her forever no matter how much I may have wanted to, "They have to take her upstairs now."

I nodded my head in response to her words but my actions reflected an entirely different understanding of the matter considering that instead of backing away, my subconscious leaned me in even closer.

"I have to go now Sam… but you'll be fine… You'll be fine and I'll be right here waiting for you the entire time… I love you so much, okay? Make sure that you remember that."

"I will," She muttered her assurance, her eyes slowly closing against the strain of her exhaustion, "I love you too…"

I turned away from her quickly, knowing that if I kept looking down at her, I would no longer be able to suppress the tears that I was barely controlling to begin with…

But I regained my composure quickly because I knew that I had to, I knew that I was on a time limit here, so I leaned forward, placed a gentle, comforting kiss directly on the side of her head closest to me at her temple and stood myself back upright; and finally, with a nod on my head, and one final squeeze of her hand, I let go completely as to let them know that I was as ready as I would ever be for them to take her away from me.

* * *

In my entire life, I don't think that sixty whole minutes had ever felt as long as they started to feel after I'd begun living my live strictly on a minute-to-minute basis…

And now, they usually say that keeping busy makes the time fly by faster, but I can tell you this much; if that was anything even close to true, with all of the commotion that I had going on in the past hour, sixty minute should have felt like sixty seconds to me…

But it didn't… instead; it felt more like sixty hours… sixty days even.

But the time was the time, I knew that; and the evidence never lied as the clock on the wall of the waiting room that I had been transferred into following my release from the hospital rang in its incessant ticking, marking the one hour point to the exact since I'd stepped foot in this stupid room so that suddenly, it was painfully obvious to me that I still had to go on at this point was the news that Dr. Miller brought out to me about fifteen minutes ago now to tell me that Sam had officially been brought into the OR and that both her and Julian were doing just fine… for now.

"Hey… how are you holding up?" My head snapped up in response to the first noise that had found its way into this room for a long time now, and the source of the voice wasn't exactly difficult to find… After all, aside from me, Haley was the only person still awake amidst the crowd as the first rays of sunlight began to peak themselves up from behind the closed blinds of the limited number of windows here in the waiting room.

"What?" I responded bleakly to Haley's question after several seconds of silence in between with what I knew must have been a blank, even stupid look splayed across my face that I probably would have paid money to see given the circumstances were different.

"I was just wondering if you were holding up alright." She repeated her original sentiment par to my request, pulling herself up from the seat across the room that she had previously been sitting in so that she could walk closer to me, where she eventually dropped herself down into the vacant chair adjacent to where I was sitting that had previously been establishing an empty space between Victoria and I.

"I'm not really sure to be completely honest with you." I expressed my confusion towards the matter as best as I could using the limited amount of words I managed to come up with, "I just can't help but think that there's something more that I can be doing here other than just sitting here waiting."

"Oh Brooke…" She sighed and extended her arm out to me, wrapping it around the backs of my shoulders so that she could pull me closer into her, "Waiting is the hardest part, I know that, but you're doing absolutely everything that you can… just make sure that you keep telling yourself that right now, alright? It's the most important thing that you can do."

Her calmness towards the situation, her aura of relaxation poured through my very veins as if she was literally transferring some of her energy over towards me, and honestly, if it was anybody else saying all of this to me I don't think that it would have had anything even close to the same effect as it did now…

Haley was having a hard time right now; I think we all knew that, but what I don't think that people saw as much was just how strong she was through it too, because I knew exactly what it was like to feel as if it were impossible to so much as wake up in the morning so that I also knew how much it took for her to simply do that, let alone continue to stand up and dish out all of this advice to me.

"How do you do it Hales?" I finally asked her only after I'd managed to find my voice again, "How do you ignore that voice inside of your head that's constantly telling you that your entire world is shot to hell and there's nothing that you can ever do about it?"

"Are you kidding," She answered my question with a small laugh, but one by which was accompanied by a shake of her head as to enforce the seriousness, "Have you seen me lately Brooke? I don't do it… I don't do it at all."

I offered her a sheepish look of apologetic concern, sorry that I brought up such a seemingly sensitive subject, afraid that I had sparked a situation that she simply didn't want to talk about… But she didn't respond in a manner that I'd expected her to either way, instead, she just shook her head softly and averted her eyes away from me, staring blankly straight ahead at the bland wall with that distinct glaze of concentration prominent in her eyes; an expression that lingered momentarily before she turned to face back towards me.

"Why?" Her jaw dropped unexpectedly as if she were surprised by my announcement or something, "Have you been feeling that way a lot lately, Brooke? I mean… it's normal to a certain degree, especially for somebody in your situation to feel overwhelmed at times, but if it's always there… if it never goes away, you shouldn't keep that inside… trust me."

"I don't know Hales," I muttered, rubbing my flat palm clear across my forehead in an effort to ease the throbbing pain that had suddenly erupted between my temples as I attempted to distinguish and express towards Haley exactly what it was that I was feeling with little to absolutely no success, "I've just been feeling so… I don't know… broken lately, and no matter what I ever do about any of this, something always manages to come up… I can't get away from it Hales; not any of it."

I felt her as she shifted up against me, her hand moving slowly up and down across my upper arm in a motion that I translated into an open invitation for me to turn and bury my face deep into her shoulder where I was welcome to release everything that had been building up behind my eyes for hours now.

"You know Brooke, the other day I was having kind of a hard time, and I ran into Jamie… I didn't know what to do… He asked me if I was upset because something happened to you and Sam… I didn't want him to worry so I lied to him… I changed the subject and told him that I was just happy because it was right after you told me that you were pregnant and all… I hope that's alright by the way, that I told him."

With a short grin and a subconscious hand lifting up to graze across my stomach, I gave her the shortest of nods, indicating to me that it was alright, that in fact, it was even more than alright…

"Anyway, he was so excited when I told him that he was gonna have another little cousin… I mean, I wish that you could have seen him Brooke," I turned towards Haley, appreciative for the words of comfort that she was expressing to me right now but at the same time, confused as to why exactly it was that she was telling me this story, "It just made me think about things you know… put everything into perspective."

The clarity of her purposes swiftly began shining through her eyes, and all at once, I understood… I understood it all.

"I don't even know how it was that I ever forgot it, but seeing Jamie there, it made me realize just how much all of the people in my life really mean to me… my friends, my family, all of them… It gets hard sometimes Brooke, I know that it gets hard when you start to dwell on just how unfair it is that we're only given a limited amount of time to spend with the people that we love, but when that happens, you just have to remember that instead of focusing on that, you have to celebrate the fact that you've ever had it at all… This life that we've made for ourselves, Brooke… none of it was ever a mistake, remember that… And the next time you see Julian, and you see Sam, and when you hold that beautiful baby in just a couple of months from now for the first time, well let's just say you'll remember the reason that your world keeps on spinning."

I forced my eyes away from hers, feeling my face contort with a prominent look of confusion as my eyes squinted to half-lidded concentration and my brows furrowed below their natural line of scrimmage… It was just that I was desperately trying to envision a moment in the future where I wouldn't feel this utterly hopeless, this confused, but I just couldn't…

All I could do was hope and pray that Haley was right, that one day, this would all pass, that it would go away, that I would simply wake up some morning with my heart no longer feeling heavy, my eyes no longer being tired…

I guess it was just that that was a future that was hard to believe when it seemed as if there was absolutely no end in sight.

"You should try and get some sleep Brooke." She took my lack of a response as an end of our conversation, and amidst my best attempts at covering my exhaustion by stifling the steep yawn that I had felt originating at the very base of my throat for several minutes now, she'd caught the phoniness of it all, and being Haley, always keeping my best interests in mind in the face of a crisis, she called me out on it; and not even I, the master of deception that I was, could pretend that she wasn't right.

"I'm just gonna rest my eyes for a minute." I tried to play my movements down, but I said it behind a strong yawn and the reality behind my lie wasn't fooling anybody, not even me.

"You do that Brooke," She smirked down at me as I buried my head deeper into the crevice of her shoulder… I had never noticed before this moment just how comfortable her appendage actually was, "Do you need anything before you go to sleep?"

"No," I mumbled into her shoulder, feeling my eyes slide further and further shut as she began dragging her hand still draped lazily across my shoulder up and down across my upper arm, instilling a sense of comfort in the friction of warmth throughout my entire body, "No I think that I'm just gonna sleep."

"Okay…" My announcement struck her silent in her respects of trying desperately to fulfill my desire for an undisturbed sleep, but it became apparent to me the second that my eyes were closed, that my body had other plans…

Have you ever been so utterly exhausted before that your body refused to do absolutely anything, including falling asleep? I only ask because that's exactly what I was experiencing right now, as instead of drifting off into a fantasy-fueled, peaceful slumber, I fell into that strange in between; the relentless limbo between being asleep and awake, the parallel universe where the only thing that you have room to actually do is think.

Behind my closed eyes, all I saw was a clock; the symbol of my mortal enemy of time; and in my overly exhausted, overly worried mindset, I swear to God, the damn thing was actually moving backwards, creating the illusion that this was actually taking even more time than it already actually was.

I fucking hated clocks; I hated clocks because I hated time; hated it with a passion because, and I'll swear to this, they always worked against me. Whenever I needed them to speed up, all they did was slow down, and when I wanted nothing more than for them to slow down, they sped up…

I'm really starting to get convinced that Father Time over here does this on purpose; that he simply gets his kicks throwing me for a loop just to see how much he could mess with me before I really went nuts… After all these days, these weeks, these months… they've all past by so damn fast; too fast if you asked me, and these days, every single second of every single day did nothing other than act as a reminder that I should have just learned to slow down and embrace this time that I had with Sam… with everybody in my life really, while it was still being offered to me.

For some reason this just got me thinking back to my past; not as long ago as it feels some days, after I had come back to Tree Hill in an effort to incorporate meaning into my otherwise meaningless life of glitz and glamour…

In the midst of having corporate America clutched between the very palm of my hand, through the celebrity status, and more money than I could have possibly even know what to do with, I still had nothing.

I could have had anything, I could have been with anyone, I knew that, but I chose to go about that knowledge with an air of detachment from the very world around me… I refused with a valiant fervor to allow anybody inside of my heart or my mind; and I'm not saying that doing that was right, or that it was good for me per se, but at the time, it worked… or at least I thought it had.

And when I realized that I had been wrong in those thoughts all along, I came home; the weird thing was, nothing ever really changed; to me, the lifestyle, the feeling of having an address centered right smack dab in the middle of New York, New York was identical to having one in Tree Hill, North Carolina.

I was still torn apart with jealousy, with greed… the only difference really was that now I felt badly about having the feelings that I did because they were directed towards my best friends… my family, who were all too busy formulating families of their own to pay too much attention to me… It was a selfish feeling, I knew that then and I know that now, but it didn't change the fact that I had felt as if I was completely stuck at a dead stop in my life.

And then I met Sam.

And through our common knowledge of constantly maintaining a strictly pessimistic view on life, the two of us grew to be optimists, and after a little while, through that optimism, she'd somehow managed to bring me right back to life.

She fought for me, she fought for Julian, but most importantly, she fought for us… for all of us; and in that seemingly endless battle which, for a little while I admit, seemed to be going absolutely nowhere, I managed to learn a very valuable lesson; Sam was the type of girl that picked her battles wisely and usually got exactly what she wanted, and for that, I couldn't be more thankful.

But eventually, even the comfort of my constant started to get too few and far between for me to keep up with anymore because you see, even in the midst of a plateau, good news was never meant to last because real life is bound to strike you full force right over the head eventually, and it hit me… oh it hit me alright.

I hadn't even been completely recovered from the blow yet when I'd learned that despite everything else going on around you in your life, in itself, parenting a sick child is as well as a full time occupation.

I mean, that's not to say that we couldn't manage our occasional sense of joy here and there; that brief normalcy that all of those average, every day people leading average, everyday lives got to experience… After all, I still had my big house, my beautiful fiancé, and my amazing kid… soon to be turned to the plural in just a few short months time.

But unlike all of these normal families, the ones where you actually have to dig around a little bit in order to expose the flaws, uncover the cracks, ours tend not to be all that hard to see…

It's as if at any moment those growing fault lines spreading larger across the very surface of our foundation with each passing moment will self destruct, and I know that eventually, it won't even be able to help but to come tumbling down in a vicious landslide all around us, and there's absolutely nothing that we can do to prepare for that other than simply brace ourselves…

It reminded me a lot of Cold War America back in the 1950s and 60s… You know, that fear of a nuclear holocaust hovering in the air that managed to grip the entire nation so that people were sent into a constant state of absolute panic…

I thought about all of the stories of entire families building underground bomb shelters right underneath the kids' playground sets in the backyard, I reflected on the images I've seen in all of those films of second graders hiding underneath their school desks with their arms wrapped over their heads in an effort to protect themselves from a fear that they weren't even old enough to understand, and when I compared that to my situation, to how I felt at this very moment, well I was put into a fairly descent perspective, because I knew that in our worry, in our preparedness, both me and all of those people had something very much so in common; we both knew that we had everything to lose, but everything to gain as well; and we were going to fight like hell to make sure that things went in the direction that we wanted it to.

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?

But I wasn't stupid; I knew what was on the line here, I knew exactly what the consequences of failure were, which is why I knew that I couldn't possibly allow that failure to occur… We all knew the basis of it all, the logistics, the solid notion that right now, it was Sam's life that was on the line here…

But the thing is, what most people didn't ever understand was this; for all intents and purposes on the matter, so was mine.

* * *

"Brooke… Brooke!"

The very first thing that I managed to properly identify about my surroundings in a matter of several hours was noise… Before that, there was nothing; just a big, blank sheet of blackness, and then all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, that fog of nothingness became infiltrated, broken to pieces by somebody… or somebody's yelling, yelling loudly by the sounds of things, yelling… my name?

When my eyes finally opened, the first thing that they managed to focus on was the clock… I hadn't even planned it that way, but I guess my subconscious mind was… Funny how things work out sometimes isn't it?

Anyway, the last time I looked at the damn thing, it was just a little bit after 7:00 in the morning, and I honestly wasn't expecting there to be much of a change in any of that… My eyes focused on the blurry minute and hour hands, their images bombarding through the foggy sheathe of sleep in an effort to prove my previous theory based on the snail's pace of time, and you see that, just as I expected, it was only five minutes to one…

Wait! It was already 1:00 in the afternoon? How the hell did it ever get to be 1:00 in the afternoon?

Performing a double take up towards the device to ensure that I hadn't read it wrong, I confirmed my initial assessment and darted upwards from my seat so abruptly that the people who had all been previously surrounding me were forced to jump backwards just to keep out of the way of my flailing limbs.

I must have fallen asleep… How the hell did I allow myself to fall asleep? And for six hours none the less…

What if I'd missed Sam and Julian's doctors coming out to give me an update on their conditions? What if they were out of surgery, awake, alone, and confused as to where the hell I was after I'd promised the both of them that I would be there when they woke up… What if I was too late? What if the surgery had gone wrong? What if Sam was gone and I'd simply slept through the entire thing?

The constant questions bombarded my ability to achieve a sense of conscious thought so that the result was a mere fog slowly layering itself over the surface of my brain… My vision quickly became the first of my senses to clear; moving slowly at first as all of the blurry images all around me began to acquire distinguishing features that allowed me to recognize them as all of the friends and the family that had been by my side before I had been stupid enough to succumb to the weakness of sleep deprivation.

But then something caught my eye… Something new, something out of place, something that definitely hadn't been there before even though it had been all that I was waiting for the entire time…

Two doctors; two very familiar doctors standing in the doorway, arms crossed, dressed down in a stereotypical pair of dark blue scrubs, and displaying neutral expressions on each of their faces so that my heart seized up so high in my chest, I was afraid that it would come straight out of my mouth.

"Dr. Miller… Dr. Nguyen… How are they?" It was the first words that I allowed to spill out of my mouth in the hours since I'd spoke last, but as much as I had on my mind to express right now, that was the only thing that I could think to say, the only sentence that I could properly formulate… and I stammered even with that.

I watched them carefully as they took careful synchronized steps, moving strategically forward like they were members of a marching band rather than a team of doctors that had just operated on my daughter and fiancé…

Closer and closer to me they got, and as if they had rehearsed this routine prior to coming in to see me just to make sure that all of their motions were performed simultaneously, both of their faces broke out into wide smiles that told me all of the answers that I ever needed without them uttering even a single word.

"She did great Brooke… so did Julian; they're both upstairs in recovery now." I froze, choosing not to respond for a moment or two strictly because I couldn't really come up with any sort of response at the moment… I was having a difficult time processing, a difficult time distinguishing whether this was her idea of a sick joke, or if it really was possible that after all of the hours, the weeks, the months of pure, unadulterated fear, something had finally gone right in my life for a change.

Behind me, the distant cheers and expressions of relief snapped me back into this reality, and in one sudden instant, I couldn't even see these doctors in front of my face anymore because my eyes had filled with tears to the point that I felt as if I were laying at the bottom of a pool looking up at them.

The smile displayed across my face became so prominent that I couldn't help myself but to actually begin physically laughing… Relief, pure joy in a manner that has been so long since I've experienced filtered across my body, swelling it to unbelievable proportions so that I couldn't think of any other way to express myself.

I was doubled over in my hysterics, my abs physically beginning to hurt from the workout as I was suddenly overcome with the amount of sunlight streaming through the windows, and the idea that this cramped waiting room had just grew ten times its original size…

My senses heightened exponentially so that I heard every joyous expression being emitted inside of this room, and I felt the arms of every one of my friends as they wrapped me one by one into an individual celebratory hug of congratulations.

"Can I see them?" I regained my composure only upon the realization that there were still matters to be dealt with here; and I asked the most important question that I possibly could have through a sniffle, wiping gently at the undersides of my eyes even though the fact remained that for every tear that I brushed away, the amount that would fall after it would positively double in quantity.

"They're both still sedated from the anesthesia… it will be a while before they regain consciousness."

"That's okay, that's fine… actually, it's perfect." I spoke with the promise that I had made to Sam before she was taken into surgery in mind; the one where I'd told her that I would be at her side the second that she woke up.

"Yeah… yeah of course," The doctors seemed confused by my statement but complied to my request despite that, separating like the Red Sea in order to give me access to the open doorway, motioning with their arms for me to follow them into the hall, "We'll take you upstairs."

I turned my head quickly behind me and over my shoulder, facing back towards the group of my closest friends, the members of my family who have all been standing firmly at my side since a ridiculous, unheard of hour of the morning as each and every one of them nodded me out…

The expressions on all of their faces reflected exactly how I was feeling in the immediate; each one of them representing a different emotion currently coursing through my veins so that I was starting to think that I should just shuffle them around alongside of me as my own personal entourage to properly convey to passerby exactly how I was feeling in the moment.

"Tell Sam and Julian that we say hi, and that we're all down here waiting for them okay Brooke?" Haley spoke for the group, an indirect indication that I better stop hanging my ass around down here and get the hell upstairs to be with the two people that mattered the most.

I responded with a mere nod before turning my head back around, and without so much as I second thought on the matter, I followed the doctors' lead, charging into the hallway, ready to commit to the journey to see the man that I loved that had just given the gift of life to the child that we both loved, and the daughter that I feared beyond feared I would never have the opportunity to see ever again.

The second that I allowed myself to be removed from the isolation of the waiting room and back into the open space of the rest of the building, reality hit me like a ton of bricks smack over my head, and when the notion of where exactly I was traveling too, what had just happened, and what the outcome had been finally filtered to a point of understanding throughout my body, I found myself unable to control my emotions even worse than I was already experiencing…

I swear to God, the electricity could have gone out in this hospital, in this entire damn town right at this moment, and I think that I still would have been able to charge them back to life with the glow radiating off of my body right now.

Through each one of my eyes, the tears poured down freely, producing damn waterfalls that puddled relentlessly down my cheeks, terminating with a proud finality across the various wet blotches ever-spreading across my shirt; I couldn't stop them and I didn't try too.

Instead, I continued to power down the length of the hallway, head high and face proud, because I knew for a fact that I was currently displaying a side of Brooke Davis that I rarely exposed to the public, and I was crying harder than I think I had ever cried in my entire lifetime, but for once, these weren't tears to be ashamed of; they weren't tears of fear, of worry, of weakness; they were tears of accomplishment, of pride, of complete joy, and I wanted everybody to know what me and my family had accomplished here today, and how it would take much more than that to knock down a Davis… any one of us.


	62. Awake My Soul

**Hey guys, sorry it's been a little while, things have been a bit hectic this past week. My computer crash, I moved, and now I'm getting ready to graduate this Saturday so I've been running around like a lunatic. **

**Anyway, I kind of decided to throw this chapter in last minute (which is another reason this took so long) because after this chapter, I wanted to focus a lot more on the whole family aspect of the story, plus the rest of the chapters are going to kind of jump through time a bit, nothing too dramatic but just to keep from being too redundant.**

**Anyway, thanks for being patient with me, hope the wait was worth it I'll try to get the next one up soon.**

* * *

Chapter 62: Awake My Soul

**Saturday, February 11****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

When I was younger, and I'm talking a lot younger here, like just a little kid really, I had this unbelievably spontaneous personality stemming from a lot of curiosity and maybe just a little bit of hyperactivity… I was the kind of kid that had no fears, no reservations, instead, I would usually just find a situation that I wanted to be a part of and I would jump right into it head first without so much as a second thought.

Years of experience and a constant stream of steady let downs however quickly taught me to abandon that fool-hardy way of life, and eventually, I had reconditioned myself to become shy and timid, a distinct lack of confidence behind every step that I took.

Entering into a brand new environment was the equivalent of entering a brand new world in my mind and it was something that I could no longer handle as well as I could when I was five years old or so… I think that must be why when I turned out of the elevator doors onto the previously uncharted second floor post-operative inpatient ward where they were currently keeping Julian; I started to feel pretty nervous…

Yeah sure, I'd seen him only yesterday, but that was different, that was when he was being kept in recovery, a unit that I had been in plenty of times before, and on top of that, he was being kept with Sam; the combination of the two factors molding to create a familiarity towards the environment that oozed with comfort and support… something that I sure as hell wasn't feeling down here.

It hadn't been too late in the day yesterday however that Sam and Julian had been separated; Sam going back to her second home up in the sixth floor medical intensive care unit while Julian had been stationed down here in this unchartered territory where he would be staying for the next day or two before they sent him back on his merry way, good as new albeit being one body part less than he had been when he'd walked into this place…

And with four solid floors of wood and thick concrete separating Julian and Sam, I was left desperately confused and deeply frustrated towards hot the hell it was that I was supposed to take care of both of them at the same time… And that was about the same time that Julian, being the kind of guy that he is, insisted that we parted ways, telling me to spend the night with Sam and that he would be okay waiting for me until tomorrow.

I took his advice only when he point blank refused to take no for an answer and ended up sitting with Sam throughout the entirety of the night, keeping a close eye on her and monitoring her more carefully than even her nurses and doctors probably could have until the sun finally came up…

But of course, my self-assigned task of being Sam's constant lifeline proved to be relatively uninteresting… She spent the majority of the night still pretty out of it from the surgery, so jacked up on pain medications and sedatives to prevent her body from physically acknowledging the fact that it had just had an additional organ stuffed inside of it, that her pain was not only successfully blocked, but in an exact opposite feature that I had expected, she managed to get no more than a few minutes of sleep at a time throughout the entirety of the night…

She'd get twenty minutes here, maybe an hour or two there, but the final result was all the same; she'd shoot awake with a flash of pain that faded only after her natural endorphins combined with the artificial ones in a manner that left her spending handful of minutes at a time woozy, delirious, and completely incoherent… And the more I thought about it, the more I figured it was probably a good thing that Julian had convinced me to sit with Sam all night, because in the fragile state that I saw her in throughout the night, I had a feeling that she would suspect and fear my total abandonment if I so much as got up to go to the bathroom.

She'd only settled down and fell asleep for a sufficient length of time and in a manner that properly satisfied me just as the sun began to rise up across the city, indicating the start of a day that I would classify as brand new for more reason than one, that I finally felt confident enough in my ability to safely leave Sam's side for at least a few minutes while I went upstairs to check up on Julian.

"Brooke…" He saw me coming before I so much as had an opportunity to knock on the door and send my request for entrance that I was planning on committing to strictly for formality purposes only.

He sounded pleased, relieved even to see me, indicated by the way he pulled himself higher up against the bedside table that he was currently using as a makeshift walker to assist the completion of his journey from the bathroom back into his bed…

But of course, those motions stopped rather suddenly as he slouched back down, his eyes widening and his face grimacing in a suddenly apparent burst of pain that made even me wince from my position all the way across the room…

I guess that it's just easy to forget that moving around too much probably isn't a particularly good idea when you've got a seven inch surgical star still healing across a prominent space of your lower back.

"Are you okay?" I took a couple of hesitant steps forward, afraid that something that I had just done had hurt him as my heart leapt up into my throat and my blood froze in a feeling so characteristic of me lately when a situation arose that made me question the physical stability of somebody who I cared about more than anything else in this entire world.

"Who me? Yeah… yeah, you know, I'm feeling a lot better all of a sudden." He smirked up towards me, that quick quirky grin that I knew so well, the one that always made my heart melt and my every nerve ending swell with heat.

"Well, they've got you up and walking around already so that has to be a good thing, right?" I stated the obvious, using the fuel of constant good news to power me further forward, directly against Julian's side where he patiently awaited my arrival with his arms open and expectant so that it was conveniently much easier for me to fall right into them, moving gently as I wrapped my arms around his neck and brushed my lips across his own in an action that he mimicked instantaneously.

"Yeah well they finally took that damn catheter out of my bladder so that I can actually start peeing on my own again so…"

"That's disgusting," I laughed, but I was still half serious as I pulled my body away from Julian's and watched as his knees practically gave out in his body's indication for him to sit back down and his face grimaced once again, recognizing the consequences of his lack of obliging to his body's needs.

"Are you alright?" My muscles tensed expectantly, ready in an instant to provide assistance should it be needed, my mindset admittedly jumpy for obvious reasons as I assessed the situation, relaxing only when he responded to my concern with a small smile that indicated his apparent amusement towards my overreaction.

"Yeah I'm fine," He spoke with a tone of assurance behind his voice as he allowed me to assist him in lowering himself down against his bed, "I'm still just getting really tired pretty quickly, that's all."

He shrugged off his discomfort, graciously allowing me to channel my inner-nurse as I worked frantically to get him comfortably settled back down against his mattress.

"Well maybe you shouldn't be up and walking around as much so soon then…" I spoke seriously, the nervousness prominent in my voice towards my concern that he was pushing himself too much too soon… But of course, he didn't reciprocate my feelings, an emotion displayed prominently by the smile that never left his face… not even once.

"I guess that means that I'm just going to have to have my favorite nurse come in and wait on me all day."

"Well what a coincidence that I've actually been considering taking up nursing as one of my many hobbies." Of course, now that I actually thought about it, to use the term "considering taking up nursing" was a vast understatement; after all, I've basically been registered as an unofficial nurse ever since October with all of the crap that has been going with Sam…

"No, no I don't think that you'll be able to be my nurse."He shook his head firmly from side to side, still never losing that grin; not even so much as allowing it to falter.

"And why might that be?"

"Because then you wouldn't be able to stay here in bed with me all day."

He didn't give me so much as an opportunity to respond to his witty comment before he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me downwards, allowing me to fall with a slight shriek that I couldn't help but emit from my mouth with the unexpectedness of our sudden journey.

I felt my body collide against the mattress and I automatically curled up against Julian's side in an action that he enforced by draping an arm across my shoulder and tugging gently in an effort to get me even closer to him than I already was.

I shifted heavily, careful not to do a single thing that might interrupt his still-recovering injury although no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't help but noticed the fact that he had his eyes closed tightly and had been taking very controlled, regulated breaths to ease the pain that had resulted from our unexpected, and rather abrupt journey downwards.

"Can you feel it at all?" I asked only after he'd reopened his eyes, quickly realizing how stupid I must of sounded to ask him such a question when he was obviously sitting here in intense pain, "I mean… can you… you know, tell that there's not a kidney inside of you anymore?"

"Nah, it doesn't really feel like anything," His response was casual, but I noticed that his voice was much softer than it had been earlier, "But anyway, I've been totally meaning to lose a few pounds anyway so you know, it's totally cool…"

I knew for a fact that he'd delivered that comment to me in an effort to force me to relax, to get me to laugh, but I didn't… I couldn't really, because to be completely honest with you, my thoughts had wandered, and suddenly, I was thinking the exact same thing that I had thought about Julian about Sam, and it made me worry even more about her than I already was…

I wanted to know if she could feel that something about her body was different, if she could tell that there was an extra part floating around somewhere in there, if she was in any sort of indescribable pain at all…

And of course, once I started thinking like that, I couldn't stop, and my mind raced automatically to the worst case scenario; the possibilities, the potential outcomes that I had been crammed with and warned about by doctors and nurses constantly in these past hours since Sam and Julian had come out of surgery…

They never seemed to end, those what if's, and now that Sam had effectively proven that she was indeed strong enough to come out of this transplant at all, a whole new set of dangers seemed to emerge in order to remind me that even though we'd gotten over this hurdle, Sam's life wasn't exactly out of the woods yet… in fact, it wasn't even half way there.

The fact of the matter seemed to settle on the idea that even if Sam herself couldn't physically feel anything at all different about her body, well that didn't mean the rest of her couldn't…

I've been told over and over again that signs indicating that Sam was rejecting the kidney that Julian had just given her could take weeks, maybe even months or years to develop, who knew… The fear was that because Sam didn't have an immune system right now; a combination of defective cancer cells and chemotherapy designed to wipe it out completely, her body could be attacking the organ right now, and nobody would know because it was at too miniscule amounts for even the best of technologies to detect…

For people like Sam, organ failure is a thing that pops up in the middle of the night months after that last session of chemotherapy to destroy a life that you thought you'd just got back.

The idea alone killed me; the fact that we could never be sure, the idea that no matter how many years passed, Sam wouldn't be safe, the constant reminder that for the rest of her life, Sam would have to monitored around the clock like a freaking hawk…

"What are you thinking about Brooke?" My plunge into deep thought had been obvious, hell, I didn't even bother trying to hide it; Julian had acquired over time, this rare ability to see right through me; a skill that bred from my unusual allowance for my guard to drop whenever he was around.

"I was just thinking about Sam…" I muttered my response even though I was pretty sure that Julian had already figured that much out for himself, "I just wonder if she feels the same way as you, you know… not really all that different, or if she can tell that she's got a new piece inside of her."

I looked up to judge exactly what he was thinking based on his expression; his face contorted into a look of careful concentration, his lips moving wordlessly for a couple of seconds as he attempted to come up with the appropriate response before he finally spoke.

"Sometimes the way that I feel about it all is that even though I can't feel the difference physically, it's almost like… like there's this piece of me inside of her, and that created this link between the two of us and sure, that link may not be a literally one, but… but at the same time it's more than just figurative… I think that might be how Sam's feeling right now… it's how I'm feeling anyway."

He shrugged casually following the end of his speech, but there was absolutely nothing casual about any of his words… It was true what he was saying, and I guess I never really thought about it that way, but Sam and Julian… they're always gonna be connected now, connected in the most obscure, in the most unbreakable way that two people possibly could be… And the way I looked at it that was a bond that couldn't ever be broken; not by anything, and sure as hell not by anyone.

I marveled at the way that Julian's words managed to move me, damn near registering me straight into tears… but of course, at the same time, I felt something else; this small pang of jealousy that somehow managed to course in the tiniest of particles throughout my veins; miniscule, yes; but there none-the-less.

I guess I was jealous that Julian had managed to establish this bond with Sam; a bond that I could never have, not with my adopted daughter, not with husband-to-be, not with anybody… I'd worked so hard, so damn hard just to build up the courage that I needed in order to open my heart, to create a family, and that finally happened for me, but it seemed that no matter what I did, I would never be able to gain that sense of emotional linkage, or anything even close to it between the people who mattered the most.

"It's kind of cool actually," He pulled me in closer towards his body, speaking as if he could read my mind, sense my uncertainty, "It's almost like I can finally get at least get this glimpse of what the two of you have with each other… you and Sam I mean… I guess I just never really understood it before, but I'm starting to now… I'm really starting to get it… Did you know that I woke up this morning, and for the first time since you told me that we were going to have a baby, I wasn't feeling absolutely horrified about whether or not I would make a good father… Instead I felt ready… ready to be a dad to Sam, especially once those adoption papers finally come through, and ready to be a dad to our baby."

I reached a gentle arm around him, draping it across his chest, acting on the sudden urge I was feeling to clutch onto him closer than I had ever held him before. He reciprocated my actions instantaneously, pulling me up further against him, high enough so that he was able to lower his head and bury his face into my hair where he lingered momentarily, only coming up so that he could continue speaking again.

"I don't think that you can even begin to understand how much I love you right now Brooke Davis."

"I think I have an idea," I whispered through a watery smile, the tears of overwhelming emotion, of love that surged through my entire body more than I had ever felt before in my entire life literally clouding my vision, "After all, I am starting to grow rather fond of you myself."

I spoke while simultaneously leaning myself even closer into his muscular body, tilting my chin upwards so that our eyes met, allowing me to deliver my silent proposition that I wanted, no, I needed him to kiss me, right here, right now or else I knew that I would have positively exploded with desire…

Luckily for me, he read my indication as such, acting on my pressing need, lowering his head slowly until our lips finally connected and attached as if they were held together by actual glue.

With a small jerk of his arms besides me, his free hand rested gently along the curve of my hipbone, travelling strategically upward, grazing across the smooth skin of my stomach, not so much as pausing or showing any signs of even slowing down.

It was only when I could finally feel his touch linger along the bottommost swell of my chest that I stopped him, physically forcing myself to pull my body away from his as to prevent not only him, but myself as well from getting too caught up in this spontaneous heat of passion.

"Alright stud," I turned back towards his horrified face, frozen in the fear that he had just done something wrong to pull me away and I couldn't help the laugh that escaped from my mouth, "I'm sorry but there's something weird, kinky fetish-like about doing it in a hospital bed… Besides, your doctor made sure to specifically let me know that he told you no sex for at least three weeks…"

"Crap, I was hoping that you'd forget about that part." Julian sighed, his shoulders physically lowering in the disappointment that I'd just caused him…

"I never forget anything." I whispered into his ear as to torture him just a little bit more, strictly for my own amusement.

"Well that just means that you're going to have to stop coming in here looking so damn gorgeous then." He retorted, the lack of truth towards his statement causing my cheeks to flush red with the heat of embarrassment.

"Julian, I've been awake for forty eight straight hours sitting in a hospital I look like crap."

"You could never look like crap," He assured me, leaning forward once again to close the gap that I had created between the two of us when I had pulled away from him so that I couldn't help but subconsciously move to meet him half way, my lips capturing his own once again.

"Three weeks? Are you sure that we can't cheat, not even one time?" His lips parted from mine just long enough to mutter his inquiry towards me, his forehead pressed against mine and his mouth so close that I could feel the air of his words brush across my cheeks.

"Sure we can cheat… After two weeks and six days, how does that sound? But you know, by the time we wait that long, it might already be too late in my pregnancy for us to be able to keep doing it."

"Yeah right, don't you think that I hadn't already looked that up online so that I happen to know for a fact that we can still do it right up to the second that you go into labor if we were so inclined, and on top of all that, it's actually good for the baby so don't you even try to threaten me with that."

His arm wrapped back around my shoulder once again so that he was practically bear hugging me as he pulled me back into him so fast and unexpectedly that I couldn't help the shrill giggle that escaped out of my mouth, and all at once, I knew for a solid fact that if Julian kept going at this rate, there was no way in hell I would be able to last the next three weeks completely celibate.

"Um… I'm sorry to interrupt…" The sudden acknowledgment of a third party in the room forced me to jump up so fast in my seat that I accidentally pushed off of Julian's gut in order to gain momentum, causing him to release a dramatic grunt of pain that originated straight from the base of his throat.

Guilt panged deep inside of the very center of my chest and radiated outward across the rest of my body, but that guilt was diluted in an instant; vanished in my desperate attempt to straighten myself out and play the situation as if whatever it was that Dr. Miller had thought that she'd just walked in on wasn't at all what she had walked in on even though it was obvious to all parties involved that it was.

"Dr. Miller! Um… no, no you weren't interrupting anything, we were just… uh… talking… What's going on? Is something wrong? Is Sam okay?" My dramatic change in subject was only semi-intentional really; I mean sure, I sure as hell did not want to continue this conversation going in the direction that it was going, but at the same time, I truly did want to know why Sam's doctor was coming all the way down here to look for me, because the only reason that I could currently think of was because something had happened to Sam; something that I couldn't imagine being any good…

"She's fine Brooke, she's fine…" The doctor spoke quickly in an attempt to ease my racing mind before it could travel too far away from me… It was only after my heart finally decided to stop beating straight out of my chest that I realized that I was standing with one foot already out the door, prepared to run to Sam's side at a moment's notice… I guess I'm still just not quite used to the fact that not everything that this woman has to say to me has to be a bad thing.

"Actually, I came down here to let you know that Sam's awake and she's asking for you Brooke… I just wanted to know whether or not you wanted to head up there and Julian, if you're feeling up to going on a little vacation."

I turned in an about face to turn back towards Julian, watching as the pain vanished from his face in a heartbeat and he sat further upwards inside of his bed with a small smile and a vigorous nod, his expression telling the both of us that he was indeed up for going on a little vacation and then some; that if it meant him being able to go see Sam right now, he would probably be willing to walk a lap around the entire damn world and back and it would still be fine by him.

* * *

**JULIAN**

The second that those familiar automatic double doors swung open on their own accord, and I felt a jolt as Brooke pushed the wheelchair that I had been sitting in straight through them and into the starkly different environment of the sixth floor's medical intensive care unit, I felt nothing short of pure relief.

And okay, I admit it, now that I say it out loud, that does sound a little bit weird, but then again, my entire life has been even more than a bit weird lately, so you know what they say; if the shoe fits; right?

I felt as if it's been forever since the last time I'd been up here even though it couldn't have been any more than two days… But I guess now that I actually think about it even a single day without being here might as well have been a lifetime to us… In fact, the place was so familiar, so homely at this point that when they did move me downstairs to the surgical inpatient unit late yesterday afternoon, I felt like a five year old kid again at my first sleep over at Connor Polaski's house where I'd lasted about an hour before I started bawling my eyes out and my parents had to come pick me up.

I couldn't sleep last night, hell, I could barely breathe; instead, I spent most of my sleepless hours feeling scared, feeling homesick, and wanting nothing more to call Brooke and tell her to get me the hell out of there and back up to where I belonged…

But of course I never did, I never would, I knew that… The very last thing that Brooke needed yesterday was to worry about me any more than she already was, after all, she had to have been just as much as a nervous wreck as I was, probably even more so… But that didn't mean I didn't have images flash across my brain all night long of her sitting just as awake, just as worried as I was directly at Sam's side, and I couldn't help but think that I should have been up there with her.

I'd kind of zoned out of things for a little while there, you know, thinking about all of the stuff that I was thinking about, so that once Brooke actually did begin to slow her movements until she came to a grinding halt directly in a doorway, it was only the sudden change in her movement patterns that was able to snap me back up to attention.

Taking a deep breath, not knowing what to expect or what I would see, my eyes lingered over a nurse whom I'd never seen before who was hovering directly over Sam, who was laying still as a board and flat on her back, her thin gown bunched up in order to expose the healing incision stretched across her lower stomach so that the nurse could diligently unravel the old bandages in order to put on the new.

I stared carefully in an effort to comprehend exactly what it was that was going on here… I don't know, I guess I never really did understand any of this medical shit even though you would think that I would have nailed it by now… I guess that's just another reason why I decided to become a movie producer rather than a doctor…

Anyway, based on everything that I'd gotten out of what they'd told me yesterday it was like this; basically, while I had a nice little cut broad across my back, they'd decided to make a nearly identical incision along Sam's front on account of the fact that they'd decided to actually leave her useless old kidneys inside of her, believe it or not…

It sounded crazy didn't it, and still, I didn't really get it… Instead, it was something about putting her through needless extra time in the operating room which would do absolutely nothing but put Sam in more danger than she already was in at the time, so instead of doing that, they'd made the collective decision to just work around it all; you know, open her up and just kind of throw my kidney right on top of hers.

It's kind of weird to call it that at this point; to keep saying that it was _my_ kidney when it was very clear to everybody, especially Sam and me that it sure as hell was no longer my kidney but instead Sam's… I didn't really know how things like this worked; needless to say, I've never exactly been in a situation like this before… I wondered if there was some sort of etiquette towards kidney transplantation; if there was an established post surgery transition period that marked the time by which it was still okay to use the word "my" when discussing said organ.

There probably wasn't… I have the slightest feeling that there aren't very many other people rather than me that really think about this sort of thing; I've always been sort of the over-analyzer towards all aspects of my life.

"Hey Sam," Brooke pushed me directly up against Sam's side but the girl didn't seem to so much as notice our presence until the two of us were practically hovering over her.

"Hey," She responded simply, her eyes remaining permanently dazed with that fog of morphine as they dragged softly across the both of our features, analyzing our presence, her cloudy brain taking a bit longer than usual to pick up on those recognition receptors.

But through all of that, our eyes never so much as met once; I was too focused on the specifics, studying her scar with the most exquisite of detail… It was exactly what I'd imagined mine looking like considering the fact that I couldn't exactly see it on my back… There were about twenty stitches lined across the taut skin, leaving the site looking swollen and bruised, inflamed practically beyond the point of recognizing it as human…

It didn't look particularly pretty, but I guess that things like this aren't exactly supposed to look pretty or else it would totally defeat the purpose.

"How does it look Julian?" I was kind of banking on the fact that she was too drugged up to notice the fact that my eyes were lingering a little bit longer than they should of, but I'd clearly underestimated her state of mind because she noticed, and she noticed quickly.

"Huh?" I snapped my neck up in order to face her, trying to pretend as if I hadn't just been staring no matter how obvious it was that I had been.

"How does it look? I can't really see it myself from this angle, you know? I'm not exactly in the right shape for doing crunches to check it out myself." She gave me a small smirk, or at least as much of a smirk as a human being could have possibly mustered with a nurse standing over her probing at fresh surgical scar, but you get the point here…

"It's not that bad," I told her, self propelling myself further towards her, feeling instantly comforted by the oh-so Sam like nature of her question, "You should see the guy I heard his is just hideous… How are you feeling Sampson?"

"Eh, you know, kind of like somebody just opened me up and shoved an extra organ inside of me is all… How about you? How are you feeling?"

"Funny you say that actually, because I'm kind of feeling like somebody just opened me up and ripped an extra organ out of me…" I played to her comment, just trying to do something to make the kid laugh again because God only knew that she deserved it… Hell, in my mind she deserved the world, but I'm still trying to come up with a way that I could give her that so for now, I'll just deliver what I could…

"Well that's quite a coincidence isn't it?" She spoke with a wince, feeling the effects of the nurse as she began to clean Sam's wound that I knew about so well… that sharp, shooting pain that I swear traveled directly up your spine and into your brain… You'd think by now they'd invent an antiseptic that didn't sting so damn much; but I guess that would defeat the purpose of cleaning out an injury.

"But I'm feeling better," She spoke quickly, trying to convince us that despite the fact that she was speaking through gritted teeth, this was a normal pain compared to the very abnormal pain that she had been so used to lately… I guess it just puts it into perspective for you how much that poor kid must have been hurting these past couple of weeks to consider major surgery as feeling better than what she had been feeling prior.

But despite this particularly heavy-hearted thought, her answer still came to me as a relief considering the fact that it was just a day ago now that I was sitting here trying to wrap my head around the fact that there was a very serious possibility that I needed to start preparing to let Sam go and help Brooke do the same… And yeah, that possibility still existed, and yeah, that thought was still on the backs of all of our minds, but we'd learned to take our victories where we could, to celebrate good news when it came, and for right now, we were gonna focus on the present, and worry about the future a little bit later.

"Glad to hear that Sampson," I spoke truthfully, my voice dripping with genuineness, "And you know, I read the other day that sometimes organ recipients might also start to take on some of the characteristics of their donor, so just remember if you also start to feel any sudden bursts of awesomeness too, you'll know exactly where they came from."

"Yeah right," She laughed with an eye roll towards my sudden display of mock vanity considering she knew for a fact that it couldn't have been any further from an accurate representation of me, "More like if I start to feel the sudden urge to join the Mathletes I'll know exactly where it came from."

"Don't worry Sam; I'll make sure that nobody with the last name Davis ever becomes a Mathlete… Especially not at Tree Hill High." Brooke contributed her words of wisdom, never wasting an opportunity to mock me in all of my high school glory so that I was suddenly finding myself having flashbacks of those days when girls wouldn't so much as look at me, instead choosing to giggle behind my back… Who knew that one day I would land myself one of those girls, huh… if only I'd been able to see into my future when I was sixteen, it would have made my life a hell of a lot easier.

"Thanks for looking out Brooke."

"Anytime Sam," She responded to her daughter casually with a simple nod of her head so that I was feeling a very sudden sense of déjà vu; kind of like I'd travelled back in time to a place in my life that hadn't been so long ago now when things were simpler, when Sam and Brooke's relationship was characterized by their ability to shoot the breeze and interact with each other by such a perfected means you'd think they practiced even though we all knew they never did any such thing…

It was nice, this sudden sense of normalcy, and I knew that if it was possible that it was this surgery, this new life that had been given to Sam on account of me, hell, I would have given Sam one of my body parts a long time ago.

"Okay Sam, I'm all done here for now," I had almost forgotten the fact that Sam's nurse was even in the room with us until she spoke suddenly and reminded me just as she finished up with her final task of spreading a significant amount of medical tape across the gauze wrappings keeping Sam's newly cleaned wound out of the potential infectiousness of the very air, "I'll give you guys some time alone, how does that sound? I'll be back to check up on you in a little while; if you need me, just call, okay?"

"Yeah okay," Sam responded simply before falling off into a period of silence that lingered even beyond the amount of time that it took the nurse to turn out of the room and make her way down the hall… And meanwhile, the entire time, Brooke and I continued to stare directly at her, worried despite the fact that Sam had just previously displayed her well being towards us that this silence was indicative of something very different than what she was actually saying…

But really, could you blame us for being so jumpy when it came down to Sam's health?

"You know Julian; I'm thinking that I kind of owe you a thank you too…" She finally spoke again, stemming her sentence off of her previous expression of gratitude towards Brooke, extending it to include me in her thank you train.

"What do you mean?" I asked her with an honest hint of confusion, my brow wrinkling in my expression of such as I watched Sam's face take a sudden downturn, leading us into what was bound to be a more serious movement than what we were previously experiencing.

"You know, for saving my life and all… I know what the doctors were all saying about me Julian, I know that they didn't think that I would even make it to today if it weren't for you so thanks you… really, I don't even know what else I can say to you that would make it up to you."

It's strange when I thought about it in the terms that Sam was expressing it to me… that without my kidney, currently pumping trite and true inside of her body rather than my own, it was a very strong possibility that the girl could have been dead by now… I couldn't picture, and it wasn't just because I didn't want to picture that possibility, no, I literally couldn't imagine what my life would have been like if Sam would have gone right then and there… Here one minute, gone the next…

I don't know I guess it's just something that you have to get used to, this feeling… but I'm guessing that this was just one of those things that I could never truly get used to… something so obscure, something so seemingly nuts.

"Sam, I told the same thing to Brooke and I'm gonna tell you too, there is absolutely nobody else in this entire world that I would rather do this for other than you… and you know what, I would it again in a heartbeat… Losing a kidney, it's nothing compared to what it would have been like losing you… When I told you that I wanted to be here for you and Brooke, when I told you that I wanted to be a member of this family, that I wanted you to be my daughter… I wasn't pulling that out of my ass alright? I would do anything for you, don't forget that…"

"I won't Julian," She assured me, her voice laced with emotion in response to the truth behind the words that I'd just delivered to her, "But still, you gave me your kidney… the very least I could do is give you a thank you."

"Well if that's the way you feel about it then you're very welcome… But you still don't have to thank me."

"So," She breathed out abruptly, indicating her desire to end that conversation and start a new, and I'll tell you, I couldn't have agreed with her more, "Where do we go from here?"

She asked the broadest of questions that had but the vaguest of answers, her head flipping back and forth between Brooke and I like an endless metronome so that we were suddenly all very much so reminded of the fact that there was still a battle to be fought here… disappointing really, considering I was starting to get used to the bliss of the naivety that came with the sudden surge of hope stemming from Sam's latest victory.

"I'm not really sure yet Sam," Brooke answered her question honestly, giving her a soft, comforting smile as to reinforce the fact that not knowing didn't necessarily indicate something bad, "Dr. Miller is working on a plan to get you back on chemo and once she has that, she'll let us know… The way I understand it, I think it depends on a lot of different things, but we'll see… But basically what I've gotten out of it is that at this point… well we start from the beginning."

She nodded, an expressionless smirk displayed prominently across her face as to let us both know that starting from the beginning was the thing that Sam was fearing the most although I couldn't really blame her considering how poorly the beginning worked out for her the first time around… Of course, at the same time her voice was also telling me, as I'm sure it was telling Brooke, that at this time, she was willing to do absolutely anything to kick this thing to the curb.

After all this was a fresh start, a brand new opportunity, and at this point, I had all of the confidence in the world that if Sam could make it this far throughout all of this, well then nothing could stop her now…

You see, the reason behind my confidence stemmed from the doubt that Sam had finally kicked straight to the curb the second that I saw her… the thing was, I couldn't lie to you and pretend that I hadn't had my doubts about whether or not she would have been able to pull herself out of that trap she'd managed to get tangled into…

It had been a situation that, for a little while, had been completely out of my control, or so I thought at the time… I knew that Sam was dying, and I knew that there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it, and I hated myself for it; every second of every day, I absolutely hated myself.

Looking at Sam now… it was literally watching somebody getting a second shot at life, and that wasn't something that I was about to take for granted around here…

I had done absolutely everything in my power to get Sam over this hurdle, and at this point, the only thing that was still left to do was for me to just sit here and hope and pray that I still had a little bit of fuel left in my engine to get her through the rest of what was to come too.


	63. Skeptics and True Believers

**Alright, so like I mentioned in the last chapter, I decided to jump around time-wise so that they'll be pretty big gaps between the dates of the chapters from now until the end of the story. I just feel like I've kind of done everything already and I didn't want to make the story too redundant, plus I think this thing is long enough lol.**

**Also, I just wanted to give a thank you shout out to all the people who wished me luck with my graduation, you guys literally made me bawww out loud hahaha, you're all too good to me, I don't deserve readers like you!**

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Chapter 63: Skeptics and True Believers

**Friday, April 6th, 2012**

**JULIAN**

On any other particular anniversary of any other given event, I was usually the type that went the extra mile to plan something nice; you know, dinner on the beach, a nice movie or two, who knew, maybe even a special evening in an up-class hotel room…

Call me a nerd, but I was always a romantic like that; I couldn't help but get all mushy over big gestures, which is probably why I had a tendency to take every little celebration straight to the next level…

But today was different.

Now don't get me wrong, today we had indeed reached a milestone, a milestone that was damn worth celebrating that was for sure… The thing was Sam had woken up this morning and instantly defied every single one of the odds that had been stacked against her since her diagnosis… In fact, she positively shattered them…

It wasn't too long ago now that people; friends, family, professionals even began preparing us to accept the strong possibility that this day would never come; Sam's seventeenth birthday… The fact that it had made me positively giddy with the belief that the event warranted a party that could rival that thrown in Times Square every New Years Eve… The combined factor that we were a mere days away from reaching the two month anniversary of Sam's kidney transplant made her deserve the world and beyond even more than she already did.

Of course, this celebration wasn't going to be spent in a five star restaurant on the beach. It wasn't going to take place in some historic movie theater in the city. Hell, we weren't even going to be able to have it in our own home let alone a high class hotel room… No, we wouldn't be doing any of that…

Instead we would all be eating our birthday cake and blowing up our "Congratulations on Going Two Month's Without Rejecting Your New Kidney" balloons within the confines of a hospital room in much the same manner as the rest of our days throughout these past two months had been spent as, much to Sam's dismay, she continued to be hospitalized without so much as a break between the endless days of her new, post-transplant life.

I was starting to feel guilty… I mean, here I was having been released from the hospital a little less than a week after the operation with no more than a small scar and the assurance that I was recovering remarkably quickly for such a major operation… Of course, in an effort to relieve at least some of that guilt, I continued to spend every single day since my release still right here in this hospital, spending the majority of my time with Sam, and with Brooke who practically refused to leave Sam's side for much of anything these days…

Of course, Sam hasn't really given either her doctors, or her mother any reason for the relentless around the clock monitoring, but still, taking risks with Sam's life wasn't exactly something that anybody was willing to do considering our relatively poor success rate at previous attempts towards doing that…

I guess the only point I'm really trying to make here is that compared to the two months that we'd gone through with Sam before her transplant, the two months following it had turned out to be a downright breeze.

For all of the risk that we'd thought we'd been taking at the time, for all of the risk that we actually were taking at the time, at this point, it was all starting to come off as relatively insignificant to the point that I could barely remember why we had been so worried about it at all… I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I didn't feel any different; Sam didn't feel any different… I mean, unless you counted the fact that she was actually spending her days not feeling as if she was positively dying different, and the truth was, with every day that passed, I found myself regretting my decision to give up my kidney for the sake of Sam even less than I had at the moment that I'd actually done it, a difficult feat to accomplish considering how confident I'd been with my choice at the time…

In fact, other than a mounting case of cabin fever, Sam was just about as healthy as she possibly could be at this stage of the game so that nobody could really blame her for starting to get a little bit restless… I think that it kind of just goes without saying that she just had a tendency to make her doctors nervous; understandable considering the contents of her past…

It was just that constant fear of infection, her body still recovering from the combination of having both cancer and an organ transplant…well that was enough to bring anybody down, and even though I had longed believed Sam to be beyond a simple anybody, I wasn't about to risk anything over here, especially when that anything was Sam's life.

The nurses got uncomfortable every time Sam so much as stepped out of the ward, forget about her leaving the floor completely, and with the shifting seasons providing for an optimal opportunity for Sam to catch something outside, stepping out into the real world was an event that remained completely out of the question for a continuously undetermined length of time.

In fact, the closest that she'd managed to come to a real vacation in the past two months occurred about a week and a half following her operation when she was moved out of the ICU and across the hallway into the regular sixth floor inpatient units… but even that only lasted for a half a second or so; not nearly long enough to satisfy Sam's cravings for just a taste of the outside world.

But all of that, well it hadn't been for nothing and everybody knew it, especially Sam, which I think was the only real reason that her complaints towards her situation, although warranted, were kept at an almost non-existent minimum…

First and foremost there was that constant update being delivered to us nearly daily that there were still no signs that Sam's body was rejecting the organ that I had given to her… the updates coming to remind us that this was good news, that that bump in the road that we'd come across nearly two months ago now was proving to all be worth it in the end…

Of course the risk was still there, the risk would always be there I think, especially with Sam being in the especially fragile state that she was in, but she was being well looked after, she had a solid support system, and the fact that she was still being pumped with a cocktail full of enough anti-rejection medication to kill a small animal was a combination of factors that were sure as hell enough to keep me hopeful of a positive outcome.

This extensive regimen, well it was something that we were starting to get used to, which was a good thing because based on my understanding of it, it was going to continue for a while… I mean sure, it would at least wean off after a little while, but I think that not only Sam, but the rest of us as well were starting to get used to the fact that this was just something that Sam would have to do for the rest of her life… Of course, taking a couple of pills a couple of times a day was definitely an outcome that beat the alternative; Sam being dead, so none of us were really doing much complaining…

And how could we complain with all of this good news coming in…

But still, back when all of the focus had been towards treating Sam's kidneys, back when that had been the only thing that anybody ever seemed to be concerned about, it was easy to forget the real reason that she had actually been put in this position to begin with was because she'd been in the midst of a vicious battle with cancer… Now that the reminder that that battle was far from complete was back to rearing its ugly head at us, it was hard to believe that we'd ever been able to damn near forget about it at all.

Before all of this diversion, Sam had been a mere round or two away from being done with all of her chemotherapy treatments forever but now… well now the biggest fear was that because her treatments had become so delayed, and because of all of that extra strain that had been placed on her body in these past couple of months, doing anything less than starting Sam's treatments over from the very beginning would do nothing but put her on an almost guaranteed path of relapse… and if that happened, well I don't think anybody knew what the hell it was that we would do.

The problem was that the vibe that I was starting to get was that even if we did go ahead and do all of that, the chances of her staying in remission still weren't guaranteed… not by a long shot.

She'd been taking steady, low dose chemotherapy treatments consistently for about a month and a half now not only to keep the cancer at bay, but to also prepare her still-recovering body for more vigorous treatments… And now, although her doctors haven't seen any indication of cancer cells still in her body, thank God, still continuing the little that we have been doing isn't going to work so well for very much longer…

Based on the things that I've been hearing, her counts haven't exactly been good lately, and if we don't act fast, it will only be a matter of time before we're sent straight back to square one…

And I know that if I've said it once I've said it a million times before, I'm not good with all of this medical stuff, and even though when Dr. Miller had been explaining it to us just yesterday using the most lament terms humanly possible, I'm still not sure that I fully have it right when I say that even though her latest bone marrow biopsies haven't shown any cancer cells, there is not a doubt in anybody's mind that there are still a few residual cells floating around inside of her body somewhere, and if there's even one of those cells still left in there, well it will grow, and very quickly become just as big of a problem, if not more so, than it had been before…

And my understanding is that relapsed cancers were even harder to treat than those initial instances, and considering the extensive amount of difficulty that we had with this initial instance, well I didn't even want to think about what it would be like if Sam relapsed.

It was just yesterday that Dr. Miller had come in to discuss the treatment options with me, Sam and Brooke, and the final word; well it sounded grim, exhausting, and positively draining for not only Sam, but for everybody else involved…

But if Sam could take the news with a small grimace but a determined attitude none-the-less, well than I think that anybody could really…

The moral of the story was this; right at this very moment, Sam was a mere days away from starting her most intensive, most extended period of chemotherapy to date.

But still, yesterday I was starting to get the implication that the doctor was beginning to think that even that might not be enough.

We'd talked more than once in these past two months about considering bone marrow transplantation as not only a very possible treatment option, but potentially the only option that we had left…

The prospects were iffy, the details just a little bit more than completely unknown, but we'd discussed it; as a family, I mean with excruciating detail and concentration, and the more we did that, the more I was starting to believe that it was a serious possibility that this road was the one that we were going to have to go down eventually no matter what we did… At this point I think the only real obstacle keeping us away from that was finding an actual donor.

I knew how tricky bone marrow donation was, I'd known that long before I'd even had to know that… There was more to it than there had been the time I'd given Sam my kidney, and even though I wasn't really sure exactly what that was exactly, what I did know for sure was that this time around, I wasn't going to be a viable option for this…

Apparently, bone marrow donation is something that needs to be exact to the tee; anything less simply wouldn't do; and to find those exact matches is an event that's few and far between… I mean, people wait months, years even to find the right donor and still, nine times out of ten, that donor never comes, and that one time it does, well it's usually a family member, which is an option that we clearly didn't have.

Families bent over backwards in order to find donors for their loved ones… They did everything, and I mean everything; they harvest stem cells, they have brand new kids who they never actually wanted, hell, they even created brand new kids in a damn test tube to ensure exactness if they really wanted to, but us… we weren't going to have any of that.

The chances of us finding an unrelated donor for Sam was few and far between, we knew that; after all, the notion had been pounded into our heads relentlessly since the beginning in an effort to keep us from getting too hopeful on relying on that method of treatment, but we weren't ones to give up hope on Sam or her recovery that quickly… we'd already made it far enough to prove to ourselves that absolutely anything could happen; even the things that seemed to be the most unlikely.

So with that burst of optimism lingering in the backs of all of our minds to guide us, we'd decided to cross our fingers and hope for the best as Sam's name was entered into the National Marrow Registry… I guess now the only thing that we could really do was wait for the call to come that we had a match.

Now as for Brooke… well she's still been your same old typical Brooke; sure she was still constantly nervous, and she would never stop being worried about Sam, but she was trying, better yet, she was succeeding at doing a lot better with taking care of herself than she had been at the beginning of her pregnancy so that none of us could really complain too much…

But of course, it was hard for me not to worry about Brooke on a normal day, the fact that she was currently fifteen weeks pregnant with my child made it down right impossible… I would probably sit here forever and do absolutely anything in my physical power and beyond just to make sure that she was eternally okay, but I knew how much of an independent person that Brooke was so that I knew just how much she absolutely hated it when I did that, and trust me, in these last few weeks I have learned not to test Brooke's patience because more time than not, a pregnant Brooke meant a very testy Brooke, and a father-to-be Julian was an obedient Julian, just as I should be.

More so than usual, these days Brooke wanted whatever she wanted and it was absolutely my job to give it to her, no questions asked… Hell, I would have handed her the entire universe on a silver platter if she asked me for it; absolutely no questions asked.

As it was, the most recent of Brooke's list of demands had been delivered to me mere minutes ago as we prepared to head off to Brooke's fifteen week prenatal appointment together… The physical appointment was still more than an hour away at this point, but as she pulled over in the downtown shopping district, about five miles away from where we actually needed to be, I was starting to realize exactly why she had demanded to leave the hospital so early…

It was the same exact reason that she had just sped down the road, practically killing me, her, and about twenty other people in order to pull efficiently up to the local pizza shop, pausing only to flash me those puppy-dog eyes as she batted her eyelashes in a motion that I knew as well as she did that I could never possibly deny, convincing me effectively to buy her an entire pizza for herself while maybe saving a slice or two for myself.

Now that I thought about it, I probably should have seen this one coming. After all, throughout the past couple of weeks, Brooke had managed to develop one of the most intense cravings that I have ever witnessed in my entire life; and her meal of every choice wasn't ice cream, or chocolate, or pickles and mustard or whatever the hell else normal pregnant women usually crave, no, instead it was a very specific brand of black olive pizza only served from one of the ten pizzeria's or so in Tree Hill…

Brooke didn't even like olives; hell, she had such a strong distaste for them, that she wouldn't even allow them in her house before this, but here she was, sending me into this place at least twice daily, most of the time more than that and I could only guess why…

I'd known a long time ago that all of this would catch up with her eventually and come out full throttle much to both my and Brooke's misery… Brooke had spent the first couple of weeks of her pregnancy bragging openly to anybody that would listen about how easy she was getting off with those horrid pregnancy symptoms that she'd heard so much about because she barely experienced them at all during the time period where the average woman would suffer the worst…

And she did have a point there; I remember distinctly thinking that, as she rounded her tenth week, it was unusual, yet uncharacteristically lucky of us that she was barely experiencing any morning sickness, she never felt fatigued or bloated or anything like that, and she wasn't eating everything within a mile radius of her… Hell, she wasn't even doing anything even close to that…

Of course when we thought about it now we were all very convinced that that had very little to do with luck and more to do with the fact that she had rounded into her tenth week of pregnancy consistently thinking nothing about herself and everything on Sam as she continued to recover from her kidney transplant… I'm pretty sure that Brooke didn't have enough of a concept of herself at the time to even have noticed if somebody was driving a wooden stake through her heart let alone to notice a few mild pregnancy symptoms.

But we both should have known at the time that such an outwards display of confidence would come back to bite us straight in the ass, because the past three or four weeks have been absolute hell; more so for Brooke than for myself, as all of those symptoms we'd thought we avoided boiled over and chose to explode all at the same time.

Every single day it happened, the same thing over and over again; never any better, and sure as hell never showing any signs of letting up so that I was starting to get the feeling that Brooke, and subsequently me by default, were going to be absolutely miserable up until the day she gave birth.

I'd woken up to puking every single day for the past month or so, and trust me, that didn't just let up once the morning ended like people wanted you to believe morning sickness usually did, no, it acted like clockwork; she'd go into the bathroom the second that she woke up, and then it would happen again around noon, once again at about seven, and one final time right before she went to bed anywhere between ten and eleven… Then she would finally settle down long enough to go to bed, wake up the next morning, and the cycle would start all over again…

Her doctor, and every single pregnancy book and website in the entire world would go on to tell us that morning sickness generally subsided by week twelve or thirteen but Brooke's didn't even start until week twelve or thirteen so that I had absolutely no idea where we stood in terms of a time scale but I can tell you this much; these days, she spent more time puking in the hospital bathroom than Sam did on the days that she was doing chemo.

I just hoped all of this ended soon, not just because it sucked seeing Brooke that sick every day, but also because I wasn't sure how much more of Brooke yelling me that I was the one that had done this to her in between vomiting rounds through the bathroom door anymore…

But of course, even if her morning sickness ended tomorrow, that wasn't the only thing that I got yelled at for; I got yelled at when she would wake up feeling as if she weighed 900 pounds even though she barely looked any heavier than she had been before she'd been pregnant, I got yelled at when she was in the bathroom peeing every half an hour, and I got yelled at every time I so much as tried to hug her because her breasts had been so damn sensitive lately that on some days she couldn't do much of anything other than lay fanned out with only the thinnest of cotton shirts covering her as to avoid too much pressure… And of course, when Sam made fun of her for that because let's be honest here, that's what Sam did best, well I got yelled at for that too.

Of course I'd gotten the warnings to prepare for every single one of Brooke's emotions being targeted directly at me long before this; I'd heard it from Nathan, I'd heard it from Lucas, hell, I'd even heard it from my own dad of the year who I talked to for the first time in months just a few days ago… I think Nathan described it the most accurately when he told me to be wary for hose "pregnancy talons" because absolutely everything, no matter what the situation, is your fault in times like this.

And if it was this bad now, I didn't even want to think about what it was going to be like when the day came where she was actually giving birth… I was seriously considering showing up to the delivery room wearing a suit of armor for the purpose of my own personal protection.

"Oh my God Julian, thank you so much… Have I ever told you that you were my favorite fiancé ever?"

Of course now that I was approaching her with a pizza in my hand, she showed nothing but love and affection, but you should have seen her this morning amidst the chaos when her head was buried face down into the bottom of the toilet for so long that when Sam's latest chemotherapy session finally caught up to her stomach, poor Sam was forced to throw up into the damn trash can just to avoid puking on herself…

Yes, the scene in Sam's room this morning was absolutely anything but pretty; to celebrate her birthday morning, we had gotten her an absolute shit show, which I'm sure she appreciated very much so.

"You might have mentioned that once or twice." I refused to respond to her statement with anything less than a sly smile and a similar affectionate display, at this point knowing exactly what I needed to say in order to keep Brooke happy.

"Can we eat outside today Julian?" She asked me as I stepped into the car, her big puppy dog eyes staring up at me wide and true with the excitement of it actually being nice enough outside to eat in the park considering it had literally been raining for the past month straight.

"We can do whatever you want Brooke." That was a sentence that I seemed to be saying a lot these days, but I didn't mind too much; seeing the look of satisfaction spread across Brooke's face every time she heard that was enough to make me want to say it over and over again without the effect ever getting old.

There was this small park directly across the street from the medical plaza where Brooke's OB/GYN was stationed… It was a cute little set up, the kind that you usually see dropped right smack dab in the middle of a giant city so that they appear to be a little bit greener than they actually are, and, for all of our intents and purposes today, it was absolutely perfect.

We set ourselves up strategically, sprawled out across the grass directly under some huge tree set up in the middle of everything, and for a little while there, we soaked it up in silence, neither of us saying so much as a word mainly because Brooke's mouth was particularly full at the moment as she worked effortlessly to set a world record as the fastest person to eat a single pizza; demolishing more than half the thing, crusts and all in under ten minutes, which, based on her relatively tiny body mass index, was a damn impressive feat.

I would be marveling at her skill if I wasn't too busy praising myself for my seemingly ingenious planning to buy my own slice of pizza, keeping it out of the clutches of Brooke's relentless stomach.

"What?" Brooke finally paused in between bites in order to look up and question me once she'd been conscious towards the real world long enough to catch me staring at the splotch of tomato sauce that had been decorating the corner of her lip for almost five minutes now.

"Nothing," I shook my head with a laugh and a shake of my head as I reached up and brushed my finger across her mouth in order to wipe away the offending sauce, "I was just thinking that maybe we could get you into those professional food eating competitions… We could make thousands you know."

Her eyes narrowed in an expression of mock offence as a small scoff escaped from in between her parted lips, and with a small swat of the back of her hand, she slapped at my shoulder with a smile and an amused-sounding laugh directed towards the fact that she knew full well that I could have sat here and watched her like this forever if it was up to me.

In fact, I had gotten so caught up in watching Brooke, that the second that her expression changed; an abrupt shift in her face as her eyes widened and the smile vanished into a look of pure shock in the blink of an eye, I was much more alarmed than I probably would have been in a regular situation, although I think the gesture would have probably terrified me just the same…

"Brooke what is it? Are you okay? Is something wrong with the baby?" I jumped up so quickly, I managed to make it from my ass to my feet in one fluid movement, my food scattering every which way as I took a single leap directly to Brooke's side, my eyes scanning over every square inch of her body, my hands roaming furiously in an effort to find a physical source towards this sudden, and dramatic change in her expression.

"No, I'm fine Julian, really I'm fine," Brooke spoke with a soft laugh, forcing herself out of my arms as to end my frantic search to find a non-existent cause to her non-existent pain, "Just feel this."

She reached up towards me, clutching my hand with own in a gentle grip as she guided it down towards her growing stomach, resting her palm against the fabric-covered skin where my touch lingered for no more than a second or two before I could feel exactly what she had just gotten so worked up about; a soft flutter, barely distinguishable but there none the less, originating from within the depths of Brooke's body.

"Wow…" My face melted into a similar look of stunned shock that was currently displayed across Brooke's as I uttered the only word that I could actually think to say in the moment, any further statements obscured by all of the wonderment that I was currently feeling towards actually being able to feel my child move for the first time… It was crazy, this notion that this was actually real, that it was actually possible that I had created a human being, but here it was; the living proof currently displaying itself right underneath my fingertips.

I could feel my eyes losing focus in an instant, my mind escaping me to the point of no return as I began to analyze exactly what all of this meant; not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, but every time I did this, the scale of its enormity grew larger and larger…

I mean, of course this was real, of course I had known way before today what it meant that Brooke was pregnant and what the final result would be, but still sitting here, actually feeling it in front of me made me realize that that day was going to come sooner than I expected it to where this baby that I could only feel from the inside was actually going to physically be here on the out; in Brooke's arms, in my arms… And as incredible as it sounded, I suddenly realized that it was real, that this really was going to happen.

"What are you thinking about Julian?"

"Huh?" Brooke's voice was probably the only thing that could have pulled me out of this daze that I'd managed to fall into, and even then, I was still feeling as if while my body was here on earth, the rest of my head was stuck in outer space.

"I was just wondering what was going on in that head of yours… Something good I hope…"

"Oh it's something good alright… Something really good," I assured her with a nod and a short assuring smile that ultimately confirmed the fact that I was indeed telling the truth when I said that, "I was just thinking about Sam, and our baby, and you too…"

"Yeah, I figured that it was something like that." She nodded, that all-knowing expression that only a wife and mother could manae gleaming deeply behind her eyes.

"Oh really, and why is that?"

"Because people usually do smile like that when they're thinking about me," She spoke with a mock sense of conceitedness and a sly smirk on her face as she shifted forwards onto her hands and knees so that she was able to crawl closer towards me, practically sitting on my lap as she slunk her arms around my neck and pulled me in close until our lips connected to ultimately seal the connection between our bodies.

"Well if anybody other than me is smiling at you like that, you point them over to me and I'll make sure that they'll never look at you like that ever again." I pretended as if I was actually a tough guy, mumbling the threat into her mouth before shutting myself up so that I was free to go back for more…

Ultimately, it ended up being Brooke to start this public display of affection, and Brooke to also end it as she pulled away from me and clambered off of my lap, tilting her body backwards until she was flat on her back, laying in the grass with her limbs splayed out, fanned across her body and her eyes glued permanently to the sky above her.

"What are you doing Brooke?" I asked, half amused but at the same time half honest in my curiosity as I simply watched her laying back in the grass, looking as if she didn't have so much as a care in the world as she folded her arms gently underneath the back of her head so that the sunlight caught brilliantly against the every feature of her face making her look as if she were literally glowing.

"I'm just trying to look into the future that's all…" She spoke airily, mumbling so that I could barely understand her, even as I found myself crawling closer towards her, following her lead by occupying the empty space directly next to her, mimicking her to the exact in her positioning.

"What, in the clouds?"

"Yeah… yeah, something like that." She nodded her response.

"Well are they telling you what we're gonna have… I mean, do you think this baby is going to be a boy or a girl? The question that I had been thinking about constantly to the point that I was even dreaming about it these days escaped from my lips in a motion that really was just me thinking out loud although it had been clear enough for Brooke to pick up on.

"I don't know… but I want it to be a surprise… what do you think?"

"Yeah…" I replied, silently thinking that my head was going to explode having to wait an extra six months but at the same time knowing that it would just make the day that Brooke had this baby that much more special, "Yeah I like that idea."

I reached out, wrapping my arm around her shoulder so that I was able to pull her head directly into my shoulder, and for a second or two, we just sort of laid there, and just as Brooke before me had been entranced by the marvel of an endless sky, I too found myself falling into that trap as the cloud formations all meshed into one, completely encompassing the absolute picture of perfection.

"So… do you have any plans in store for Sam's birthday later?" I'd asked the question simply for formalities purpose; after all, this was Brooke Davis that we were talking about here; she had probably started to make plans for Sam's birthday as early as the day after her last birthday… Of course, she probably had to make some modifications towards those plans given the situation but still, a party was a party, especially when it was for someone and for something as important as Sam.

"I've got some tricks up my sleeves." Brooke smirked up towards me, "Haley called me this morning to tell me that Jamie was itching to give Sam the present that he picked out for her himself so I figured I might as well call everybody up, see if they wanted to stop by for a little while… and I mean, Sam is feeling good today so I figured she'd like the company…"

"Yeah… yeah, that sounds nice." I nodded honestly, knowing full well that Sam would indeed like the company.

"It does doesn't it?" She spoke mainly to herself as she twisted over in the grass, resting her body weight gently against her right arm as the lifted the left, instinctively wrapping it protectively over her pregnant stomach.

"You know Julian, I'm starting to think that maybe… well maybe everything's gonna be okay."

I smiled naturally in response to her words, unable to fully pin-point even to myself just how good it felt to hear her say them again for the first time in… well I didn't even know how long it's been anymore…

"I haven't felt like this in a long time, but I do now… really I do… It's gonna be okay Julian, all of it… We're gonna be okay."

I could feel my forehead wrinkle as my brows furrowed into a look of pure concentration in response to my mind desperately trying to comprehend the actual magnitude of her assurance, to comprehend the reason why the sky, the trees, the houses, even Brooke and myself suddenly seemed big… bigger than it was before, bigger than it could ever possibly be in real life.

These days sometimes I felt as if Brooke and I had been ready to be married with a child on the way since the first moment I saw her on the day that she'd barged in on me unexpectedly at that USO show, ranting and raving, screaming her head off in all of her Brooke Davis glory that she didn't trust me, that she would never trust me, and that I shouldn't interfere in Peyton's life if I knew what was good for me…

And similarly with Sam, well Sam had felt like my daughter the second that she'd sat down next to me inside of that old ratty diner and professed her desire to me in confidence to become a writer one day…

I think the idea that I'd almost lost that dream, that future just made me want it even more… To be completely honest here, I'd been feeling the exact same way as Brooke was now for a while… But now with Brooke on my side, it was somehow even better, now that all of those previous notions were erased, the ones from before back when Sam had been so sick that I was barely able to so much as look at her for fear that if I did, it would be the last time, it would be the time that I had say goodbye, it was much easier to believe both mine, and now her ideals on the predictions of our future…

And the thing was, Brooke had become Sam's parent long before me, leading me to become the one to watch from the sidelines as she nursed Sam back to life, but ultimately sparking something inside of me; something big, something huge… I finally saw Brooke, I finally saw Sam, I finally saw the picture of this family, and I mean really saw it…

I saw this potential, this obvious greatness shining through; the figurative light at the end of the hardest year of my life, and suddenly I knew what I had to do, I knew what I wanted to do in order to stand up and become this father to Sam, to my baby, and to become the husband that would positively crumble and die without Brooke at my side for even a second of the rest of my life.

* * *

**BROOKE**

This day has been pretty bizarre, holistically different from the rest every since the very second that I'd woken up this morning, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, no… in fact, it wasn't a bad thing at all because there was this sense about it, this encompassing factor that made me positively embrace it as I wished it to never end… a feeling that I must admit, was rather unusual for me these days.

To be completely fair, I always felt a little bit spacey like this when I was sitting on the examination table at my OB/GYN's office with my shirt hiked up above my ever-growing stomach, but this time, well this time there was something additionally hypnotizing about it, something that distracted my attention even beyond the usual hopeless oblivion, so that I'd even forgotten to feel that sense of awkwardness that always came with lying half naked in front of my doctor so that she could display my insides on a screen above my head…

It's just that… well it's kind of hard to concentrate on anything else in the world when your child's heartbeat is echoing across the walls of the room, projecting itself proudly in all of its fast-paced brilliance.

The noise pounded consistently; an orchestra dominated by a series of sixteenth notes booming against a giant bass drum, and I could tell that Julian was feeling the same exact way that I was simply by the way that he squeezed my hand even harder than he already was the second that the sound infiltrated his ears.

I returned the only gesture of shear affection that he could display without being distracting immediately, turning my head in order to deliver him the brilliant smile that I just couldn't help but show him in such a time like this one, and I could literally see his mouth fold so far upwards in response that the edges of his lips practically touched to the bottoms of his eyes as his face glowed, and his eyes shown with a distinct kind of pride that couldn't be compared to anything else.

"Alright Brooke, everything is looking good over here…" I think that this was probably the only consistent news that I'd been getting from any doctor lately that I could actually consider to be good, "The baby's development is fine, right where it should be as usual, the heart rate is strong at 154 which is totally normal for this stage of the game, oh, and before I forget, I got the results of your blood work back the other day."

My head popped up in attention instantly; it had been so long since they'd taken those blood samples from me that I'd actually forgotten that they'd done them at all… Okay, so it hasn't really been that long, in fact, it's only been about two weeks or so, but with all of the things that have been going on in my life lately, if an event went so much as a day or two without being so much as mentioned, said event basically gets thrown straight into the garbage dump that is the back of my mind, and this was no exception.

"The results determined that the babies blood type is A+… the same as Julian." She gave Julian a brief nod in order to emphasize her statement, "And you Brooke, are O- which isn't only a different blood type, but also a different Rh protein factor as well."

"Okay… so… so is that gonna be a problem?" I asked, my head perking up nervously in an instinctual alert mechanism that I'd learned to present with every time I feared bad news… a mechanism which I've had a lot of practice performing, trust me.

"It won't necessarily be a problem no, but there is a slight chance that it could become one for future pregnancies… A situation that sometimes develops when there's a fetal-maternal blood conflict such as this one is that your body tends to build up an immune response to the Rh protein in the baby's blood, which can grow in strength should you become pregnant with another child who has positive blood so that it has the potential to cause a type of hemolytic anemia in any future children you might carry… It's nothing to be concerned about; there are very simple intervention measures that we can take to prevent this from happening, the basis of these blood tests we take from Rh negative mother's is just to catch this, which we have so that we can start these prevention measures early in the initial pregnancy."

"Prevention measures like what?" I had indeed heard her tell me that this situation was nothing to be concerned about but I still couldn't help but feel my heart seize up in my chest, the fear towards the answer to my own question projecting itself via the racing of the organ inside of me, beating at a pace that sure as hell might have been normal for the child growing inside of me but definitely wasn't anywhere even close to normal for me.

I was in a state of panic but really, could you blame me? After all, I had just been told that there was a possibility of something inside of me could pose a threat to my child… And trust me; this wasn't the first time in the past few months that I was cursing the blood type that I had been born with.

"It's very simple Brooke, really, nothing to be too alarmed with… Basically what we do is to prevent any sort of an immune reaction from ever occurring by giving you two separate doses of a drug called RhoGAM… We'll give you the first injection when you're 28 weeks along, and the second a couple of days after the baby is born… Like I said Brooke it's very, very preventable with these measures and it poses absolutely no risk to this child, and it won't to the next one with these therapies."

Her assurance was appreciated but at the same time I couldn't think about how easy it must have been for her to sit at the other end of this conversation and tell me not to worry… It should go to figure that my genes weren't even good enough to overpower Julian's in order to give my baby a blood type that wouldn't even have the risk of hurting it… go figure right?

And then, just as that notion of Julian's genes meshing with my own to create this baby entered my mind, I froze; my mind blanking in an impenetrable white out, my eyes widening with a sudden realization that smacked me over the head like a sack of bricks…I mean, if everything was going to be alright with this blood thing as long as we were careful enough about it, then why couldn't we take these results that were seemingly not as bad as I'd originally thought they were, and turn them into something good.

It was as if I'd just have the wind knocked straight out of my lungs… The idea seemed so monumental, so positively perfect, so absolutely fool proof that I couldn't even believe that it had even take me this long to think of it.

Here's the thing; I already knew that Julian's bone marrow wasn't enough to be Sam's donor, I think we all knew that, but if this baby had his blood type, and his HLA matches that made him a decent match for Sam, maybe it was possible that I'd passed along enough of my additional HLA molecules to combine together and actually make this child an actual viable cord blood transplant possibility for Sam.

The way I saw it anyway, this baby had been a downright miracle to begin with… I mean, at the time, there was absolutely no conceivable way, no reason that I could have ever really gotten pregnant in the first place but I had, and I did, and I mean, if this child growing inside of me could have proven to be the miracle that I needed to put my life back together once, well then there was absolutely no reason for me to believe that he or she couldn't do it all over again and do the same thing for Sam, right?

I tried not to get too excited about it, tried not to physically display how worked up it was making me; after all, I knew the chances, I knew the statistics, and above all, I knew the risks, every single one of them… But still, I couldn't help it; I couldn't help all of these feelings flooding inside me towards this idea that I was even more certain now than I had been before when I'd projected my confidence towards Julian in the park before we'd arrived at this appointment… I mean maybe it was actually rue when I had said that everything was actually going to turn out to be okay after all.

"Are you okay Brooke?"

"Huh?" I snapped back to attention, my mind drifting away from the idea of Sam and of this baby, and the possibility by which the two could combine together in a manner that would create something even more beautiful than what any of us could ever be.

"You just looked like you had your head up in the clouds for a second or two, that's all… Listen, I know this can be an overwhelming thing to hear, and it's a lot to process and understand, so do you have any questions about anything at all?"

"Um… no…" I spoke quickly, all the while carefully picking apart my mind for any sort of question that never actually came, "No, I don't think so… Not right now anyway."

"Okay, then you're all set to leave; and hey, if any of those questions pop up at anytime, you have my number okay?" I nodded in response to her display of lending me a helping hand in a motion that she returned before she turned back towards the door.

"Oh, and Brooke," She swiveled backwards to face me, calling my attention back to her from halfway out the door so that my head snapped up and away from Julian just as he extended his hand to help me down from off of the table and onto the floor, "It really is nothing to be too concerned with, so don't worry yourself too much over it, alright?"

"Okay… I won't… thanks." I responded to her simply, choosing not to elaborate on the exact reason why I seemed so spacey in those last couple of moments of my appointment or how it had very little to do with the potential side effects of this whole blood type issue and nearly everything to do with all of the benefits.

"Hey, are you alright?" Julian asked me as the doctor finally left with a swing of the door closed, leaving Julian to take over her role as caregiver, "Because you heard what the doctor said, this isn't anything that we need to panic about Brooke."

"No, no it's not that, I'm alright." I told him with a nod of my head and a smile that probably confused the hell out of him as he struggled to make sense of exactly what it was that I was thinking about right now, "Actually Julian, I'm starting to think that I might be even more than alright."

He raised both of his eyebrows up at me but I didn't give him so much as a second to get in a word edgewise before I wrapped my hand into a balled-up fist against the scruff of his shirt and pulled him in close to me so that all of the words that had been previously lingering on his tongue were caught off by my mouth pressed up against his.

He lingered for only a moment before pulling away, leaning back after a couple of seconds in order to shoot me a raised-eyebrow glare of confusion stemming from the fact that although I looked as if I were about ready to cry just a few minutes ago, I was currently pulling the moves on him in my excitement in the next.

"What are you thinking about Brooke?" He asked me, not for the first time in that day, that look in his eyes letting me know that he definitely knew that there was indeed something going on with me; it was just the specifics that he was a bit hazy on.

"I need you to do me a favor Julian." I responded to his question with a vague, indirect answer, knowing full well that this wasn't something that I wanted to blurt out right away… I needed to take this slowly, I needed to make sure that I had something here before I went off and shot my mouth.

"Yeah of course, anything,"

"I need you to drive me back to the hospital… I need to talk to Dr. Miller now… right now."

* * *

Explaining my situation to Julian as it turned out, ended up providing me with an even larger motivation booster than I was already feeling to begin with towards that rising sense of excitement about this new idea that I was building more and more details onto with every passing second.

On any given day, Julian and my car rides home from my OB/GYN appointments were already something to pause and relish over, something to buy time to reminisce about, something to remember for the rest of our lives… But this today had started off as being starkly different from the rest of them and this was absolutely no exception; today was unique in that it had the added effect of the sense that we weren't only gaining one child out of all of this, we were potentially gaining two in that one had the potential of physically saving the other's life.

The basis of my excitement was that once I'd relayed my plan to Julian, and once he displayed an identical sense of excitement as I had, a comfort flooded through me that got me thinking that maybe, just maybe this idea wasn't actually as crazy as I'd initially thought that it was when the thought had first flashed across my mind.

He had become my second voice of reason, my basis of support, my symbol of comfort… It made me just want to clutch onto his body and never let go… It was just that absolutely everything about Julian's presence always had this tendency to make me feel better and better with each second that went by, and today was no different…

So I determinedly clutched onto his hand without so much as letting up, holding tightly so that the only way that we could have possibly been separated as we sprinted together, darting as fast as we could down the halls of Tree Hill Memorial hospital like a damn Kenyan track team was a freaking chain saw.

Together we moved, our feet pounding away at the hard linoleum flooring underneath our bodies as our eyes scanned left and right in search for the one familiar face that we wanted to see right now, the one that would be any sort of potential benefit to us and our current desires, the one that would tell us if we really did have something going on over here, or if we were both just as crazy as we thought we were.

It had taken nearly twenty minutes of performing a rigorous form of exercise that could be considered nothing short of a sprint to find her sitting up in her sixth floor office; a stupid move on our part considering that this really should have been the first place that we'd looked for her in all along…

In our hurry, we practically slammed into the open door, creating a bang as loud as a gunshot that forced the doctor to jump up and practically drop everything that she had clutched between her hands at the moment, her muscles tense in a natural response until her eyes finally focused on us and recognized no immediate threat towards the situation.

"Dr… Dr. Miller…" Julian addressed her before I had the opportunity to, panting and out of breath as he struggled to release even the briefest of greetings.

"Brooke, Julian, what happened, is something wrong? Is Sam alright?" She shot up so quickly in her seat that I couldn't even see the transition she made from sitting to standing as she frantically checked at the beeper clipped to her scrub pants to see if she'd somehow missed a 911 page regarding Sam.

"No, no it's nothing like that!" I spoke quickly, waving her concern off quickly, trying to make my motions quickly so that she didn't have to sit here and think that something terrible was currently going down without her even knowing about it when in fact, it was the exact opposite, "Actually, Julian and I were just wondering if we could speak with you for a few minutes… It's about a potential stem cell donor."

"Um… yeah, yeah of course, come in, sit." Our eyes locked, her features widening slightly in the surprise of my announcement as she gently lowered herself back down into her desk chair, beckoning for Julian and I to follow her lead into the seats directly across from her in an invitation that we both took gratefully.

"Well… the thing is, a couple of weeks ago my OB/GYN took some blood work and today at my prenatal appointment, she told us that the baby… well the baby has the same blood type as Julian." I spoke slowly, cautiously, my hesitation being towards the fact that now that I was speaking with a professional that actually knew what she was talking about here, I was afraid that my idea was crazy enough to make me sound like a damn idiot.

"I know that Julian isn't an exact match for Sam, Dr. Miller but I was reading about it and… well it said in a few different places that a cord blood match doesn't need to be as exact as a stem cell match because umbilical cord blood is more flexible so even a match that's not exact but is as close as Julian's could work."

I finished the proposition of my offer, my words coming out faster and faster with every word that I spoke in my nervousness as I swallowed a heavy lump that had rose up my throat back down into my stomach, worry panging across the entirety of my chest the second that I noticed that Dr. Miller didn't seem to be as seemingly enthusiastic in the absolute second that I had unveiled my plan as Julian and I had.

"When is your due date Brooke?" Her voice was calm, consideration behind her voice although I couldn't help but think that that was only as to not put me down too hard.

"October 2nd," I let her know, my shoulders rising in my seat with interest, hopeful towards the idea that maybe I was actually getting somewhere over here.

"Brooke, you know as well as I do that time isn't exactly on our side over here… I mean, waiting six months to perform this transplant isn't exactly ideal, and on top of that, this baby isn't an exact match to Julian… Sure, it might have Julian's blood type and a handful of his HLA matches, but it will also have inherited some of yours to which more likely than not means that it's more than likely that the baby will actually be even less of a match than Julian is, and even for cord blood transplants, that would be more than a bit of a stretch."

"But… but it's a possibility right? I mean, a stretch doesn't mean that it's completely out of the picture, and like you said, we're running out of times and options… we have to at least try and do something, we can't just sit here and wait for a match that we all know probably isn't gonna come." I tried my luck at my persuasive skills, simultaneously attempting to restore some of my own faith in the situation, after all, I knew as well as everybody else did that Sam's entire treatment course so far has been based off of miracles that had previously been believed to be a near impossibility but it didn't mean that taking these risks felt any easier, and it sure as hell didn't stop me from fearing that there had to come a time eventually that our luck ultimately ran out.

"Well… yeah, you're right about that Brooke," She nodded in recognition of the fact that my statement was the furthest thing from a lie, but we'd already known that much… It was what happened afterwards that really caught my attention; it was a pause, an extended silence and an expression appearing across her face that made me believe that she actually was considering my offer…

"Can you give me the name and number of your OB?"

My ears perked up towards her question, my heart speeding up with the acknowledgment that I really did might have something brewing over here.

"Really?" I sat up straighter in my seat, absolutely fascinated towards the fact that my idea was so much as plausible let alone doable.

"Really… I'm gonna see what I can do okay," She nodded her head with the confirmation, "At this point Brooke, I'm starting to think that if it's something that you think can be done… well than I do too."

* * *

There was so much happening with us today; so much excitement, so much hope, so much potential, that within a matter of just a couple of hours later, with no word yes or no towards my previous inquiry to Dr. Miller as to whether or not mine and Julian's child would be a viable candidate for a cord blood transplant, I honestly forgot about it completely for a little while there.

It was just that, to celebrate Sam's birthday, Julian and I had been so determined to help her forget about the fact that she was spending it in a hospital by making it as normally as humanly possible that not only did we succeed in making her forget about the fact, we also managed to make the both of us forget about it as well, which in my book, is more of a success than either one of us could ever possibly emphasize.

I was always one to throw a party for even the smallest of celebrations; I think that everybody that had ever met me knew that much, and today, well today was absolutely no exception to that rule.

By the time I was finished decorating Sam's room, you could barely even tell that it was a hospital room anymore. I made sure to go all out, not hesitating in my extravagance in the slightest; I mean, I'm talking balloons, streamers, even a giant card practically the size of the damn wall that the floor's staff had given to her, them always being one to do something like this for kids who were stuck in the hospital on their birthdays just to make them feel a little bit better about the situation they were in, and let me tell you; that tactic worked, it really did; every damn time.

And now, I wasn't about to go ahead and put this much work into all of this without bringing in any sort of an actual party, so I had taken it upon myself to go ahead throw a little bit of an extravaganza… or at least as much of an extravaganza that I possibly could have thrown in the confines of a pediatric oncology unit…

It was nothing too elaborate, I mean, I wasn't about to go out and buy strobe lights and glow sticks and start a rave with a bunch of fist pumping guidos and bad techno music, no it was nothing like that, instead, it was small but genuine; me Julian, Victoria and obviously Sam joined for the night by Peyton and Lucas who had accepted my invitation with barely a breath between my question and their answer, and of course, Haley and Nathan who had practically been dragged over here by Jamie in the boy's eagerness to arrive as he never once did miss a party; a trait that he had obviously inherited from his godmother.

So yeah, maybe we were a bit crammed here in this small hospital room, but it wasn't for nothing, not by a long shot.

I was all the way in the far corner of the room, chatting away brightly with Nathan and Peyton but still subconsciously glancing over towards Sam every second or so, my eyes brightening each time as I watched her face, laced with determined concentration as she sat up in her bed next to Jamie pounding away viciously at the XBOX controller that she'd managed to master in the hour or so since Haley had presented her with the game council that the Scott family had spoiled her with for her birthday alongside a card that let her know that they figured they'd try to at least provide her with at least a bit of entertainment in here considering the fact that she'd been locked up in the hospital for two months now with her doctors still showing absolutely no sign of letting her out any time soon.

I mean, of course I was supposed to disapprove of Sam being ravished with gifts so elaborate, but even with Lucas and Peyton coming in here with a new iPod for her and Victoria going far enough to give her a damn computer, I knew that she wasn't about to start acting spoiled anytime soon, after all, this was just us catching up on seventeen years of lost time being able to spoil her silly…

I mean after all, it was only up until recently that Sam was spending her birthdays living in the trunks of cars, only to trade that with spending this one in a hospital recovering from cancer and a kidney transplant so that if anybody deserved such a lavish celebration, it was Sam.

With my eyes lingering on her just a little bit longer than was actually normal and my thoughts constantly focused solely on whether or not Sam was enjoying herself here, I excused myself from the small group of my closest of friends and walked slowly over towards Sam, figuring that since it had been on my mind, now was as good a time as any to give her my gift to her; and sure, it was nowhere near a new video game system, or an mp3 player or even a new laptop, but it was something that I was hoping that she would appreciate all the same.

"Aunt Brooke!" My mere presence was enough to distract Jamie from something as hypnotizing as Call of Duty, a feat that made me impressed with my own capabilities and at the same time, completely honored, "Momma showed me all the… all the new pictures of my new cousin that you got at the doctor today and she said… um… she promised that when he's born I'll be able to help take care of him and soon I'll be able to play with him… Is it a boy or a girl Aunt Brooke? Is he gonna be born soon? I hope that it's a boy, but I think that it'll be okay if it's a girl too." He rambled incomprehensibly just like he always did when he got excited like this; his little face turning bright red from the lack of breathing that he was doing in between his words.

"You'll definitely be able to play with this baby Jamie, don't you worry about that, but we won't know if it's a boy or a girl yet Jim Jam, not until it's born… But either way, I know that you're gonna be one of the best big cousin's ever."

"Really?" His little face brightened prominently and I couldn't help but feel my heart melt; one day when this kid grew up a little bit older, he was gonna be a hell of a charmer, just like his father.

"Oh yeah, definitely Jamie," Sam threw in her opinion, reaching up to ruffle her hand across the top of Jamie's head so that the natural spikes lay completely flat, "You're already a pretty cool little cousin, so I bet for a fact that you'll be an even better big one."

His cheeks flushed a deep color red, his eyes pointing downwards towards the ground in his embarrassment towards Sam and my compliments so that, if possible, he looked even cuter than he already did.

"So Sam, how's your birthday going so far?" I asked, changing the subject before I practically killed the kid from swelling his head with so much pride.

I established my stance, sitting at the edge of Sam's bed, lifting Jamie up by underneath his arms and placing him down on my lap in order to let him know that just because I wasn't talking about him anymore, it didn't mean that I still didn't think the same way about him.

"It's been the best birthday that I've ever had Brooke, really," She nodded in order to confirm her words and prove to me that she meant every last one of them, "Really Brooke thanks, I owe you one big time."

"Well I'm gonna have to remember that one come my next birthday," I cocked an eyebrow playfully just to let her know that I wasn't about to forget that offer even though my last birthday had just passed a little more than a month ago and still had eleven months to go until the next one, "But hey, I haven't gotten a chance to give you your present yet."

"Brooke," She sighed, her face falling as she began to shake her head back and forth in an effort to emphasize how disappointed she was that I had actually gotten her something even though I had absolutely no idea why, "You didn't have to get me anything, listen, you've done enough for me this past year to last a lifetime."

"Don't be ridiculous Sam, of course I have to get you something; that's what mom's do." Her face softened slightly but still, she continued to give me that look of disapproval so typical of a selfless Sam.

"It's not much," I emphasized this statement in order to try and get her to stop thinking that I'd gone out and brought her a damn private island or something the way she was acting, and pulled out a small box that I hadn't found time to wrap with all of the things that had been going on with me today, "But it's the prototype of the bracelets that we're gonna start selling at Clothes Over Bro's for this new leukemia research line that we're launching next month… I wanted you to be the first person to get one; I figured that that was only fair."

Her eyes widened in her wonderment for a brief second before ultimately brightening as she slowly opened the box in order to reveal the beaded bracelet decorated with the small orange ribbon charms dangling off of the end.

"Do you like it?" I asked nervously, watching as Sam pulled the bracelet out of its box and spun it around between her fingers, analyzing it from every angle.

"It's perfect Brooke." The corners of her lips twitched upwards as she draped the thing over her bony wrist; a little bit too big for her, but a problem that could easily be rectified, "Really I love it… thanks mom… for everything."

"You're welcome, now get over here." I demanded of her, beckoning for her to come closer and into my outstretched arm so that I could pull her tightly into my shoulder in as tight of a hug as I could possibly manage with Jamie still sitting comfortably in my lap.

In fact, the only thing that truly got me to pull away from Sam and re-focus on my surroundings was a sudden silence that filled the air in that, despite the fact that this room was full with people, not a single damn one of them was making a sound.

My eyes shot up quickly in an effort to find a source of the silence; a search that ended quickly the second that I saw Dr. Miller standing smack dab in the middle of the doorway.

I quickly lifted Jamie up off of my lap, placing him two feet on the ground so that I could stand up from against Sam's bed, my body stiff straight with realization as I stared straight into her eyes, begging this conversation to move quickly but at the same time not able to find the strength in my body to move forward… I was struck suddenly across the face with the sudden memory of everything that had happened between us this afternoon, stunned stupid with the fact that I'd been crazy enough to forget all about it.

"Dr. Miller," I stated simply, my voice dry and barely audible from being completely caught up in the back of my throat, "Have you heard anything?"

My eyes subconsciously flashed over towards Sam's, my worried expression locking with her confused one so that I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I'd forgotten about all of this so effectively that I hadn't even told her of the plan, the one that had been completely concerning her; hell, I hadn't even so much as mentioned it.

"I just spoke with your OB Brooke," She nodded her head, pushing herself away from the door frame and over towards us.

"Happy birthday by the way, Sam," She brought herself some time, positioning herself strategically between myself and Sam so that we were both in a perfect range to hear exactly what it was that she had to say.

"Thanks," Sam sputtered quietly, her eyes never leaving the doctor's once as she waited for the older woman to continue speaking, fully aware of the fact that she hadn't arrived at this room with this reaction between me and her simply to wish her a happy birthday.

"Listen, I'm sorry that I haven't been around to see you today until now, but I was hoping that it wasn't too late to give you one last birthday present." Directly behind Dr. Miller, a small gasp escaped from between my lips as her words literally cut the breath right out of my lungs.

"Oh… um… Dr. Miller you don't have to give me anything…" Sam started with the same shpeel that she'd presented to me, her cheeks reddening at the doctor's offer, but the older woman cut her off quickly with a small shake of her hands.

"Well, it's not your typical birthday present Sam, and trust me, it didn't require too much effort from me, it was really all your mom, so really, you don't have to worry about that too much."

"What do you mean?" I watched Sam carefully as she cocked her eyebrow in her confusion, clearly wondering what the hell it was that this doctor was talking about while at the same time, my eyes clouded over with the tears of potential stemming from the fact that I had an idea of what it was that she was about to say but at the same time, I didn't want to get my hopes up too high just in case it wasn't.

"We found a match Sam… a bone marrow match."

Across the length of the room, a collective gasp of shock escaped from almost every mouth in the place, erasing the silence only briefly before it returned with an even stronger presence than it had before, so much so that it was physically hurting my ears… In fact, it was so quiet in here that I could practically hear the sound of everybody's jaw's positively hitting the floor as they all dropped in their surprise.

But me… well, meanwhile me, considering the fact that my heart had just leapt right up and into my very throat, I decided to keep my mouth shut out of fear that my most vital of organs would have positively fallen out if I so much as opened it a fraction of an inch.

"Who is it?" Sam looked up and down the woman's form with widened eyes, trying to physically read the answer straight through her, her voice presenting several octaves higher than it had been the last time she'd spoke…

And with a soft smile and a short nod of her head, Dr. Miller's eyes latched onto Sam's as she paused briefly for dramatic effect before finally answering Sam's question.

"It's your little brother or sister."


	64. I Believe We Fly

**Hey guys! So I think this might be the fastest that I've put a chapter up in a while, think of it as a reward for all of your patience lol.**

**I hope you enjoy it, soak it all in only two more after this one!**

* * *

Chapter 64: I Believe We Fly

**Sunday, September 2****nd****, 2012**

**SAM**

It's funny really, ironic almost if you truly think about it; in the nearly seven months that it's been since I'd received my kidney transplant, about 90% by which I've spent inside of the hospital, might I add, sleeping was probably the only thing that I ever really did anymore, but at the same time, it was also the only thing that I never seemed to be able to get enough of.

But counterintuitive to my previous statement, sleeping was actually exactly what I was doing as we speak right now… or at least, it's what I was trying to do anyway…

It's around this time every morning that I always woke up; like freaking clock work or something, just as the sun began peaking up high enough to pour itself through the window of my sixth floor suite at about 6:30 daily… And today was absolutely no different.

My eyes squinted open only about half way in an effort to adjust to the sudden display of light as it patterned itself in a series of thick bars shadowed off by the blinds blocking my window along my face…

With a short groan of exasperated disapproval, I rolled over onto my back and draped my arm across my eyes in an attempt to block the light from shining into them but it was no use… if anything, I think my efforts made them sting even more with a sharp pain that I swear extended straight back into my very head.

I sighed louder than before even, giving up all hope in terms of sleep all together, instead choosing to sit straight up in my bed, trying desperately to ignore my growing headache.

As my eyes slowly adjusted to the new lighting, they began to automatically scan across the room in an effort to asses my surroundings even though I knew that they couldn't have changed very much from the day before… or from the day before that, or the day before that, or, now that I think about it, in the months before that by which I'd been stuck right here in this exact place the entire time.

The only difference that I could really see was in the fact that Brooke and Julian had moved around, rather rambunctiously might I had, in their sleep from their previous positions in the corner of the room on top of the fancy, high-class tempurpedic cot that Julian had purchased for the two of them a long time ago strictly for nights such as this past one had been.

He was sprawled out chaotically on his stomach, his head turned into the side towards Brooke and his arm draped precariously over her still form in an attempt to protect her very, very pregnant stomach even in sleep.

Well at least they were able to get a couple of good hours of sleep in for a change… Usually when I was awoken by the sun this early in the morning, Brooke and Julian were wide awake and halfway through their normal morning routines in preparation for the rest of the day…

For them, a good night's sleep was the least they deserved considering everything that the three of us had all been going through in these past couple of months… It's hard to describe, hard to put in perspective exactly what that "everything" I just referenced actually was, but needless to say, it was hectic, it was intense, and it was downright exhausting…

Here's the thing, while the rest of the kids my age were lazily preparing to endure their first day of their Junior year of high school tomorrow, I was stuck in here, anxiously recovering from the end stages of the most intense treatment regimen I'd experienced yet in order to prepare my body for the imminent bone marrow transplant which had already been scheduled to a T for the day after Brooke was due to have her cesarean section on October 3rd.

By mid-April I had begun what ended up being only first of what quickly developed into a painfully extensive, almost obsessively detailed treatment plan, and ever since then… well I basically haven't been doing much more than that, and I knew that I wouldn't be doing much more than that either… not until the day that I finally had this transfusion anyway…

For the first couple of weeks following my kidney transplant, the doctors had actually decided to give me a little bit of a break for the first time that I could actually remember since the day I'd started all of this…

That break came in the form of a seven week, low-intensity dosage of a chemotherapeutic agent known as cyclophosphamide, or more importantly, a chemotherapeutic agent that actually didn't make me want to die every time that it was given to me for a change… I guess it was just my reward for spending months on end getting my body thrown around like a damn ragdoll…

The problem was that I'd gotten so used to it, that when they'd decided to up the ante on me following that seven week period, the subsequent treatments hit me even harder than they would have to begin with.

It started in the beginning of June… a solid month and a half of the most draining, most harrowing drug cocktail that a human being could possibly be given and simultaneously withstand without positively keeling over and dying.

They called it COMLA for short; a fancy shortened term that the nurses liked to use when they didn't feel like saying the entire, actual name for it all; 1.5g/m2 cyclophosphamide, 1.4mg/m2 oncovin, 120mg/m2 methotrexate, 25mg/m2 leucovorin, and finally, 300mg/m2 arabinoside…

You see? And now you understand why they'd invented a little thing called abbreviations.

The final course of my treatments began a month ago yesterday on August 1st, where, thankfully enough, I was put back on the less intense cyclophosphamide regimen, except the second time, it came with a catch; it was to be combined with a five day a week full body irradiation treatment to alongside it.

Now, before this started I've heard horror stories about how bad radiation therapy could be on the body, but to be completely honest it didn't end up being all that bad at all… I guess it helped that I was constantly reminding myself how vital it was, how much I needed it to get to the end…

Basically, what radiation therapy was designed to do years and years I came along to use it was to blast out any cancer cells that still might be hiding out inside of the body even after chemotherapy and all of that fun stuff… I needed it because based on the way I was understanding it, if I had this cord blood transplant, and there was so much as one single cancer cell left inside of my body, well that rogue cell would end up dividing all over again, and then we'd just be right back to square one, which is the absolute last place that we wanted to be.

I'd finished radiation a few days ago, marking the end of my preparation for this transplant, meaning the only thing that we could possibly do now really was to wait, and meanwhile, I would be stuck right here in this very room up until the transplant actually occurred, and at least a few weeks beyond that…

And meanwhile I knew that I wasn't the only person stuck in this place that was going absolutely crazy…

Poor Brooke, rapidly rounding into her eighth month of pregnancy, she quickly ballooned into the rough size and shape of a baby beluga whale… although of course nobody, especially not Julian or me, would ever actually tell her that… And because of the special circumstances regarding this pregnancy, and the importance of what was to come following it, well Brooke was now pretty limited towards the activities that she could actually perform safely so that these days, she usually chose to just kind of hang out with me… more so than she already did before anyway…

But there was still some good news amidst all of this chaos.

First and foremost, every last one of her latest prenatal appointments came back solely with positive updates; the baby remained healthy, and so did Brooke for the most part.

Secondly, at this point, Brooke and I had Julian wrapped up between our little fingers more than we usually did so that we could get him to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted… I honestly think that the man would travel up into space and steal the moon for us if we'd asked him to.

Brooke has been on a strict order of bed rest straight from her OB for about a week now, and now that she was, well she was milking it for all that it was worth so that I knew that I had taught her well…

I hadn't even noticed through all of this reflecting and over-analyzing of my experiences of the past few months that I'd actually managed to fall back asleep until I woke up all over again.

It hit me like a cold gust of wind that struck me with the force of a bullet and slunk into every crevice of my every cell; and in a sudden instinctual motion, my body responding naturally to a sudden gut feeling that I couldn't quite pinpoint, my eyes flew open and I shot upright in my bed…

The sun was still shining through the blinds as it had been before, the shadow only shifting the slightest bit so that I knew that not too much time could have passed between me being awake last, but I powered through the pain the brightness caused my eyes expertly, scanning in my frantic search to find the source of what could have possibly been this powerful to cause such a sudden alertness…

It didn't take me very long to find it… It wasn't five seconds later that Brooke had shot up in her sleep as well, in a very similar manner to which I had just done, with a quick grunt and a rapid upwards motion of her hands as she brought them instinctively over her bulging stomach.

"Are you okay?" I asked her immediately before she even had time to process what was going on.

"Yeah, yeah I'm alright," She nodded quickly, but her face still looked confused… uneasy even…

But still, I nodded towards her, accepting her answer for what it was but still never faltering as I continued to stare a hole straight through her body, boring her in my worry so that I suddenly felt as if Brooke and I had just swapped body's or something in our dramatic role reversal…

"I'm fine Sam, really." She spoke again, this time with a more distinct tone of faux convincing behind her voice as she slowly pushed herself up off of the cot and to her feet as if she was trying to physically prove to me that what she was telling me was true, "I just have to pee, that's all."

My eyes remained glued on the back of her head the entire time, following her as she slowly waddled over towards the direction of the bathroom, getting only a handful of decent sized paces in before she stopped in her tracks with a rapid intake of air, hunching forwards as her muscles tensed expectantly and her arms wrapped around her middle in a protective bear hug.

"Brooke, what's wrong?" I sat taller in my bed, rushing to step off of it so that I could get to Brooke, but I only got two steps in before I felt a slightly painful tug at the catheter in my chest that reminded me that I was still physically attached to the wall in the form of my IV…

The biggest problem was that before I could so much as turn around and unplug myself from the outlet so that I could get to Brooke, I noticed something that froze me in my tracks directly where I stood…

For a split second, I thought that Brooke had actually pissed her pants en route to the bathroom… I mean, after all, the ground underneath her had suddenly become very, very wet in a small puddle formulating at her feet, that seemingly originated from somewhere up her pant legs…

But it didn't take me very long to realize how stupid I had been to think that at all… I mean, we'd only been preparing for Brooke's due date for eight months now… you would think that that would have been enough time for me to realize that a day was indeed going to come where her water broke, sending her straight into labor…

I guess I just didn't expect that day to be today… or on the floor of my hospital room.

"Oh crap."

It was the only thing that I could actually think to say, and in retrospect, it probably wasn't exactly what Brooke was looking to hear at the moment; of course, Brooke was a little bit too preoccupied at the moment to really do anything about that one…

For a long time, neither Brooke, nor myself said or did anything… Instead, we just stared at each other, our eyes wide, and our minds positively racing as we desperately tried to sort out just what the hell it was that we were supposed to be doing about this…

And even though that short time period lasted mere seconds, to Brooke and I, well it felt as if it might as well have been hours.

"JULIAN!"

At the same exact time, as if the reaction had been perfectly synchronized, Brooke and I turned our glances away from each other and towards Julian, screaming his name as he remained obliviously asleep.

"Julian damn it, wake up!" I repeated my previous calling to him; this time adding a few expletives to give it some extra meaning as I stretched my body as far as I possibly could still being plugged into the wall and all, extended my foot, and gave him a descent sized kick right in the ass.

He flew up so quickly that I was convinced that if he moved just a fraction of a beat quicker, he would have actually taken off and achieved flight.

"What's going on?" His tired voice drawled stupidly as he attempted desperately to clear it from all things sleep… I opened my mouth in an attempt to offer an explanation even though I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on myself, but before I could so much as utter a single syllable, Julian noticed Brooke for himself as she remained smack dab in the middle of the room unable to do very much other than stand there as she attempted to sort out the feelings trembling deep inside of the very pit of her stomach.

I think that every last trace of exhaustion that Julian previously felt inside of his body vanished entirely the second that he saw her, because after only the most miniscule of pauses that lasted no more than a single blink of the eye, he took off, reaching Brooke just in time to catch her underneath the arms as a powerful contraction nearly sent her flat on her ass.

"Brooke honey what is it? What happened?" I could hear the distinct hint of panic behind his voice as he held Brooke close and attempted to do whatever it was that he could to help her despite the fact that he had absolutely no idea what was going on.

"My water just broke Julian… I think… I think that I might be in labor."

His face paled so dramatically that I could see the transition from across the room… But of course, at the exact same time, he positively glowed in his expression of pure awe towards the realization that this was it, this was the day that we'd all been waiting for.

"Julian, it's too early!" Brooke's sob traveled right through me; her panic bouncing straight off of my body so that I froze, feeling positively stupid that I hadn't even thought about the fact that Brooke still had a solid month to go before her actually due date…

My heart clenched as I watched Brooke's eyes lace with the beginning hint of residual tears… This wasn't the way that we had planned it out. This wasn't the way that everybody told us that this was going to be like…

Was eight months too early for this baby to so much as even have a chance?

I didn't know; I didn't know anything about any of this stuff, after all, I had only gotten a little more than a month out of my high school biology class before I'd been abruptly pulled out of the course; and even though I could probably receive an honorary M.D. license in the field of oncology at this point, I sure as hell couldn't tell you whether or not this baby, whether or not Brooke was going to be okay…

I couldn't take a risk like that; I couldn't possibly bring myself to tell me that everything was going to be okay; not with so much on the line… The thing was, right now, not only was this baby's life at risk, but so was Brooke's, so was mine… and I guess if you put all of that into perspective, for all intents and purposes, so was Julian's.

My thoughts were interrupted only when Brooke released yet another howl of pain… I couldn't tell if this reaction was normal or not, after all I had no idea, I'd never actually seen anybody about to give birth before; and in that confusion, in that lack of knowledge, I was suddenly struck with an inability to come up with absolutely anything that could have been considered helpful at the moment.

"Sam, call for a nurse!" Julian shouted his instruction towards me, and to be completely honest, I was glad that he did, because if he didn't, I probably would have stood here staring like an idiot for the rest of my life.

I nodded quickly in my response, leaping back over and onto bed where I grabbed instantly for that small box attached to the hand rail, juggling it between my shaking hands only briefly before I jabbed relentlessly at the prominent red nurse-call button at the top until the very muscles in my arm began to sting with exhaustion from my frantic motions.

It didn't take very long to get a response; before I knew it, an entire team of nurses came sprinting frantically into my room… I felt kind of bad, now that I thought about it, with the urgency by which I was calling them, they probably thought that the call had come from Brooke or somebody who'd woke up to find me dead…

Needless to say, with their mind set on the idea that I was stuck in some sort of mortal peril, they ran directly towards me… In fact, I don't think that they even noticed that Brooke was on the floor freaking giving birth until I said something they were so concentrated on me.

"No, no not me, it's Brooke! She's having her baby!" I spoke in a practically incomprehensible sentence, my words fragmented with worry as I jabbed my finger frantically over towards the area where Brooke continued to lay against the floor, buried inside of Julian's arms as he did everything in her power to just keep her calm and breathe through all of the pain that she was undoubtedly in.

The scene would have been funny if it wasn't so serious… Here was a handful of nurses; their faces dazed with confusion and their legs running in frantic circles like chickens with their heads cut off as they tried to assess exactly what it was that was going on here… But all at once, every single one of their eyes seemed to lock onto Brooke at exactly the same time, and that moment, a strange calmed silence suddenly washed across the room, vanishing just as quickly as it had arrived into pure chaos, laced with running and screaming and calling of orders as everybody circled around Brooke so tightly that I couldn't even see her anymore.  
It wasn't until they used the teamwork of every last one of them combined with Julian to lift Brooke to her feet that I saw her again; her toes barely skimming across the floor as they literally carried her to a chair and sat her down, crowding around her to near suffocating proportions in an effort to get her to calm down as she cried out with pain every couple of seconds, squeezing Julian's hand tighter and tighter each time.

"Okay Brooke, I need you to breathe for me honey… In through your nose, out through your mouth, nice deep breaths, can you do that for me?" Brooke was being coached by the nursing staff to perform even the simplest of tasks, but she was still having a difficult time doing even that.

"It's too early for me to have this baby Carol," Brooke positively sobbed, continuing to expel her deepest fears to the woman in front of her, "I'm only at eight months, it's too early… I can't have this baby yet… what about Sam? They can't use the cord blood if this baby is too early... You have to stop it from coming Carol, you have to!"

She begged the women desperately, probably ready to ask her to physically shove this baby back inside of her if she had to while meanwhile Carol... poor Carol, she's been my charge RN for months now, and was a very competent oncology nurse sure, but when it came down to obstetrics, well the look on her face told me that she didn't want to see this baby come out of Brooke right now any more than Brooke did.

"Brooke listen to me alright... I know that it's a little bit early but that's okay, there's no reason for anybody to think that this baby isn't going to be perfectly fine. Sure it might be a little bit early but Brooke it's not too early, so what I need you to do right now is to try and relax as best as you can and take nice slow, deep breaths okay?"

She used the same exact motivational template that she delivered to me on the days that she was stuck nursing me in the bathrooms after a particularly difficult round of chemo, with a slightly different content of course, and you know what; it worked for me then, and it looked as if it were working for Brooke now... I watched as her eyes contorted into focus, trying desperately to take this woman's advice as she poured all of her concentration into her breathing patterns in a last minute attempt of erasing the unbearable pain that she was no doubt experiencing right now.

"Good Brooke, you're doing great honey," She was coaxed into relaxation by the nurse, watching her every move as she sealed her mouth shut and took steadily timed breaths until her death grip on Julian's hand slackened and those shouts of pain faded away into a few dull whimpers.

"Okay, I need somebody to page up to OB right now, tell them that Brooke Davis is in labor and they need to get Dr. Hughes in here now," The second that Carol was convinced that Brooke wasn't going to pop out my little brother or sister right here on the floor in front of her she felt confident enough to turn her back on her long enough to shout out the necessary orders to get things moving over here, "And somebody call Dr. Miller, tell her we're going to start getting Sam prepped for transplant as soon as she gets down here!"

In all of this chaos, I'd completely forgotten that this moment required more fear, tension, and joy than was required to merely prepare myself for the acquiring of a brand new sibling... Of course, in my defense, this wasn't exactly how I'd pictured myself getting ready for my stem cell transplant so I guess nobody could really blame me too much...

In fact, I think that almost everybody was feeling rather similarly about their revelations on the matter considering the fact that we'd all frozen solidly in our places, including Brooke, who, for a solid minute, completely locked eyes with me, her expression calm and collected, completely unrepresentative of the fact that she was currently in labor anyway...

I felt a hint of a smile pass across my features, dumbstruck as I finally finished processing the idea that today was actually going to be the day that I was going to get better, today was the day that I was finally going to get my life back...

Experience has taught me not to get myself so worked up about situations like this one, failure has taught me never to get my hopes up too high... But that kid who once was taught not to fight back, the girl that was constantly told never to believe in destiny, well she was gone now...

I used to be a kid defined by definitive explanations and impenetrable beliefs, but I think that I'd slowly been transforming from a person of science to a person of faith for a while now and today, well today just solidified it to it's exact... The thing was, I finally understood the fact that we're all born into these pre-determined, fragmented, rounded edge pieces of a giant puzzle that is the world, and even though it took me a pretty long time to find where my exact piece fit in, well I think that I'd finally started to manage to jiggle it in somewhere, and maybe soon we'd actually be able to get it to fit... all of us.

* * *

**JULIAN**

After today, I'd officially decided that if this whole movie production business doesn't end up working out for me, I should probably go into an occupation that involves professional aerobatics or Olympian level gymnastics or something like that because from the time that I had been woken up this morning, rushing straight to Brooke's side as she went into labor on the floor of Sam's hospital room, to the movement of the entire small army that had rushed in to provide the care that I couldn't for both Brooke and my pending child, I somehow managed, even through all of that twisting and turning, to keep my hand firmly clasped around her own the entire time, my grip never so much as loosening amidst the chaos.

I had stretched and bent, tumbled, turned, and expressed a level of flexibility that I never thought possible, but the important thing was that I had done it, and by the time Brooke was sitting in a wheelchair, just waiting for the go-ahead from the orderly in charge to push her upstairs, I was standing firmly at her side, my hand still clamped around hers as we eagerly waited to meet our new son or daughter.

I could feel my hand shaking from inside of that shell around Brooke's, who was moving with such similar motions that the combined effect sent a trembling sensation up the entire length of my arm...

I don't think that I'd ever been more nervous in my entire life than I was right now... In fact, I had the strangest feeling that I was starting to sound exactly like Brooke was as I panted, desperately out of breath as a direct result of the subsequent freak out that I was currently experiencing... Of course, the difference between Brooke and I was that I wasn't the one that was in labor over here, so I really did have absolutely no excuse.

"Okay Ms. Davis are you ready to move upstairs now?" The orderly standing behind Brooke addressed her, his hands tightening around the handles of the wheelchair in preparation to transport Brooke.

I felt all of the eyes in the room turn to Brooke, mine included as we waited for her answer, watching as she turned her head into a brief nod that lasted a mere second before the motions of her neck stopped rather abruptly; frozen in an answer that was never actually fully released.

I paused in my confusion for a brief moment only, but then I actually followed the direct path of the line of vision in Brooke's eyes and I froze in a similar understanding the second that my eyes locked with Sam's; identical to Brooke's in every way, unmoving in that similar fear of the confusion of what it was that we should do.

I felt terrible, of course I felt terrible, but more than that even, I felt conflicted...

I didn't want to leave Sam here by herself... the girl was preparing for the most pivotal moment of her life, the one we've all been waiting for, the one that would see her healthy again, but at the same time, I knew that there was no way that I could ever possibly even consider missing the birth of my first child...

I have never felt the desire to be in two places at once more than I did in this moment.

"Wait!" Brooke stopped the orderly dead in his tracks after he'd misinterpreted Brooke's half-nod for an indisputable yes and began to take those first couple of steps towards the door, "I need to see my daughter first... Can you take me over to her?"

She demanded a place at Sam's side before anybody made so much as another move, and I could see the tension behind Sam's features soften automatically with the acknowledgment that she would at least get the chance to say goodbye to each other before they were torn apart from each other, so savagely yet so indisputably necessary at the same time.

The orderly complied to Brooke's request more than obligingly, performing an impressive about-face that must have come from years of practice before pushing Brooke up directly besides Sam's bed as the girl continued to sit Indian style at the foot, still looking awed and confused towards exactly what the hell just happened in the middle of her hospital room, but besides that, professing a distinct sense of excitement behind her astonished features.

"Good luck," Sam offered, accompanying her words to Brooke with a smile that I could tell was laced with a little bit of disappointment towards the fact that she knew that she wasn't going to be able to be there with Brooke and Brooke wasn't going to be able to be here with her as they prepared to enter the most life-changing events in their lives that either have faced to date.

"You too Sam... even though I already know that you're not gonna need it." Brooke gathered herself together instantly, a feat that I knew she struggled to perform despite the fact that she'd managed to make it look so easy, as she temporarily erased every other feeling inside of her body in order to pour all of her attention out onto Sam, "I'll see you when you go in for your transplant okay?"

"Are you sure you're gonna make it?" Sam asked her, a hint of a plea escaping from behind her voice so that I could tell just how much she wanted Brooke to be there so that the older woman could at least ease some of the fears I knew that Sam must have undoubtedly been feeling at the moment.

"They'll have to tie me to my bed to stop me from being there... And even then, I'd crawl there with that entire thing strapped to my back if I had to." Brooke assured her confidently, reaching down to grab onto the girl's hand with the hint of an extra squeeze and the brightest smile that she could currently manage given her current situation.

"Okay... then I guess I'll see you later then." Sam shrugged awkwardly, not really knowing what else to do but fully knowing that a time was come and a time was gonna come soon where this conversation would have to end, where Brooke would have to let go of her, where they would have to be separated, even if only for a little while.

"Yeah... I'll see you soon okay? Now come over here real quick," She beckoned her daughter closer into her, leaning forwards and releasing my hand in the process so that it marked the first time that we were actually physically disconnected so that she would be able to wrap her arms around Sam's shoulders and squeeze the girl into her tightly.

"Alright, I gotta go know, but I want you to know that you're gonna be fine Sam, you'll be okay..." She pulled her body away from Sam's but still left her hands firmly gripped against the girl's shoulders, hesitant to lose that final contact with her as she attempted to pound the notion that there was nothing to be afraid of into her head.

"Yeah... yeah I know, and you're gonna be fine too Brooke... and so is the baby."

"So then I guess I'll see you later." Brooke told her with a nod, finally releasing the younger girl's shoulders and sinking back into her wheelchair with one last self-assuring nod.

"See ya," Sam responded with a small wave; marking the sudden finality to the conversation as Brooke was pulled backwards in the wheelchair, inching further and further away from Sam's bed and closer to the door with every step.

"Take care of my little brother or sister while you're up there will you Julian? And make sure you look out for my mom too." Sam gave me a distinct set of orders that I planned on strictly following as I lingered hesitantly where I stood next to her bed, suddenly finding it very difficult to so much as lift my feet up from off of the ground let alone get my legs to physically move and follow Brooke.

"I will Sam, don't you worry." I tried to play it cool, taking a firm power stance as I crossed my arms over my chest and pretended as if I were actually still standing here on purpose and not because my legs felt as if I'd just stepped into a vat of super glue.

"And while I'm at it, you should probably be looking out for yourself too," She told me with a quick laugh, clearly seeing right through my facade as I probably should have known that she would, "Try not to pass out in there alright? I hear that's a common occurrence amongst new dads.

"Aw, well thanks for your concern," I responded to her statement with a laugh, reaching over nonchalantly and ruffling my hand across the top of her head in a motion that would have probably been much more effective had she still actually had hair on her head, "I'm glad you have so much confidence in me."

"Eh, I was only joking you'll do fine, now go; get out of here before you miss your own kid being born. You know if that happens, the both of us will never hear the end of it from Brooke." She practically yelled the order at me, reaching over her bed in order to physically shove me with all of the strength that she had towards the direction of the door in a motion that truly got my attention as I realized just how right she was when she said that I really did need to get the hell out of there before I missed my own son's birth.

"I'll call some people and let them know what's going on!" Sam had to yell after me considering I was already halfway out the door when she'd made her announcement, "And come down and let me know what happened. Remember, you owe me twenty bucks if its a boy!"

* * *

It took three hours, forty seven minutes, and thirty one seconds from the moment that Brooke had officially been settled into her private room upstairs in the maternity ward for the doctor to finally give her the okay to actually start pushing...

It took three hours, forty seven minutes, and thirty one seconds of absolute blood, sweat and tears to get us to this point, but considering the fact that I've heard that things like this could take hours, days even, neither me, nor Brooke were really complaining all that much, although in all fairness, Brooke did have a lot more of a capacity for complaining than I did right about now.

"Okay Brooke, I need you to take a nice deep breath, and when you release that breath I want you to go ahead and push as hard as you can... Okay, on my say you're gonna start, ready... one, two, three... Push!" The doctor practically shouted her final order and my eyes remained positively glued onto Brooke's as she took both an audibly and visibly shaky breath, gathering up all of the energy that she had inside of her entire body, ultimately releasing that in a single, almighty scream that accompanied the contracting of her every muscle in an effort to just get this baby out of her.

"That's it Brooke, you're doing great baby, you're doing fine... You're almost done Brooke, our baby's almost here." I assured her as much as I could from my position above her head as I point blank refused to move down any further for fear that I would see something that would make me break the promise that I had made to Sam before about not passing out...

Reaching up with my left hand, still holding onto hers with my right, I rubbed my free hand across her frizzled hairline, beaded with the sweat of exhaustion just as she released another scream and locked onto me in a death grip that securely fastened me on her right side, and Victoria on my left that I was actually afraid would positively snap my bones if she didn't loosen up soon.

"Okay Brooke, I can see the head, alright... You're almost there, just a couple more big pushes... Ready, push!"

With another shrill scream that I swear could have shattered glass, Brooke powered through yet another powerful contraction; her chest heaving with absolutely everything that she had in her leaving the rest of us to pause, our ears poised, just waiting for the familiar wail of a newborn to tell us that that would be the final push... But of course, when that never happened, we were struck with nothing but disappointment towards the fact that we weren't quite done yet.

"You're almost there Brooke, just a few more pushes baby, you're doing great." The only thing that I could think to do was to keep motivating her, to keep complimenting her in my attempt to get her through this, but as she scraped tooth and nail through another powerful push, turning to me with a look that could positively kill, I had the slightest feeling that there wasn't too much I could do right now to keep Brooke from wanting to absolutely kill me.

"Dam it Julian, don't even to talk to me right now, I hate you so much, I hate you and your over-fertile sperm, now stop trying to coach me and get this damn thing out of me!" Her final word echoed elongated into a loud scream creating the allusion that she was yelling at me longer than she already actually was...

With my jaw slackened in response to just being yelled at, I merely stood there, not really sure what I should be doing now that Brooke professed her desire for me to shut up... Of course, this was apparently a very, very normal reaction around here because all of these damn doctors and nurses kept flashing me small side smirks as if this was the funniest thing they've ever seen in their entire lives while meanwhile, I was left here afraid to so much as touch her for fear that I'd just get my face ripped off again.

"Don't worry about it Julian," Victoria attempted to provide me with at least a little bit of relief towards the situation, but considering the fact that I was still more intimidated by facing Victoria than I would have been facing a serial killer, the effect was limited, "When I was giving birth to Brooke, I punched my husband so hard in the face that I broke his nose... At the time I felt bed, now I just wish I'd punched him harder."

Subconsciously, I actually leaned my body back a little bit away from Brooke's, hoping to God that I was at least far enough away from the wingspan of Brooke to avoid getting clocked in the face should the fists start flying.

"Can you people please stop bonding over there and pull this baby out of me? Put some damn muscle in it for God's sake!" I could tell that Brooke was reaching the last of her threshold of tolerance for pain because she was now shifting her focus of rage not only on Victoria and I, but to the doctor nestled awkwardly between Brooke's legs as she attempted to deliver our baby.. Of course, I was more than 100% sure that at this point, modesty was the absolute last thing on Brooke's mind right now... I had the slightest feeling that she was at a stage in this game where she would have spread her legs for a complete stranger if they possessed the capacity to deliver this baby.

"Okay Brooke, one more big one should do it, whenever your ready okay?" I heard the doctor's final testimony and the second that I did, my senses had suddenly shut off and I couldn't help but have tunnel vision towards the realization that this was it, this was actually happening... in the next couple of seconds, I was going to meet my son or my daughter...

I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what to say... What the hell were you supposed to say to your child the first time that you ever met it? Were you supposed to say anything? Were you supposed to do anything? I didn't know, I didn't remember when I was born so that I didn't know if my father had held me or delivered some sort of strategically planned speech to me...

My mind was racing... I needed more time, I wasn't ready for this; I couldn't be a father, I wasn't ready to be a father... Hell, I couldn't even decide what to do when my baby was born, how the hell was I supposed to make any of the other decisions a million times larger than this one when it came down to my kid...

What if I was a bad dad? What if it turns out that I suck at this? What if my kid grew up only to hate me?

And then, the second that all of these thoughts passed straight through my mind and dissipated into the hidden chest of my deepest of conscious thoughts, an even scarier one entered into my mind, even worse than everything I had been thinking before, worse than anything I had ever thought ever before... What if something went wrong?

Our baby was an entire month early... What if it was born too sick? What if it was born too weak, or... well, I didn't even want to think about what else could go wrong...

Brooke and I were struggling as it was to keep our small, unconventional family together throughout everything that has been throwing its very best effort to break as up... If something were to happen to this baby, I wasn't sure that we would be able to survive it, I really didn't...

I hadn't even noticed the fact that the entire room had completely blacked out into nothing in my head; I couldn't make out any conscious shapes or colors, I couldn't hear any noise, I couldn't even feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins in a magnitude that I was positive probably outnumbered the amount of blood in there at this point... And then, slowly and quietly, a single noise escaped above the silence, powerful enough to cut through even the deepest of fogs that my head had managed to fall into...

It started small, slowly growing higher and higher in both power and volume until there was absolutely no mistaking even the most persuasive voice screaming at me in the back of my head that there was no way, that this wasn't possible, that this moment could, in no conceivable thought actually be happening...

Who knew that the sound of a baby's wailing, shrill in ear-piercing capacity could ever be so... so perfect, so absolute, so definitive in that it was the only thing that I possibly wanted to hear in this moment.

And then, just when I thought that I couldn't possibly ever hear anything better, I did...

"Congratulations Brooke and Julian... Meet your new son."

My jaw dislodged so completely that I would swear to it that it actually touched the ground below me... My eyes widened to the size of flying saucers, until they physically pained me but I still couldn't possibly get them large enough to completely take in the image of my son in front of me... I didn't move an inch, and I don't think that I could have, even if I wanted to.

The doctor rose heroically out from her position at Brooke's feet, but this time when I saw her, she wasn't alone... In her arms stood my magnificently wailing, relentlessly struggling son in all of his glory, fidgeting already in an effort to get out of the doctor's arms and get along with his independent, free spirited ways so that I could tell the first time that I laid eyes on him that he'd inherited the best of his mother, which now I thought about it, was probably the best for all of us.

"I can't see him Julian... Is he okay? What does he look like?" Brooke thrashed around desperately from her position on her back in hopes to catch a peek of her son, but she couldn't get a good look at him from his position in the doctor's arms as they handled him precariously in preparation to cut his umbilical cord with an acute exactness, knowing full well that the smallest error could compromise the potential for the life of our other child, who's life was hanging in the balance of this near stranger's accuracy...

"He's beautiful Brooke... He looks just like you, he's so beautiful..." I muttered, not even bothering to hide the tears prominent in my eyes as I leaned forward and pulled Brooke closely into me, planting my lips against the side of her sweaty forehead where I allowed them to linger in our connection, knowing full well that I needed a lot more than words to accurately describe just how perfect our son actually was."

No matter where I seemed to move around the room, my eyes seemed to follow the path that my child took, staring agape as the nurses cleaned him off, cleared his airway, counted ten fingers and ten toes in an effort to make sure there was nothing even remotely threateningly wrong with him... And meanwhile, that extra unusual addition of the transport team to our delivery room was in a frenzy, rushing to carry off that precious cargo; a sterile hazmat bag containing nothing more than an umbilical cord and the residual placenta; what might be considered junk to some people, thought of as a brand new opportunity at life to us...

I was still struggling to conceive an accurate notion of how this was even possible, how I'd managed to create something like this, how something so beautiful could have ever managed to come out of such a wrech like myself... All at once, it seemed that everything that I had ever created up until this point; every macaroni and glue portrait I'd made as a child, every robot I'd built with my high school robotics team, every award winning movie that I had produced as a successful adult was just cheap, meaningless, and a complete waste, because nothing could ever compare to this; nothing in my past, and I was sure as hell nothing in my future either...

"Would you like to hold your son Ms. Davis?"

My eyes, my body, my every attention snapped back into reality in the exact second that I heard those words, and by the time I came back into the realm of conscious thought, a nurse was hovering over Brooke, presenting her with that cleaned, cared for child that I still was struggling to believe was my own...

It was a strange sort of display, hard to put into words; one person was bringing our child into this world for the first time while at the exact same time, another was rushing from the room with that dutiful, perfect combination of both mine and Brooke's blood in an effort to prevent our other one from leaving it.

The second that they were gone from the room, disappearing entirely, I allowed my eyes to snap back onto Brooke, as I squeezed onto her even tighter than I already was, watching unblinkingly as the nurse lowered our son down into her awaiting arms...

"He's got your nose." Brooke spoke, her voice choking with emotion as she brought our son into her chest, talking to me but at the same time, never allowing her eyes to leave his tiny form once.

"Nah, I don't think so... I think that he got everything from you... there's no other explanation for why he's so perfect..." I reached my hand downwards, extending a single finger over towards my child's tiny hand, minuscule in comparison so that his natural response was to reach up and explore this new sight by wrapping the entirety of his hand around my single finger, electrifying me in the realization that this was the first time that I had made contact with my son.

"Who is that?" Brooke leaned down into our son, rocking him gently as she spoke in a sing-song voice characteristic to the way that proud parents are supposed to address their children, "Is that your dad? Yes it is, that's your daddy, and one day you are gonna grow up to be just as handsome as he is, aren't you? Yes you are... Do you wanna hold him Julian?"

She turned to me, our baby cradled in her arms as she extended him outwards to me, but the only thing that I could do was drop my mouth open agape and offer her the shortest nod of my head in my indication that I would like absolutely nothing more than to hold him...

I jutted my shaking arms out towards her, focusing with a careful concentration as Brooke placed the tiny bundle directly down into my awaiting arms where he fit perfectly, his little mouth widening in an extended yawn before he rolled over into my torso, taking comfort against the fabric of my sweatshirt.

"Excuse me Ms. Davis, do you have a name picked out for your son?" A nurse approached the two of us, but I still struggled to tear my focus away from this very personal introduction between my son and I... But I guess if I was going to be distracted by anything, I couldn't complain about it being about naming my son.

Brooke and I exchanged a quick glance and a smile in response to the nurse's question, and with a small nod of my head, I silently told her to perform the honors...

Brooke and I had been talking about baby names since the second that we found out that she was pregnant, and considering the fact that we didn't know whether or not we were having a boy or a girl at the time, we had planned for both...

To be completely honest, we were never really planning on naming our child after anybody in particular... I mean, both of our parents were kind of flakes, and being the creative individuals we were, we always thought that we could do better than simply stealing a name from our closest of friends... So ultimately, we'd decided to free ball it, and then Brooke did what she did best; she made a list, and then she made me make one too; my top ten favorite boys names, and my top ten favorite boys names... and then we compared...

On our list of girl names, we matched four out of ten names... But considering the fact that I don't think that either of us wanted our son's name to be Abby, Bridgette, Elyse, or Kylie, that fact wasn't really all that helpful at the moment...

On our list of boys, we had only one similar name out of the entire thing, strange now that I think about it considering how generally obscure the name actually was...

"We do," Brooke told her, reaching over the handrails of her bed in order to grab at our son's tiny hand with her thumb and index finger, "His name is Elliott... Elliott Alan Baker."

* * *

**BROOKE**

It's been ten hours, twenty four minutes, and a mere handful of seconds since I had given birth to what without a doubt must have been the single most beautiful baby boy that has ever walked this Earth... And considering how worried I had been at that time when I'd gone into labor exactly one month early on the floor of my daughter's hospital room, my little trooper had made it through his initial assessment with flying fingers; ten fingers, ten toes, and a set of lungs that I could tell was healthy and fully developed from the second that he was born considering the fact that he wailed his head off the entire way out.

But he was quiet now... for what I was pretty sure was the first time since he had been born, looking particularly adorable in his little blue knit hat, cocooned securely in his blanket, fast asleep in my arms as I bounced him gently up and down from his position against my chest as I sat in a chair in the far corner of the private, sterile room where my daughter was currently being prepared to have her stem cell transplant...

I have been told more than once in my life that I possessed a certain charm, and before today, I honestly never believed a word of it when I was told that, not even once... But today, well today I might just think I actually saw what everybody else did when they made those comments, because it had to have been either my charm, the adorable baby boy I held in my arms, or maybe a combination of both that actually got me to convince my doctors, as well as Sam's to allow not only me out of my hospital room to be with Sam during this particularly pivotal moment of her treatments, but my son as well.**  
**

To be completely honest, so far, there was a sort of anti-climactic sense about this moment that made it feel as if it could have been any other ordinary day in the hospital for us... I mean, despite the addition of an extra family member to our ranks, Julian, Victoria, me, and Sam were really just sitting and waiting at this point, watching with a particularly indistinct attention as the IV bag containing the filtered, analyzed, and cleaned stem cells was prepared high above Sam's head, just waiting for infusion...

Sam had gotten the opportunity to meet her baby brother for the first time a few hours ago, and now that the excitement of their initial meeting was beginning to die down, things were starting to get quiet again...

Of course, I could still sense her disappointment towards the fact that she was not allowed to hold him quite yet... in fact, it would be a while before she would be able to do any of that... No, for now, and for the next couple of weeks to come, Sam was strictly confined to an entirely sterile environment in order to give her body an opportunity to process these new cells as they attempted to reestablish the immune system that she hadn't really had for almost a year now...

Her contact would be completely restricted to her doctors, and on a more limited basis, solely to me and Julian for about a week or so, and even after that, the limit to the amount of visitors that she could see would be in effect for at least a month... Hell, we were told that in some instances it could take up to a year or more for her to build up complete immune function again, but at this point, we were willing to do absolutely anything... We had made it way too far to care to much or to worry about compromise at this point...

"Brooke can I hold him?" Julian leaned down into me, his eyes shining brightly on our creation that I would still swear on my life looked absolutely identical to him despite the fact that Julian had already protested that fact more than once today...

"Do you wanna go see your daddy Elliott? What's that? No, you want to stay in your mommy's arms forever," I carried out a mock, very one-sided conversation with myself and my few-hour old baby, before turning up towards Julian with an apologetic look and a shrug, "Sorry daddy, it looks like your son is picking favorites already, aren't you Elliott, yes you are."

My incessant cooing forced the baby in my arms to open his tiny eyes where he squinted up at me briefly before rolling away from me, wiggling in my arms with a shrill scream so that Julian flashed me a look of indistinct victory towards the fact that our son clearly wasn't thinking in the same way as I was when I told him that I planned on holding him for the rest of my life.

"Fine, I guess that I can hand him over for a minute or two," I settled on a compromise, taking a deep breath to prepare myself the physical pain that I knew it would cause me to let go of the tiny infant in my arms, but as hard as I was concentrating on my muscles to move in order to pass my son into his father's arms, I still couldn't bring my conscious mind to actually let go of him...

"Julian, you're gonna have to help me out over here..." I called for his assistance, knowing full well that if Julian didn't come over here and physically take this baby from me, he would never be able to hold him.

"Why, is everything okay? What's wrong?" Julian sprang up in his seat, causing a mild panic to erupt across the mass amount of people crowded into this small room as they froze with the fear that they had done something terribly, terribly wrong as they continued to prepare Sam for her transplant... Meanwhile, in an exact opposite fashion of everybody else around me, the only thing that I could do was laugh at the reaction, the softest of movements that settled the racing minds of everybody around me, who I guess were feeling a bit tense today or something...

"Everything's fine Julian," I spoke to him with a soft smile, "But if you don't take this baby out of my arms yourself, you'll never get to hold him because I don't think that I can let go."

His muscles relaxed with the assurance that none of us were in any sort of an immediate threat and with the smallest sighs of relief, he bent forwards, his arms grazing across mine as he slid one arm protectively underneath Elliott's head and the other down to support his backside as he lifted the child right out of my arms...

The instant that the contact was lost, my arms felt suddenly empty, very light... It was strange; he was small, he was so small... at 7lbs 4oz he was smaller than small... But for a baby, especially a premature baby, he might as well have been an elephant, and I'm not gonna lie, as terrified as it made me this morning, now that we were in the clear, I was almost glad that he was born so early... I could only imagine how much more he would have weighed had he been born on his actual due date...

I'd already made a mental note to kill Julian at a later date for passing his gigantism genes onto our kid.

"Look Elliott, there's your big sister, that's Sam..." Julian bounced the now wide-awake child on his lap, responding to his eyes locking onto Sam's with a rapt attention so that I couldn't help but wonder if he sensed the importance of this moment, if he somehow knew that his blood was about to be used to save his sister's life... It sure seemed like he did, after all, his eyes hadn't left Sam since he'd woken up as he watched protectively as the doctor's made their finishing touches on Sam's transplant preparation, assessing the scene as to make sure there were no errors to be made in this critical process.

"Alright," Dr. Miller jutted her world between us, interrupting our crucial thoughts with the finality of her tone, "We're all ready to start here, how about you guys?"

Silence fell swiftly across the room, filtering slowly as Julian, Sam, Victoria and I all exchanged hushed looks, our faces displaying just how nervous we actually were through the cracks of the excitement... This was the moment that we had all been waiting for since... well since forever it felt like some days... But now that it was here, it just seemed so final, so real...

We'd had our opportunity for celebration earlier... we'd had our family and our closest friends here to profess their excitement; eager to congratulate Sam on how far she'd made it, unable to wait any longer to meet the newest addition to our little family, particularly Elliott's godmother Peyton, and his godfather Nathan... But at this stage, this was something that had to be done amongst our family, a private moment that I think everybody understood...

They would be back tomorrow, and in the weeks, and the months, and the years to come... It was finally coming into view that we had the capacity for that now, the time to spare...

I had already been struck more than once today with the realization of how huge it was that we were already thinking in terms of tomorrow... It was foreign to me, after all I had spent the past year focusing strictly on either the present or the past for fear that tomorrow would never come, but I embraced this new method style of thinking openly, more than eager to move on from the way that things had been before...

Now that I truly paused to think about it, I was starting to realize how far we had come since that moment that Julian and I had rushed Sam through those emergency room doors one cold Halloween morning last fall with no expectations and absolutely everything to fear...

At that time, if you had stopped to tell me that within a little less than a year's time, I would be watching my officially-adopted daughter battle and claw her way through the end stages of a disease that I'd almost watched her succumb to twice, I would have told you that you were crazy.

If you had told me that I would be happily engaged to my then-boyfriend, completely reconciled with my estranged mother, and settling down into the life I've been waiting for since I was a child, I would probably suggest you be professionally evaluated...

And if you would have told me that on this day, I would be sitting in a cramped hospital room, watching with a rapt attention as the cord blood of my newborn, beautiful baby boy was prepared to be transfused into Sam's body in a last attempt effort to save her life, I definitely would have officially had you committed...

But here we all were, and you know what... I was ready for it; in fact, I was more ready than I think I had ever been in my entire life... But right now, this wasn't up to me, it wasn't up to Julian, it wasn't even up to the doctor... Instead, all head turned, every eye in the room focused on Sam, waiting for her to give her answer, to make this call...

"Yeah," Sam nodded fiercely after only the briefest moment of silence, "Yeah I'm ready."

"Alright... then let's get this started." My hands were shaking in a complete opposite manner to the doctor's, who I was currently watching unblinkingly as she moved with still, distinct moments, cradling the port entrance of the central venous catheter sticking out of Sam's chest in one hand, and the end of the line that was connected to the bag of stem cells in the other, and I swear to God, every single person was holding their breaths in anticipation as she slowly connected the two lines, and sent those cells down the clear tubing towards Sam's body...

I released that breath, extending it for a long time so that the air pushed from my lungs for the entire length of time that it took for the start of those cells to travel down the length of the tube until finally, that trail touched down in that junction between Sam's skin and finally entered into her veins...

A flood like a flush of cold air swept through my body, causing me to physically shudder... It was as if I was sitting her watching her get life again... I might as well have been watching someone being revived after undergoing an hour of CPR the way I felt...

With my chest heaving with the heavy breaths of success and my eyes glued onto Sam the entire time, I reached over with one hand and grabbed onto Sam's, and reached with the other and clutched gently onto the tiny, booted foot of my son as he remained nestled into his father's arms so that in that moment, our family was completely connected with each other for the first time... It seemed appropriate, poetic even, after all, as I continued to watch that seemingly endless trail of blood leading directly into Sam, I couldn't help but think about the meaning behind that little piece of me, and that little piece of Julian, and how it managed to gather together into that line where it would be taken straight into Sam's body so that in an instant, Julian and I were made forever a part of Sam; not only in our commitment to become her parent, but now in our biology, our blood permanently running through her veins in an ironic sort of final pact of the fact that we had suddenly solidified the final link that had always made all of us family...

And suddenly, I felt as my eyes grew involuntarily wet with the acknowledgment of the fact that no matter what already happened in our past, and no matter what will ever happen in our future, nothing in my life could ever possibly make me feel the way that I felt today, not ever again.


	65. Wake Up, You're Alive

**Okay, so first of all, I wanted to thank you all for your patience with me with this last chapter! I lost it in its entirety twice due to computer crashes, the first time wasn't that bad because I'd just started it, but the second time I was literally at the end of it so I've been frustrated, yet determined to finish it as fast as I can!**

**Anyway, the good news is that I've now learned to save my chapters on a flashdrive every time I update them, you'll be proud to know... It only took me 65 chapters to realize that that would probably be a good idea...**

**Also, I've been considering possibilities of starting something new to write because I've found I really do enjoy it but I don't really have any plans for anything new or something so if you have anything you wanna see or any ideas, shoot em at me!**

**One more thing, for the couple of people who asked me about it; Brooke and Julian's baby is named after my little brother. Just a little fun fact :)  
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**Okay, I'll stop rambling now, as always thanks for reading/reviewing/doing whatever it is you awesome people do, keep it up!**

**EDIT!: I messed up the days (thanks to stagediva23 for pointing that out because I'm OCD about that kind of thing too) apparently I'm dyslexic and flip-flopped the numbers and added a day to what the real date was supposed to be. Bear with me I just took the MCATS it's been a long week!  
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Chapter 65: Wake Up, You're Alive

**Tuesday, December 11****th****, 2012**

**BROOKE**

I think that it's fair to say that in my lifetime, I have done a lot of pacing.

In the last year alone I think that I've probably paced enough to have taken an entire lap around the world and back, no exaggerations… In fact, I was willing to bet my entire life on that estimate, that was how confident I was about it.

For example, I paced every time that I took Sam to her weekly doctor's appointments scheduled to ensure that her cancer continued to remain firmly at bay…

I paced every time that I got a call from my lawyer informing me of the progress of Julian's adoption of Sam, which as it turned out, was a lot more difficult when her mother and the potential adoptive father weren't actually married yet…

And I paced every time that Elliott came down with so much as a cough for fear that he had become just as sick as Sam had previously been, making it so that just as we finally began to settle down from the stress and pain of this entire experience, we would just be forced to go ahead and start it all over again…

But today was different.

Today, instead of pacing across doctor's offices and court rooms, my surroundings were changed…

Today I wasn't pacing out of fear for my impending failure, but instead, pacing out of the nervousness of my imminent success…

Today I paced left and right across layer after layer of velvet displays proudly projecting the oldest of my jewelry that dated back to the era of my great grandparents.

Today I paced up and down a rainbow of makeup, every shape and color, organized in an almost obsessive compulsive fashion on top of ever bureau, night stand, and just plain surface that my bedroom had to offer.

Today I paced back and forth in a continuous motion past the hand-stitched, couture wedding dress that I had designed and created myself as it hung precariously wrapped in its protective plastic wrapping on the outside of my closet door.

Today I paced because today I was going to marry the most handsome, the most loyal, the most charming, and the most amazing man that I have ever met in my entire life… And despite the fact that historically speaking, Julian has brought me nothing but comfort, nothing but joy, I was finding myself more nervous than I have ever been…

I circled around the room for what must have been the millionth time in that day alone, and like every other time previously, my body subconsciously paused at the dress dangling right in front of my face so that I just had to stare at it, taking deep, labored breaths as I extended a hand delicately and lifted the veil up between my hands, feeling as the material laced between each web of each finger…

I have pictured my hair designed perfectly around this veil, my body tucked uncomfortably, yet perfectly inside of this dress since I was seven years old, since the very day that I told Victoria that one day, I was going to be a beautiful bride and in return she told me not to bother, that marriage was nothing more than a cruel joke.

It was ironic that almost two decades later, Victoria would be the one walking me down the aisle.

I turned away from the accessory veil and down towards the dress dangling beyond it; a perfect strapless, forgive my lack of modesty considering I had been the one to design it and all, alongside a light weight asymmetrical gazar corset and a Chantilly lace, soft draped skirt, and prepared myself to inspect the thing for about the millionth time today alone, looking for rips, stains, and anything else that I could see in between the tears that were just starting to form underneath both of my eyes.

I begged myself not to cry; I told myself that I couldn't do this here, I couldn't do this now…

In fact, I was just beginning to embark on my losing battle against my own tears when I heard it; a shrill scream, both loud and high pitched so that it sounded like almost nothing that a human being could possibly make, and all at once, all of my previous actions, including my tears, were stopped dead in my tracks before they could so much as start.

There were only three people inside of this house right now including me…

I sure as hell hadn't made that noise, and Elliott… well at this point, I knew the exact tone and sound of each and every one of the noises that Elliott made as well as what they all meant so that I knew that that hadn't belonged to him…

That only left one more person…

Sam.

"Sam!" I called out to her, my head raised and my ears poised as I waited desperately for a response that never came.

Inside of my chest, my heart, my heart came to an abrupt halt… something was wrong, something was really wrong… I just knew it.

In an instant, I was gone; darting out of my bedroom and straight into the hallway, trying desperately to follow the echoes of Sam's distant scream in an effort to locate the exact origins by which it had come from so that I could find her, so that I could help her in whatever hardships it had been that had just overcome her…

Something was wrong; that much I was sure of… something was terribly, terribly wrong… But still, as much as I knew that to be solid fact, nothing less than the certain truth, I couldn't help but to pray, if not worthlessly so, for everything to turn out to be just fine… for me to swing around that corner and find Sam stuck in not as much of a precarious position as I currently believed her to be in…

Today was supposed to be perfect; so perfect in fact that there was a downright impossibility towards anything ever going wrong… Of course, the way that our luck usually worked around here, I should probably be saying that today was so perfect that I was stupid to think that everything wasn't bound to be shot to hell eventually…

But maybe I should explain a little better first; you see, the way I saw it, there was more than one reason that today was supposed to be downright flawless… I mean, of course there was the obvious… that being the fact that today was Julian and my wedding date, but beyond that, there was more, the not so blatant, the nearly forgotten motive…

It was the underdog that the majority of the people that would be in attendance to our wedding today didn't even know about, probably would never know about… You see, today was the one hundred day mark of Elliott's birth, and by default of Sam's stem cell transplant as well…

I know, it seems miniscule, an insignificant cause of celebration really, but here's what you have to know about today; the thing that these doctor's have been pounding into our skulls since way back even before the idea that Sam was even viable for a transplant at all was that the one hundred day milestone was the big one, the first real landmark that the doctor liked to use in order to indicate any kind of survival prognosis…

Here's the thing; if you survive the first one hundred days after your stem cell transplant, the chances that you'll survive the next one hundred days after that, and after that, and for the rest of your lifetime after that are insurmountable…

Basically in laments terms, today was the day that we were allowed to say that Sam had finally beaten leukemia.

I remembered the feeling that I had gotten on the day that Julian and I had booked this date for our wedding…

It was about a week and a half after Sam had had her transplant, and we were feeling so optimistic about the results, so hopeful about it all, that we had finally decided to just go ahead and jump the shark and finally book a date because we knew; we knew that Sam was going to be okay, we knew that the rest of us were going to be okay, and we finally knew that everything was going to turn out to be just fine…

We'd gone down to the church that afternoon with a plan in mind to schedule the first available date that they had to be married, and that first date; December 11th, 2012.

The immediate thought that entered my mind upon this recognition was propounding... And suddenly, I saw this as a sign of something even more beautiful, something empowering...

You see, I have learned a long time ago never to mistake fate for coincidence, and this was no exception.

But right now… well right now as I finally rounded the corner of my hallway and skidded to a halt just outside of Sam's room with my heart pounding nervously and my breathing labored in panic, I couldn't help to think I had been wrong to think that all along…

I flung myself inside of the small bedroom so forcefully that the door literally flung backwards and bounced off the wall with such power that it damn near came right back at me and hit me square in the face… But hey, why not, I had a black eye for my prom, why not for my wedding too, right?

But as it turned out, the near destruction was for nothing; I don't think that Sam so much as registered, let alone even found herself distracted by my abrupt entrance, because she was currently busy pressing her face so deeply into her mirror, that she looked as if she were trying to positively fall forwards directly through it…

"Sam?" I took a hesitant step forward, quietly inquiring towards my curiosity as to what had brought on this sudden burst of vanity, so uncharacteristic of my daughter, "Are you okay? I heard yelling…"

At first, she didn't answer, instead she just continued to stare, watching her own reflection as she wiped her hand continuously back and forth across her still-bald scalp without so much as a pause in between motions as if she had transformed into some kind of damn wind-up doll or something…

In fact, I was just preparing to ask her the same question all over again, under the impression that she hadn't heard it the first time when she finally spoke…

"Do you see it Brooke?"

My first thought upon her responding to my question with another, completely unrelated question was that she had finally completely lost her mind… Of course, with everything that the poor kid has been through in these past hundred days and beyond that, I couldn't help but think that maybe she deserved to lose her mind… if not at least have it warranted…

After all, in those days immediately following her transplant, Sam had been put through the absolute ringer… Sure, maybe not so much so as she had been in the past, but still, enough to act as that final straw that would drive anybody straight up a wall…

She'd been stuck under the strictest of isolation protocol for an entire five weeks following the transplant, more than double the average length of time that normal stem cell recipients are subjected to thanks to the particularly rigorous damage that her body was put through in order to get her to that point to begin with…

Needless to say, it had eventually gotten to the point where we'd all began fearing beyond fearing that the transplant had actually failed; that all of this hard work, all of this dedication, all of this praying had been for absolutely nothing…

But then, at the end of that grueling five week stretch, a miracle happened; Sam's body actually began to produce its own cells…

And I'm talking real cells here; her own brand new, non-cancerous group of white blood cells, each and every one of them doing the job that they were intended to do, and not a single abnormal cell to be seen…

Two weeks later, she was finally released back into the safety of my own care, and I'll have to be completely honest with you here, I don't think that I had ever been more nervous about Sam coming home from the hospital in my entire life… and that's saying a lot, trust me.

But as it turned out, I had a very good reason to be nervous, to be unsure; you see, the day that Sam was finally released back into my care, the very second that we got her home actually, she started to get sick again.

It had started in the car; a simple headache that had progressed faster than we could keep up with it until eventually, she got so dizzy that she could barely even sit up anymore…

I had ended up speeding dangerously the rest of the way home, and then finally, with my newborn son cradled in between my arms, and my teenaged daughter safely tucked away in Julian's, we'd gotten ourselves settled into the living room where we'd spent the night taking shifts gathering around Sam, just to ensure that she didn't stop breathing through the silence of the night…

By the next morning she was in more pain than I had ever seen her in until it got to the point where I was forced to pack her body with ice packs just to keep her fever down as I continuously replenished my supply of cold, damp washcloths in order to drape them over her eyes in an effort to block out those painful rays of sunlight that would otherwise pound into her already aching skull…

We'd checked her back into the hospital by the afternoon, but much to our surprise, as much as it was a relief to hear them say it, they'd told us that Sam was just fine, they told us not to worry…

The way that it was, as they explained to us, was that this was normal, that most patients right out of their stem cell transplants usually do go through this phase, a relatively extended period of time in which although their blood counts are in fact rising, the actual cells are still in need of a significantly longer period of time to rebuild the strength required for complete usefulness…

And despite the fact that at the time, I was still too worked up wondering why the hell they had released Sam if that had been the case while simultaneously not believing a damn word that they said, in the end, they were right… Sam was fine, in fact she was more than fine, and less than a week later, she was back home, and since then, well we hadn't had so much as a single problem…

In fact, at this point, nearly four months following the end of a battle that she'd almost lost, there wasn't really a lot left to physically indicate that Sam had spent the better part of the last year and a half fighting cancer at all…

I mean, yeah sure, she was still skeletal to the point that that the bridesmaid's dress that I'd brought for her for the wedding had to come out of the kids section, and she was still so pale she was nearly translucent… And yes, the central venous catheter that they'd placed in her chest strictly for the purpose of the transplant remained firmly in place, out of use for months now, but still remaining for at least a couple of more weeks just in case, but if you could look past all of that, which really wasn't that hard believe it or not, it was hard to tell that she was ever as sick as she had been at all…

Well… I guess the fact that she was still just as bald as she was on the day she was born remained to be the dead giveaway, the elephant in the room, but that was just something that we were all used to at this point…

Directly following the last of her chemotherapy treatments, Sam and I had gone online in an effort to do some research, and I swear to it, words couldn't begin to explain the excitement that she'd initially felt upon hearing that oftentimes, hair starts to grow back again within three to five weeks following the final chemotherapy treatment…

Of course, three to five weeks passed quicker than any of us had expected it to, and when it did and nothing really changed, she was right back to being down in the dumps all over again…

I guess she just chose to ignore the fact that in her research, she'd also come across the fact that it mentioned that in some people, it could take not three to five weeks, but as long as three to five months…

Yes, in a lifestyle such as the one we were living, patience was more than a virtue, it was an absolute necessity, but to be honest, I think that we were all starting to accept the notion that maybe Sam's hair was just never going to grow back.

That's why I was so surprised when I saw her for the first time today, standing in front of that mirror with her hand rubbing the top of her head with those mechanical motions, that I hadn't noticed it sooner…

"Oh my God…" I mumbled the words of expressed shock more to myself than I actually had to Sam, staggering forward in an effort to get a closer look at her with my mouth agape, observing carefully the top of her head, which, now that I was truly looking at it, wasn't quite as bald as I remembered it being the last time that I'd seen her…

It must have happened overnight or something, like the springing up of the flowers adorning backyard gardens in early May… Several small wisps of thin hair so light, it almost looked to be blonde, believe it or not, were sprouting sporadically along the entirety of Sam's head…

I mean, sure it was miniscule, barely anything really, but seriously, look at what we were comparing it to over here… I mean, it wasn't more than a couple of weeks ago now that Sam had been clinging to the last couple of eyelashes that she had just so that she could claim at least a single strand of hair somewhere across her body…

So yeah, in comparison to that, this was huge; in fact, it was huger than huge…

"So you see it then? I mean… you can actually tell that it's there?" She flipped around and away from the mirror, her face brightening with the confirmation that this wasn't all in her head, that this really was happening, and I couldn't help but to channel her outpouring of energy, my heart swelling with pride so much so that it made my chest physically hurt…

"Oh I can see it all right." I told her, extending my arm up and towards her head, finding myself instantly sucked into the exact same magnetic force that had taken captive of Sam as my hand slowly began to rub back and forth, my fingers lacing between the thin strands of hair so that I knew that there was no way in hell that I would be able to force myself to stop now…

"Sam honey I'm so proud of you." I spoke airily, the truth in my statement displayed prominently in my features as I finally found the strength inside of me to release her head from underneath my hand only so that I could grab onto her shoulders and pull her into my chest, locking her into a tight embrace that she latched onto instantaneously.

"Thanks." She muttered back into my shirt, her tone gentle and distant as it always was when I complimented her and she had no idea how to respond to it…

Modesty… that was a trait that she sure as hell didn't get from me, that was for damn sure.

I could have held onto her forever; one arm supporting her back while the other snaked back up through the small hairs growing out of the back of her head… I know, I know, that might sound unusual or awkward or something for somebody who's never quite been in a situation like this one before, but trust me, to us, it was completely normal… or at least as completely normal as you can get for people like us…

But I'd learned this lesson a long time ago; things that you feel as if they should last forever, generally don't last that long at all, and, just as expected, Sam and I were broken apart within seconds, this time by a loud, incessant wail that I immediately identified as originating from within the depths of the nursery which contained the previously sleeping until this very moment apparently, Elliott…

"Crap…" I muttered in response to the distraction considering I wanted to do something big, something huge for Sam in this moment because she deserved it, really, she did.

"He has good timing…" Sam commented, pulling herself gently out of my grasp, steadying herself upright.

"Yeah, that he gets from his dad…" I spoke as convincingly as possible, but still knowing full well that Sam wasn't going to buy a word of that remark considering each and every one of us knew that if there was one thing that Elliott had inherited from me, it was my lack of punctuality and appropriate timing…

"Yeah right, nice try Brooke." And as expected, she say straight through my attempt to hoodwink her in an instant, and just because she's Sam, and this is what she does best, she called me out on it, "We all know that that one is all you."

"Yeah I guess you're right, I tried though, at least give me some credit," I shrugged, knowing full well there was no arguing with that one, "I guess I should go and get him shouldn't I?"

"Yeah, there might be something written in the laws of parenting that lists allowing your baby to bawl his head off as cruel and unusual punishment… And then child protective services might come and snatch him away from us…"

"Oh good, if that's the reward I get, remind me to leave you the next time you're bawling your head off…" I responded to Sam's sarcastic joke with an even more sarcastic joke, because as much as I always loved to tell people about how much I was rubbing off on Sam, well there were parts of her that I found rubbing off on me too… more parts than I would ever care to admit to mind you.

"Ha. Ha." She emphasized each syllable, calling back to me just as I turned to exit out of her bedroom so as to travel up the flight of stairs up towards the nursery.

"We still have to celebrate this you know!" I called down to her from within the hallway, trying to remind her of the fact that the idea that she had woken up this morning with hair on top of her head warranted the largest of extravaganzas in the history of large extravaganzas.

"Don't you have a wedding to get ready for or something?" Sam replied back to me, delivering the reminder that I knew I definitely did not need, "I mean, I'm not sure if you remember this or not, but you are getting married today!"

"Not important!" Okay, even I cannot believe that those were the words that had actually come out of my mouth… But I guess that if there was one thing that could beat out my wedding in terms of importance it was this, so I couldn't put it past her too much.

"I'm holding you to that!" It was the last thing that I heard before I rounded into Elliott's nursery with a soft smile and a silent shake of the head, otherwise choosing not to respond to Sam's comment for two reasons; the first being that I knew for a solid fact that Sam would absolutely hold me to that comment until the day I died because Sam wasn't one to forget about things like that so easily, and two, because yelling back directly in my infant son's ear would without a doubt, leave him more fussy than he already apparently was.

The child was wailing and hollering, waving his little arms and legs up from within the depths of his crib like a mad man so that I couldn't help but rush those last couple of steps over towards him just so that I could reach him before his head popped off from the swell of his rising blood pressure.

"Oh Elliott, Elliot what is the matter sweetheart?" I spoke to the just over three month old infant as if he could actually understand me using my softest, most well-practiced baby voice as I reached down into the crib and wrapped my little nugget up securely in my arms before lifting him straight up into the air.

I could feel my arms sink slightly under the pressure of his added weight… But seriously, for being born a month premature, the kid was huge… in fact, he'd clocked in at his four month checkup at nearly 17lbs, a feat, his doctor told me, that was nearly unheard of in preemies…

But I couldn't complain; he wasn't only healthy, he was plain handsome as well…

My little guy was starting to look more and more like my bigger guy with each passing day, as much as Julian continued to insist that Elliott looked more like me than he did himself…

But despite this, there was no denying it; Elliott had that shadow under his chin that would one day develop into his father's strong jaw line. He had those soft hazel eyes that would make girls' hearts melt when he was older, and the thin, brown waves of hair that would always look perfect no matter what the circumstances…

Hell, he even had Julian's personality already; a stubborn mule with a surprisingly gentle heart for a four month old.

Yup, there was absolutely no denying it; I had some pretty awesome men in my life.

"There you go, little man," I mumbled down to him, wrapping him closer into my chest as he slowly began to quiet down and relax, repositioning his tiny body to lean further into his favorite position in my arms so that he could fall back asleep, "You just wanted to get a little bit of attention from your mommy didn't you? You are my little attention hog, yes you are… Oh well, at least you got something from me."

He seemed uninterested in my banter, his eyes slowly closing as I rocked him gently, one hand supporting his backside, the other his head as I subconsciously began to rub my fingers through his few soft locks of baby hair that had only just began to sprout out of his head in large, brown tufts.

"And hey, you're looking less and less like your big sister now that she's actually got some hair on top of her head… I think that you might still have her beat though buddy." I spoke my observation aloud, entirely to myself.

In the end, I had somehow magically managed to get Elliott back to sleep just about as quickly as he'd woken up, but still, I continued to pursue my favorite activity of simply holding onto him for a couple more minutes, using my acquired motherly touch to rock him into a deeper and deeper sleep until the shrill ringing of my doorbell stopped me dead in my tracks.

The sound echoed sharply for a few brief seconds before fading into obscurity, but I already knew that it would be too late; so I stopped abruptly in my motions, tensed my muscles, and waited as, right on target, Elliott awoke once again with a shrill cry that grew louder and louder with each passing second.

And I knew better than anybody that now that he was wide awake, there would be no putting him back down.

"Brooke, can you get that!" Sam shouted, her voice ringing alongside the fading doorbell so that my previously silent house erupted very suddenly into chaos, "I'm getting ready to jump in the shower!"

"Yeah!" I contributed to the collection of noise, admitting defeat in my figuring that I had been stupid to ever think that I could ever get Elliott to sleep through the chaos of preparing for a wedding anyway…

So I hiked the still-screaming child up a little bit higher in my arms and exited the nursery, making my way swiftly towards the front door, reaching it just as a second pang of the doorbell echoed through my ears.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming, I'm coming, Jesus…" I flung the door open probably… no, scratch that, definitely sounding more tense and nervous than I actually was in my false hostility.

"Wow, it looks like somebody's got a case of the pre-wedding jitters." Peyton responded instantaneously to my tone, relentless in pointing out my emotions like only Peyton can do as her and Haley stood firmly on my front porch, their arms full with everything they could possibly need to prepare to transform into my bridesmaids and that all-knowing look of understanding of just what it felt like to be this close to your wedding on their faces.

"I do not," I tried to play it off cool, but my voice snapped just a little too harshly to be totally convincing, and when they just gave me one small smirk and a nod each, I knew in an instant that they both saw right through me.

"Yeah, okay," Peyton laughed, pushing past me and into the house so that she could dump her remarkable load down onto the couch, Haley following suite so that they were free to cross their arms determinedly and stare at me in search for a more truthful response…

"Okay… maybe just a little bit…" They're all-knowing stares pulled the truth right out of me, and of course, it didn't help that I never was a very good liar to begin with, "It's just that Elliott just woke up, and then Sam had me running around in circles before, and I can't help thinking that something's gonna go wrong… I just know that something is going to go wrong today…"

They'd got me started, and suddenly, I couldn't stop, the words spewing out of my mouth at a million miles a second as I dumped my deepest concerns and fears of the day out onto their shoulders.

"Alright, alright," Haley stopped me before I could get too worked up, probably for fear that my head would positively explode at the rate I was going and then my wedding really would be ruined, "First of all, nothing is going to go wrong… You are going to be beautiful, and Julian is going to beautiful, and the you guys' wedding is going to be beautiful… Second of all, you shouldn't be doing any of this, not today anyway…"

She indicated towards me to relinquish my maternal duties for the day, grabbing Elliott from out of my arms and pulling him closer into her where he instantly, and easily settled down into his new environment… He always did choose his aunts over me when it came down to it; but I didn't blame him, they spoiled him rotten.

"Now go! Get ready, you're getting married today Brooke Davis!"

"Oh shit…" I paused as if Haley's announcement was the first time that I'd actually heard the news that today was my wedding date… Of course, the feeling of realization that had suddenly wiped me dry made it almost seem as if it actually was, "I'm getting married today…"

"Yes!" Peyton and Haley both yelled simultaneously, giving me a single strong shove towards the direction of my bedroom where I stumbled stupidly on my feet for just a couple of brief seconds before I finally found my footing and made my way back down the hall.

With my eyes wide and my mind racing, I just stood in the doorway of the room for a couple of seconds, trying to decide where to start, trying to put my head back together as the overwhelming string of emotions that I was currently feeling really began to hit me… It was true what they were saying after all, I was indeed getting married today; getting married to the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most fantastically loyal man that I had ever met in my entire life…

I deserved it… hell, we all deserved it, us; this group of unbelievably resilient people who somehow, despite having all of the odds stacked up against us from the very beginning, managed to somehow find strength in the sharing of our pain, and who all became stronger, became better because of it.

I mean, I can say this much about myself anyway; I'm braver now, I'm more confident, I'm clearly finally allowing myself to open my heart back up to love again, even after all of this time…

Most importantly, I've become humbled, modest, always respectful, and always remembering of all of the things that I have had to go through in order to get myself here, at this perfect place that I was at today…

Because today… well today I knew that I was going to see a lot of people, and I knew that there was going to be a lot of emotions, a lot of love, but I also knew that the only part of that equation that ever really mattered was the part that came from me, and from Julian, and from Sam, and from Elliott…

Because today, we were finally going to become a real family today, and today we were going to celebrate together, and we were going to dance together, and just plain exist together…

And at the end of the night, when everybody left to rush home in order to change out of their dresses and suits so that they could all go to sleep and wake up the next morning feeling exactly the same way as they had felt the day before, well we were still going to feel it, and you know what… I was starting to get the impression that the four of us were going to feel it until the very day that we died.

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**JULIAN**

I wasn't certain about too many things in my life… I wasn't a very perceptive person, and I guess that that was just the kind of guy that I was…

Today in particular, I was certain about even less than usual, mainly because I spent the majority of the day with my head in the clouds, unable to concentrate on much of anything other than the countdown to my big moment.

Actually, I wasn't being entirely truthful, I could tell you a little bit about what I was positively certain of at the moment. For example, I was certain that I was currently standing head to toe in the most expensive tuxedo that I have ever laid eyes on let alone wore. I was certain that I was finding myself fidgeting nervously at the head of an altar, and I was certain that I was about to get married to the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most amazing girl that the world has ever seen.

But other than that, I was having a little bit of trouble focusing… In fact, I'd somehow managed to blur out my entire world to the point that I didn't even truly remember getting myself dressed, or even arriving at the church to begin with.

All of the mutterings of the audience were beginning to blur into one indistinct noise, all of their faces were mere smudges in the vision of my cloudy eyes…

In fact, it wasn't until the room fell into a state of total silence that I truly came back into focus.

The first sound that I'd actually found myself registering in hours at this point was the shuffle of bodies as every single head of every single audience member turned obligingly towards the back of the church just alongside the ringing of music as the eighty-something year old woman behind the organ began the familiar wedding march.

And only then, as my senses began to slowly come back to me, was I suddenly very aware of the cool sweat beading underneath my clothing, indicating just how nervous I truly was.

My heart pounded a powerful drum cadence along my rib cage, dancing harder and harder across my insides with every step taken by the procession as my groomsmen lead their assigned bridesmaids forward; Lucas with Peyton, Nathan with Haley, and finally, bringing up the rear, Jamie, who looked slightly ridiculous but mostly just really adorable with his arm linked around Sam's, the girl being forced to crouch slightly at the knees as she walked because her partner was so much shorter than her.

I watched her closely for several seconds, a brilliant smile igniting her entire face as she stepped closer and closer towards where I was standing, and in an instant I could tell that there was something different about her today… I just couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was…

But then, I slowly began to understand.

You see, in the days leading up to mine and Brooke's wedding, Sam had unexpectedly begun to grow more than a little bit self conscious about her appearance… It was the first time since we'd fallen into this mess that I'd truly seen that side of her, but to be completely honest, I think that she was afraid that the fact that she had no hair was going to put a damper on the wedding…

Brooke and I had tried the best we could to convince her of how ridiculous that sounded, but that never really changed much of anything, so a couple of days ago, we'd taken her down to this place in the mall that specialized in designing and fitting wigs for people who had lost their hair to injury or disease, and within hours, we were all set.

The thing was, today she wasn't even wearing it, a fact that struck me as odd considering the fact that despite a near nervous breakdown towards the appearance that we all knew she had absolutely no control over caused her a few days ago, today she was looking just as radiant, just as happy as probably would have been even if she had chosen to cover herself up… if not more so.

It wasn't until she got a little bit closer to me that I actually noticed the hair on top of her head; practically microscopic in its amount, but still there none-the-less, and suddenly, everything was making much more sense.

She strutted herself confidently forward and I couldn't help but be proud of her, but to admire her even more than I already did for her poise… In fact, I'd gotten so worked up in watching Sam, and imparting just a little bit of her self-assurance into myself, that I started to feel myself slip into more and more of a relaxed state to the point that I'd almost forgotten about my nerves altogether… the key word there being almost.

But then the music paused, and a wave of motion washed over the pews as all of our guests rose to their feet and turned their backs towards me in order to face the back doors as Brooke slowly began to emerge through them…

Our eyes locked immediately as she began her descent down the aisle so that I couldn't help the slackening of my jaw or the fact that my mouth was currently dangling open like an idiot.

My heart froze making me suddenly very much so aware of the fact that Brooke was currently present in the same venue, the very same space of my unworthy self, and I knew that the only way that I could get the vital organ to start beating again was for us to make contact, as if solidifying the fact that I already knew about how much I needed Brooke simply to survive…

And the thing was, Brooke just looked so damn gorgeous that I couldn't help but find myself starting to get nervous all over again.

She moved quicker than I had expected her to down the rows of our family and our friends so that I blinked and she was at my side, but in my own right, I must say I preferred it that way…

I'll swear to it, she was actually floating on air as she approached the edge of the steps leading up to the stage, and I stepped down to meet her, offering her my hand so that I could physically feel our love intertwining between our fingertips, and for the first time in a very, very long time, I felt free…

"You look beautiful Brooke." I told her, guiding her up the mere handful of steps so that we could stand together at the head of the altar, the priest already there waiting for us, at this point, just lingering until the two of us were ready.

"You're looking pretty handsome there yourself stud." She shown towards me, that smile that I swear hurt my eyes it was so bright, and suddenly, the strongest feeling, an urge that I couldn't possibly resist washed over me, and I knew I couldn't wait a second longer; I wanted to be made into a part of Brooke, I wanted her to be made into a part of me…

So I did what I could; I grabbed her gently by her hips, sure to be delicate because I knew just how hard she'd worked on that gorgeous dress as I pulled her closer and closer into me until our lips met and a good kind of quiet settled around us; the kind of quiet that wasn't really quiet to anybody except for to us because there was nothing else in this world that truly mattered more than we did at this moment.

I allowed my eyes to close without really meaning for it to happen because I wanted to register absolutely nothing else, I wanted to know nothing else but what it was like to feel Brooke between my arms.

She leaned back into me consensually, and by the time we both pulled away from each other, her cheeks were flushed red while meanwhile, I could feel the flush of heat adorning over my own… And with a small kiss against my freshly shaved cheek, she leaned into my ear and whispered towards me so that only I could hear her;

"I love you."

"Dearly beloved, we father here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony." Ironic that it was the priest who first reminded Brooke and I that we weren't the only people here at this wedding, and we still had a ceremony to get through before we were actually married, "Today Julian and Brooke claim their eternal love to the world with these words."

That was my cue to start… at least, I think it was; there were too many things that were going on yesterday during the rehearsal for me to truly now for sure… Of course, when everybody grew silent and all eyes turned to me, I knew that I'd been right, so I forced my brain to defog in an effort to try and remember the vows that I'd poured countless hours into perfecting.

"Brooke…"I stumbled briefly over my words… You see, public speaking had never really been my thing, which is why I'd decided to become a movie producer rather than an actor, but the second that I looked into Brooke's eyes, the world disappeared, and it was only me, and it was only her, and after that… well let's just say the words came out a lot easier…

"Somebody told me once that the only love that we accept is that which we truly think we deserve, and before I met you I used to live by that rule… But today I realize how stupid that was… that rule isn't true, because there is no way that somebody like me could ever possibly deserve somebody as amazing as you… I used to think that I had everything that I needed in my life in order to be happy, but I was wrong again, and like before, I just didn't realize that until I met you… Everybody goes through life living it their own way, but it's only a few of us that can say that they've truly lived it allowing somebody else in, and I've finally met that somebody else… I love everything about you Brooke Davis, and if I were to sit here and list all of those things right now, well we would be here for the rest of our lives… So today I'm asking you this; be a part of my life so that I never have to go through another day by myself, so that I never have to live again, a life without you in it."

"Julian," Our eyes never separated, not even once, not even after Brooke's began to glisten with tears that never actually spilled but only made her smile stretch wider, "The day that you met me you met a girl that was scared and lonely and didn't know how to open her heart up to anybody anymore, and I was so afraid that I would never find anybody that knew how to get me to let them in. But you never gave up on me. You taught me that things change, and people will come both into and out of your life, and that life doesn't stop for anybody, so you should never stop for it. You taught me how to love again and how to trust again, and most importantly, you reminded me how indescribably amazing it feels to just love and to be loved. I tried for hours, but I just couldn't even come up with words to describe how much I love you… You see the world through such a unique perspective… you see me through such a unique perspective… I want nothing more than to see the world through your eyes, and after today, I'll be able to… forever."

"Brooke and Julian, you've come here today in order to exchange your vows. Julian, do you take Brooke to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish from this day forward until death do you part?"

"I do." I emphasized my profession, speaking to the priest without taking my eyes off of Brooke as I squeezed her hands just a little bit tighter between my own.

"Brooke, do you take Julian to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish from this day forward until death do you part?"

"I do."

"The rings please,"

Brooke and I separated for the first time since her arrival at the altar, and even in that briefest of partings, it was so physically painful, that we'd both moved with simultaneous motions as quickly as humanly possible as Brooke grabbed her ring from Sam, and I grabbed mine from Jamie, swinging back around in order to slip the white gold band around Brooke's pristine ring finger.

"Brooke, this ring symbolizes my desire for you to be my wife from this day forward."

For a brief second, she just stared right back at me, our eyes locking to the point that they seemed physically detachable, but she quickly regained her bearings and realized what it was that she had to do.

"Julian," Her voice shook slightly as she spoke, but I think that that was only because she was trying not to cry in an effort that she was definitely struggling with, "This ring symbolizes my desire for you to be my husband from this day forward."

"By the power vested in me by the state of North Carolina, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride."

There was a very abrupt burst of applause… or at least, I think that there was, I was a little bit too preoccupied at the moment to truly notice as I leaned forward and wrapped my body into Brooke's, our lips meeting in a puzzle piece that was somehow even more of a perfect fit than it already was before, and in that two or three minutes out of my entire life, we truly lived, we truly loved, and we all truly felt young again, felt alive again… all in a good way.

* * *

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly, and how uniformly a large group of people gathered at a large party, for example, at a wedding reception, can get totally and completely hammered.

Actually, I guess now that I thought about it, this was the first wedding reception that I've personally ever been to where I'd willingly chose not to get absolutely belligerent because, you know, I like a good open bar as much as the next guy does, but at the same time, I really was planning on actually remember the evening of my wedding…

But despite the fact that I've heard more than my fair share of rumors about just how crazy weddings in Tree Hill could become, I was pleased to say that the people were happy, the company was good, and the day was going nothing short of perfect… knock on wood of course, considering the fact that the night was still young.

"Ladies and gentlemen at this time, I would like everybody to direct their attention onto the dance floor as, for the first time as husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Julian Baker will have their first dance!"

"That's our cue," I responded to the obnoxious DJ, presenting Brooke my elbow in order to allow her an opportunity to link her arm around my own in an offer that she accepted immediately, "Are you ready Mrs. Baker?"

"I am more than ready Mr. Baker." She nodded to me, taking the first step onto the dance floor alongside a runway of thunderous applause; all of the people that we loved the most honoring our success, our accomplishment while meanwhile, the two of us waved as if we were royalty… but you know what, for a little while there, I truly think that we honestly believed that we were…

We settled in the center of the hard wood floor, directly under the lights so that it would be easier for the audience to gawk at my embarrassing, yet compliant presentation of the fact that I had been born with two left feet.

My eyes snapped back to attention the second that Brooke's arms flung around the back of my neck, and she much have sensed my nerves because she grabbed onto me just a little bit tighter than she actually had to, allowing me to press my body into hers so that it at least looked like I was leading in the motions even though me and her both knew that it was all her…

The point was that I felt safe, and I knew that she felt safe, and when I looked over Brooke's shoulder and saw Sam watching the two of us with a smirk on her face and Elliott bouncing up and down inside of her arms, I knew that they felt safe too, and all at once, any and all concepts of fear suddenly flew right out of the window…

"Hey Julian?"

"Yeah?" Brooke's voice pulled me out of my haze as she leaned into my shoulder and mumbled barely above a whisper so that I was the only one that could hear her;

"Did we really just get married?"

I laughed openly at her question, loud and true before I turned, smiling back down at her so that the second we made eye contact, I couldn't help but continue my motions even further into her so that I took her lips into my own and was only vaguely aware of the group of cheers that exploded all around us so I suddenly knew what it was like to be famous.

"Yeah… yeah I think that we did." I spoke airily into her mouth, still just as unbelieving about that fact as Brooke seemed to be in the moment.

"So what do we do now?" She asked in that soft, seductive voice that always made me melt inside so that I almost couldn't help but suggest that now, maybe we should go sneak off into the bathroom or something, but I refrained because I figured that that might be considered rude or something…

"We dance," I made the second best suggestion that I could think of.

"Nah, you step on my toes too much," She laughed at my imperfection, loving me for it and simultaneously making me love her even more, "I'm getting a new partner… hey Jamie!"

She pulled away from my body abruptly, turning and extending her hand towards Jamie whose face glowed with pride the second that he was asked the honor of completing our first dance so that he wasted no time in scrambling up to the center of the dance floor. And of course, being the gentleman that he was, he instantly assumed the classic ballroom dancing position, reaching upwards where his little arms only just reached Brooke's waistline… But even still, Brooke actually had to crouch in order to get her arms around Jamie's shoulders…

"Stealing my wife within the first couple of hours, huh buddy?" I asked him jokingly as he began spinning in circles around Brooke, completely out of time with the song that was playing… and, just for the record, he didn't step on her toes, not even once.

"Sorry Uncle Julian," He used the title, probably by his mother's discretion for the first time, but when he did, his face scrunched up in confusion as if the whole thing sounded new, foreign even on his tongue, "Do I have to call you Uncle Julian now that you're married to my Aunt Brooke, because momma said I did."

"You can call me whatever you want bud." I told him with an assuring tone, figuring I would let the boy chose my characterization by his own discretion.

"I like Uncle Julian," He nodded confidently with a short bob of the head, "I think it sounds cool."

"I think it sounds cool too Jamie," I supported his decision by reaching up a quick hand in order to ruffle his perfectly coifed hair before he rushed to return to dancing circles around me alongside my wife, leaving me looking rather foolish standing in the middle of the dance floor of my own wedding reception without a partner…

"Hey Sam," I called to her attention, looking to rectify my embarrassment by extending a hand out towards her, "Wanna dance?"

"I have Elliott…" She sung her words, clearly trying to get out of the scenario I'd just dragged her into as her cheeks burned red at the mere thought of dancing in public…

"I'll take him darling." Luckily, my mother chose to actually assist in my cause for a change, stumbling forward, slightly drunk as she probably had been long before Brooke and my actual wedding ceremony with Victoria trailing closely at her heels, watching her nervously probably just to ensure that she didn't trip over her own two feet as she reached over and practically forced my son straight out of Sam's arm, "Yes you want to spend some time with your Grandma Sylvia and Grandma Victoria don't you Elliott?"

"Aunt Victoria," Victoria corrected her loudly, making sure that everybody within a mile radius could have heard her even though I was more than positive that only me and Sam were paying enough attention to have actually noticed my mother point out Victoria's grandmother status.

"See, now you've got no excuse, come on," I urged Sam, noticing out of the corner of my eye, Victoria intercepting Elliott as Sylvia made her way back in the direction of the open bar…

"Alright fine," She laughed with a small eye roll, accepting my the offering of my hand before following me back onto the dance floor where Brooke and Jamie continued to go all out; dancing in a manner that vaguely resembled somebody having a seizure, but still, dancing with smiles on their faces that made their ridiculous movements somehow look as if it were a professionally arranged piece.

And just as I knew that she would, Sam warmed up to the public eye quickly, falling into a similar pattern that had succumbed Brooke and Jamie so that after a while, even I was having a hard time keeping up with her…

I couldn't begin to describe how great it was to see Sam this happy again… It was even greater to see her this active considering the fact that it wasn't too long ago now that she struggled with chronic exhaustion and insurmountable amounts of pain to the point that she wasn't even able to stand up and climb out of bed on her own accord…

I became an observer in my movements; forcing the world to slow down as my family and my closest friends circled around me just so that I would be able to truly take in this moment in a manner that it truly justified, so that I would always remember what it meant to be this happy, what it meant to see Brooke so happy, what it meant to see Sam so happy, and even Elliott, who eventually stopped crying only after Brooke finally saved him from the arms of my mother…

I felt unstoppable to the point that we were invincible… We were suddenly better again, all of us growing healthy alongside Sam, all of us slowly going back to the normal with the exception of all of the positive changes that this whole experience has left us with…

To be completely honest, I don't think that I had ever seen any one of us looking quite so… alive before.

A long time ago, when I had found myself incessantly bogged down by stupid, insignificant problems such as social pressures and perceived responsibilities, I used to think of love strictly in terms of something that could eventually hurt you in its guaranteed betrayal, enslave you in its eventual liability.

It was only after I had finally come here, after I'd allowed myself to ultimately enter this life and become a part of this self-designed family that I realized that it was just the opposite, that if anything, it was the only thing that could ever possibly set you free…

Most importantly, this whole thing; this experience, this family, this love, well it transformed me, it's made me into more of the person, more of the man that I'd always wanted to become, that I always feared that I never could be.

You see, my body, my life, my heart, it all finally felt as if it were perfectly aligned, and that… well that has opened my eyes for the first time, and finally, I was actually able to see the beauty of all of our lives for what it truly was, and for what it was truly supposed to be all along.


	66. Epilogue

**For one last time, hope you guys enjoy.**

* * *

Chapter 66: Epilogue (Heaven Bound and Glory Be)

**Tuesday, September 2****nd****, 2014**

**BROOKE**

The thing about my family that you always have to keep in mind is this; that we've spent the last three years or so positively teetering on the edge of the ocean with one foot stuck in the water while the other was stretched to its absolute threshold, still just barely making it onto the shore line.

But these days, I'm happy to say, our footing has finally began to hold down more securely into the sand, these days I felt as if I could actually manage taking a step without sinking straight down to the bottom of the sea….

There had been a point in time in my life, not so long ago now, where I kept all of the blinds around my house permanently closed. And then on one occasion that truly wasn't as special or serene as I'd previously envisioned it to be, things changed and a realization hit me right smack dab across the back of my head screaming at me that my life hadn't actually been as shot to hell as I'd previously thought it was, that there still really was so much left for me to live for…

It was on that same exact day that I walked over to the windows, stopping at every single one of them throughout my entire house, and I ripped them open – some of them so forcefully that I'd wound up tearing the curtains straight down off of their rods – and I flooded my house with light, motivated by the mindset that I was finally ready to allow myself to truly start to see again.

In the days, and then the months, and ultimately the years following Sam's sickness and her subsequent recovery, I've slowly started to puncture my life with a level of simplicity that almost made me forget why I'd chosen a life laced with rigorous scheduling and hectic work in the first place…

Now don't get me wrong here, I still loved my clothing line, and the momentary fame and monetary rewards that accompanied it, but somehow, even that never seemed to measure up to, hell, it didn't even compare to what most people might describe as little things, but I would describe as the world; an A+ English essay hanging up on the refrigerator door, a small fist jutting towards you a handful of crunched up tulips that had been plucked half-hazard out of the front garden…

Basically, in lament terms the call of motherhood just rang out louder to me than the call of… well, anything else.

Today reminded me that day… only without the windows to wage war against.

It was after all, a big day in the Baker household, because besides the fact that it was Elliott's – you know, my son who has been growing up faster than I could even keep up with anymore – second birthday, it also happened to be, by default, two years since Sam's stem cell transplant, two years marking the end of an ordeal that nearly put us all in a very different position than we were currently finding ourselves in…

On some days, it felt as if all of this had happened just yesterday, on others, it felt like it was ten years ago rather than only two, but the most important thing that you truly need to know is this; I'm healthy, Julian's healthy, my kids are healthy, and Sam has finally recovered from the ordeal that nearly killed her two years ago, barely coming down with so much as a cold let alone any other kind of serious problem since then.

I still struggled with it sometimes, I can't lie to you; that notion of how it was that we'd gotten through that, how I'd managed to make it to this point in my life that seemed so perfect, so worthy of all of the struggles that we'd had to climb over in order to get here, but mostly, I had accustomed myself to the feeling that I had simply been living like this forever.

It helped that I've since learned to focus my belief system towards one of fate while simultaneously dwindling the measure by which I define my life in terms of coincidence…

And you know what? It was working.

I've become a firm believer lately of the idea that every single one of us experience this vague crossroads at some point in our life where we make this profound, life changing decision without even realizing it…

But by maybe mumbling a simple yes to a question when what you really wanted to say was no, or by taking a left hand turn at a traffic light instead of going right, you have thrown yourself into this grand, truly life changing series of events ignited by the spark created by that one decision.

I think about where it was that I would be right now if Sam had chosen a different store to shoplift from on that fateful day that I'd met her, if she'd merely walked right past mine without so much as a second glance… I struggle to even perceive what type of life I would be living had I never made the decision to go into those shop garages of Tree Hill High School, if I'd never waited for Sam in the back seat of that SUV, if I'd never asked her to move in with me…

The depth of that question was almost too steep for me to even comprehend without my world spinning so profoundly on its axis that my head literally started to swarm around me, but I could tell you this much; wherever I would be, it sure as hell wouldn't be where I was now… Hell, it probably wouldn't even come close…

There is no way in hell that I would be a wife, or a mother, receiving my daily dose of exercise not by paying an over-priced gym membership fee once a month, but by chasing a hyperactive toddler in circles around my house…

And these days, I couldn't imagine my life without them any more than I could imagine the concept of silence; especially right now, as I struggled to round my ever-growing family up into one place so that I could get them all together and take Sam to her doctor's appointment, by myself might I ad, considering the fact my amazing, handsome, and currently absent husband was currently wrapping up his production on a local film that he's been working on the past couple of months…

So here I was, trying to restrain a struggling and fussy Elliott with my knees as my arms remained preoccupied with wrestling his jacket up and over his head.

He's been in that stage for a couple of months now; the 'I don't want to wear any clothes ever' stage that yes, was good for a couple of pictures that would sure as hell embarrass him a couple of years down the line, but no, wasn't very good for when I tried to take him out in public…

Last week I'd been in the supermarket ordering cold cuts from the deli, my back turned for only a second while Elliott sat in the basket and stripped off everything but his diaper in under twenty seconds flat until a complete stranger had to tap me on my shoulder and let me know that my son was exhibiting behaviors that marked him for a future in exhibitionism.

"Come on Elliott, come on, just wear your coat for mommy… If you're a good boy I promise that I'll take you out for a special birthday lunch after we take Sam to the doctor…" I bribed my two year old with the only thing that I could really think of, but the boy didn't even slow in his squirming let alone stop it.

"No!"

That seemed to be his favorite word lately, and he was never too shy to remind me of that fact… Now that I thought about it though, I wasn't even sure that Elliott fully even understood the concept of being taken out for a special birthday lunch with mommy let alone be willing to take me up on the offer…

In fact, the only thing that he really cared about was the idea that he'd woken up this morning with a couple of new sets of LEGOS and one of those Fischer Price basketball hoops in the backyard that Julian and I had gotten him for his birthday…

"Please Elliott," My voice was laced with desperation, a feature that I knew from experience a child could pick up on and take advantage of in a heartbeat, but at this point, I didn't even care anymore…

Behind me, the sudden, shrill wailing of an infant had me groaning audibly with the recognition that today just didn't seem to be my day as my two month old daughter Cameron, who had previously been watching the scene between her mother and brother with a passive curiosity from inside of her highchair, finally decided that she was done being patient with me in her quest to gather some attention…

"Ugh… SAM!" I screamed for some assistance, my voice muffled by the crashing of Cameron's plastic bowl as it made the plunge from her chair down onto the ground below, followed immediately by the splatter of mashed carrots as they sprang themselves up from the inside of the bowl like a catapult and found a new home caked against my floors and walls…

"What!" I heard her shout back from inside the safety of her bedroom, choosing to question the reason for which I'd called her even though I was more than certain that she was able to pick up on all of the commotion that was going on from just outside of her closed door.

"Can you come over here for a minute? And hurry!" I shouted over my shoulder as Elliott continued to fight, kick, bite, and basically do anything that he could in his quest to want absolutely nothing to do with his puffy jacket, which had been designed by me, by the way and Cameron began bathing in the mess she'd created with her breakfast…

"What, mom?" Sam flung her bedroom door open and bounded out and into the kitchen, half dressed in a fresh t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants with her hair splayed messily across the top of her head in that stereotypical 'I just woke up' kind of fashion.

"Can you help me with your sister please?" I asked desperately, jabbing a finger towards Cameron, who was wriggling desperately to get out of her high chair, her entire front colored orange with the breakfast that had previously been on the table in front of her that was now all over not only her, but the rest of the house as well…

"Yeah, yeah… come on Cam…" She spoke to the infant as she made her way towards her highchair, carefully lifting her from out of its confines so that she could rest her up against her chest, rocking her softly from side to side as she rubbed soft circles into the younger girl's upper back.

I watched the two for a moment, feeling my mind ease instantly at the interaction for a brief moment… Sam was good with her siblings, she always had been… hell, on some days she had more control over them than I did, and even though she'd missed out directly caring for Elliott during his extreme infancy considering his birth correlated directly with recovering from her wager against death, there was a bond between the two of them; something that I could never understand, something that could only develop from the fact that he'd saved her life before he'd even entered into this world.

Besides, Sam was healthy now; she was energetic, she had more potential in her little finger than I had in my entire body, and most importantly, she was alive so that now, she at the very least had the opportunity to fulfill it.

I feel like I've always said this, but Sam always had been that type of person that believed she could simply spread her wings and fly whenever she wanted… and at the beginning, for a little while there anyway, I didn't really believe her; but now that I'd actually seen it happen, I knew for a fact that she could, and sometimes, I like to use that belief to fuel the notion that if she can, maybe the rest of us can too.

The smallest of my children calmed instantly from her position inside of her older sister's arms, while simultaneously, I finally managed to get Elliott inside of his jacket, buttoning it up to his neck as fast as I could because I knew that he had yet to master the concept of buttons so once he was in that thing, he wasn't getting back out of it any time soon…

"You have a doctor's appointment in ten minutes Sam," I told her when I finally had enough time to take a breath large enough to emit words, "Here, give me Cameron and go get dressed before I make you walk over there."

She smirked up at me with the briefest of eye rolls, emphasizing the joke of what she knew was an empty threat as she passed Cameron from her arms into mine.

"Aw, but if I go and get ready right now then I won't have time to give Elliott his birthday present." She stalled effectively, turning her attention away from me and onto my son, her voice rising in inclination in order to match the manner by which you appropriately address a two year old as she crouched down with her hands on her knees so that she could match Elliott's height.

"Present?" Elliott recognized the word, that much was for damn sure, especially considering the fact that he had a wide variety of aunts and uncles, as well as a big sister that spoiled him completely rotten…

Of course, Sam's theory was that anybody who had given her such an amazingly huge gift as Elliott had deserved just the same, no, more… And considering Sam hadn't had the opportunity to give him his life back because it wasn't warranted, thank God for that, she went for the next best thing; she gave the kid absolutely anything that he could possibly ask for…

His tiny face shown bright with the expectation of a gift as he pulled himself away from me and bounded over towards Sam; the jacket that he was currently wearing so puffy that it forced him to move in a little bit of a waddle.

"Fine," I sighed, throwing my arms up in defeat, knowing full well that I could never stop this interaction from ever happening, "Just make it fast."

"This is for you buddy," She told him, reaching down towards her wrist where she easily unlatched the bracelet that hadn't left its spot on her arm once in over two years…

I recognized it immediately; it was the one that I had given Sam for her seventeenth birthday that had been spent sitting in a hospital bed eagerly awaiting the day that would ultimately end up saving her life, it was one that had eventually projected Clothes over Bro's up onto the top tier of fundraising advocates for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society within mere months…

"Our mom gave me this," She told him, lowering the chain into his tiny, outstretched hands so that I was starting to get the feeling that he'd probably be better off wearing it as a necklace than a bracelet at this stage of the game, "Right before you were born."

"When I saved you?" I couldn't help but to smirk at the interaction… In recent months, Elliott had slowly began to comprehend a fact that we'd never exactly hidden from him despite the fact that he was probably too young to even comprehend what it meant when we told him that Sam had been sick before and that she had gotten better because of something that he had done in a time he would never even be able to remember…

I wondered how long it would be before he realized just how sick Sam had been during the entire time that I was pregnant with him, or which day he would realize what we actually meant when we told her that he'd been Sam's superhero much like the ones that he always saw on TV.

"Yeah Elliott, when you saved me…" She confirmed, "Now I want you to have it so that you never forget your big sister, huh?"

With the beads of the bracelet still laced between his tiny fingers, he reached around and wrapped Sam into a hug that reached up to her waist; the highest point on her that he could actually reach…

"Hey, Elliott why don't you put that upstairs in your room so you don't lose it okay?" I told him, knowing full well just how quickly something could turn up missing when it was left in the hands of a toddler and how important this was be, not only to Sam, but for him as well, even if he didn't quite know it yet, "Hurry up now, we've gotta go soon."

The familiar patter of little feet bounding up the stairwell filled our ears as me and Sam's eyes followed his tiny frame until he turned the corner and disappeared completely from view.

"I hope you don't mind." Sam turned back around towards me, her eyes cast downward with the fear that I would take offense to her giving away a gift that had originally been hers.

"Are you kidding, of course I don't mind." I told her, taking a step closer towards her so that I was able to wrap the free arm that wasn't still holding my youngest daughter to my hip around her shoulder, "I'm proud of you kid."

I felt like I've been saying that to Sam a lot these days; about how proud I was of her, and of course it was all true, I've just learned to actually tell her these things more often because I knew as well as the next person how quickly you could lose the opportunity to do so.

They say that the parents of cancer survivors have a tendency to develop unique characteristics based on the impact of experience that are rarely exhibited by others…

When it's all said and done, we have this uncanny ability to display remarkable elasticity… We can take something bad and mold it into something positive in a heartbeat, we can retain hope in even the most hopeless of situations, we can hang onto our child as tightly as humanly possible while still knowing the right time to let go…

There's an old adage that circulates internationally across oncology units for patients and their families, and although in the two years since I'd seen it last, the exact details have grown fuzzy, the basic moral of the story is this; a disease as crippling as cancer can do a lot to you, it can do a lot to your family… It can attack you quietly in the middle of the night without so much as a warning, it can cripple you in ways you never thought humanly possible, hell, it can downright murder you…

But at the same time, there's a lot more that it can't do then what it can, and even though when you're in the midst of a battle that seems endless, you have to remember that it can't destroy love, it can't shatter hope or corrode every last ounce of faith we hold onto in a death grip as much as it may try…

And for us, it couldn't, and it didn't…

It didn't erase the friends that stayed by our side all the way up until the end. It didn't silence a ravenous courage that courses thicker through our veins larger than any abnormal cell ever could, and most importantly of all, it didn't take my daughter away from me, no matter how hard it tried to, and you know what, it never will.

* * *

**SAM**

These days, there wasn't a lot of room for quiet in our house, as is expected I guess when you're shacking up with a two year old and a newborn…

But there is always a break amidst the madness, or so they say, and our break came for me and Brooke once daily in the form of a strategically arranged nap time that had taken months for us to get Elliott and Cameron to master.

Three o'clock in the afternoon has permanently been renamed 'Brooke and Sam's Safe Haven' by the two of us as it marked the single time of day that Brooke and I could actually remember a time when it had only been the two of us living in this house; a difficult feat now that there were five.

It had started before Cameron was even born; Brooke had learned to put Elliott down for his nap at 2:45 to give him enough to time to settle as I walked home from school, or got a ride home from Haley, or, eventually, drove on my own, so that by the time I walked through that back door, he would be out cold and I would have some much needed time to ourselves, just like we wanted.

When Cameron had been born early in July, things started to get a bit tricky mainly because it took Cameron a little while longer to adjust to a regular sleep cycle than it had with Elliott, but we eventually managed to fall back into the habit, even though I wasn't even in school anymore and still had a few weeks to go until I started my highly anticipated, yet still dangerously nerve wracking freshman year at UNC…

But today, well today that time came and went, but it wasn't about rest and relaxation, instead, it was just a little bit more hectic than usual as Brooke and I fluttered endlessly around the house blowing up balloons while simultaneously hanging streamers and cardboard cutouts of cartoon dinosaurs to the wall in order to prepare for Elliott's birthday party; a small gathering of friends and family, but one that had to be ravishing none-the-less because if there was one thing about Brooke Davis that hasn't changed over the years, it was her ability to throw parties.

"It looks good in here." The unexpected surprise of Julian's voice in the form of a compliment as he walked through the front door and over towards where Brooke was trying to turn our living room into a replica of the Jurassic Park set resulted in a high-pitched yelp of surprise coming from Brooke's direction, followed by an even higher pitched shriek of pain as she jumped up and accidentally put a thumb tack through her finger instead of through the poster that she was trying to hang up on the wall.

"Sorry…" He winced in pain for her, watching as she stuck her bleeding thumb into her mouth and shimmied down the step ladder and into Julian's arms, looking for comfort for the injury that he'd just inadvertently inflicted upon her.

In a natural instinct, he reached down delicately, clasping his large hands around her much smaller one before bringing his own lips down to brush against the injury, Brooke's own personal Band-Aid, briefly before he redirected the motion against her lips in a manner that, almost two years since their marriage, still never appeared to be getting old for them, emphasizing that their love, unlike so many others in this day and age, didn't just disappear with the honeymoon phase.

With Brooke's back to me, I stuck out my tongue and released a tone of mock disgust out of the back of my throat towards their PDA, just a friendly reminder that their daughter was still in the room, a friendly reminder that seemed to work as they jumped apart from each other faster than they'd come together.

"Hey Sam," He coughed awkwardly forcing himself to push past Brooke, allowing his arms to open so that I could fall inside of them in a personal form of hello.

"Hey dad," I reciprocated, accepting his offer with a greeting that slid comfortably off of my tongue…

It was awkward at first, that transition between calling Brooke and Julian well… Brooke and Julian to calling them by the proper titles that parents usually got, I couldn't lie to you about that and yeah, it did take some getting used to for all parties involved, sure, but these days it seemed as natural to me as it would have had I been doing it since the day I learned to talk…

The way that it came to be about was relatively uneventful, the impact not nearly as huge as some would like to think, but the day after Brooke and Julian's wedding, I'd sort of come across and epiphany, and when I had, it had blurted out of my mouth faster than I could stop it…

My theory was this; at that point, it was only a matter of months before Elliott would be talking and in a stage of the learning game where consistency was the most important thing that my developing little genius of a baby brother could have, and I realized that I didn't want to confuse him by having his sister call our parents by their first names while he was stuck referring to them as mom and dad…

Sure, he would be dealt the specifics of that whole, confusing storyline one day, but on most days, well I honestly didn't really understand it myself, so it would be a while before that happened…

I'd asked Brooke and Julian about it, and ultimately, they had left the decision up to me, and for simplicities sake, combined with an undeniable craving for the opportunity to finally be able to address somebody as mom and dad for the first time in my life, I went the traditional route.

"How was your doctor's appointment?" He asked, pulling myself out of his arms so that I could stand back on my own two feet again…

"Fine," I shrugged, vague per usual because I never liked to go into detail about things like that… I guess it's just that now that we've passed the time frame by which paying attention to excruciating detail was crucial when it came down to doctor's appointments and my health, I was taking advantage of the fact that I _could_ merely just shrug my shoulders and say fine and still have it be believable…

"She did great," Brooke stepped up to the plate when I didn't, her spine straightening proudly as she laced an arm around my shoulder… You see Brooke… well Brooke took to my theory of detail a little bit differently; the way her belief system worked, it was that as long as paying attention to detail ended with the promise of good news, it was to be emphasized as loudly as humanly possible, "Dr. Miller told us that the blood that they took last week came back clear, not a cancer cell in sight… She also let us know that at this point, she thinks that Sam is practically unstoppable."

I rolled my eyes softly, pretending as if I didn't love it every time I heard Brooke talk like that about me, pretending as if I was doing all of this for the benefit of Brooke rather than for the benefit of both of us…

"Well that I already knew…" He complimented me, but rewarded Brooke, leaning into a kiss that I responded to with another eye roll, this time one that was very real, and a step backwards, excusing myself from this love fest before I puked into my own mouth.

"Daddy!"

The reminder that Elliott had mastered climbing out his crib on his own accord with a sneaky silence hit us all full throttle as the rambunctious two year old carefully lowered himself down the stairs with shaky steps, because sure, he might have been an aerobatic expert when it came down to ditching nap time, but that didn't mean he still didn't struggle with stairs…

"There's my birthday boy," Julian's face lit up as he met his son half way, strong hands latching under respective armpits as he lifted him up high into the air to his face level so that the eyes that I already knew were identical without even looking met each other, and their close proximity allowed you to truly see how much their facial shapes matched.

"How has your birthday been so far big man?" Julian asked, latching him protectively onto the crest of his hip so that he could carry him down the last handful of steps.

"Basketball?" The toddler responded cautiously, thus far continuing relating his birthday strictly in terms of the plastic toy basketball hoop that had been set up in the backyard for him…

"Yeah, you did get a basketball today didn't you," Julian praised his developing problem solving abilities, "But I think that it's gonna have to be your Uncle Nathan that teaches you how to be an NBA star."

"Basketball," I smirked at his repetition… oh well at least he was consistent.

From all the way upstairs, a soft cry rang out, growing gradually louder and louder until it was describable as anything but soft… From the sound of things, it seemed that Cameron must have wanted in on this little family party going on down here.

"I've got her." I stopped Brooke in her tracks, catching on the small sigh of exhaustion she'd inadvertently released from her lips so that I figured I'd give her at least a little bit of a break this time around.

"Thanks Sam." I just waved off her gratitude, pretending that it was no big deal as I climbed up the stairs when in reality, I don't think she realized just how big of a deal this really was to me, or how much I loved doing it…

Here's the thing, for every family that I used to sift through, I would get through brief stays here and even briefer stays there by pretending that this was just a temporary arrangement, that it was only a matter of time before I'd get passed onto a family that would become my permanent family, my real family…

It took me a long time to accept the fact that a real family was just something that wasn't a reality for me so that when it turned out that it actually was, the reminder was enough of a booster that made me want to just have it directly in front of my face day and night and I still didn't think that it would be enough…

And that my friends, is why this was such a big deal to me.

* * *

For dinner, we were eating an ice cream cake that was as big as I was; literally… I guess that's just what happens when you allow a two year old to pick out dinner…

But hell, I wasn't complaining because if it were up to me, I would be eating ice cream cake for dinner every day, and even through every couple of minutes, Brooke would throw in some side comments about too much sugar and diabetes running in her family, she'd ultimately traded in her mom had for a party one, and was now the one who was cutting the thing into oversized slices for everybody at the table.

"So Sam, got everything you need for school yet?" Haley had sat herself down next to me at the table, I was certain of it, because lately, she's been taking every and any opportunity to talk to me about my future college endeavors ever since I'd decided that I was going to go to UNC Wilmington all the way back in February… seven months ago…

But I liked to talk to Haley, even about the things that we'd already discussed a million times over, because honestly, Haley was probably one of the sole reasons that I had the opportunity to go to college to begin with…

You see, after that whole… you know, cancer debacle, Haley ultimately submerged as the solid foundation that I needed in order to get my life focused on the straight path, the one the one that I had been walking down before the storm struck and made it horribly crooked…

Following my stem cell transplant, I didn't go back to school right away… in fact, I physically couldn't go back to school right away I was still so sick… So while the rest of my grade embellished in the gratuity of senior year, I remained stuck as an incomplete junior.

I toyed with the idea of returning part time in January following the chaos of winter break, when I was finally healthy enough to at least stand on my own two feet long enough to make it through an entire school day, but at that point, they'd already told me that it was too late…

But not wanting to go back to school as a nineteen year old junior, Haley had taken me on her wings to tutor me after school, and it had been hard, no doubt it was hard, but I'd survived cancer, I could survive a few tutoring sessions and summer school too…

So I did it, and I returned to Tree Hill High for my senior year, and even though I was one year behind my old classmates, who were dutifully involved in their respective colleges already, well… I never really liked any of my old classmates anyway so I was totally okay with that.

"I think so," I responded to her previous question, stuffing another generous bite of cake straight into my gullet, exercising the bad habit of talking with my mouth full that Brooke always scolded me for, "I don't really have all that much to get though I don't think…"

It was true, after all I wasn't living in the dorm rooms or anything like that; instead, I'd chosen to live at home for at least my freshman year so that I could remain in a stable environment as I rounded into my final year of maintenance therapy and monthly doctor's appointments in order to ensure everything stayed in order on top of being around to help Brooke take care of Elliott and Cameron.

"Well, if you need anything don't be afraid to ask okay… I still have like, pretty much everything I went to college with lying around the house somewhere."

That, I didn't doubt… after all, one thing that remained consistent every time Haley came to talk to me about school was her generosity in offering things that she thought I would need… Of course, I'm not quite sure when it would be that I would ever need my very own beaker set, or printing press, or whatever the hell else it was that Haley had lying around her house, but it was the thought that counted, right?

"I will, thanks Aunt Haley…" I told her, our conversation ending abruptly in the form of a wail that originated from Haley's right, a wail that set off a domino effect amongst the numerous amounts of infants currently bombarding the small room so that it was only a matter of minutes before I wasn't even able to hear myself think anymore.

I hid a laugh in the back of my throat as Haley's cheeks glowed red and she reached over to grab the offending ringleader of this rather unceremonious symphony; the latest addition to the James-Scott family, Anna… or maybe that was Keira, I don't know, at three months old, I already couldn't tell Haley and Nathan's identical twin girls apart so that I couldn't help but wonder if this was going to get easier or harder as they got older.

Haley had been pregnant alongside Brooke and Haley had given birth to the first set of twins that our small family boasted a month before Cameron was born.

Meanwhile Jamie… well Jamie was getting bigger and bigger every day, as old as saying that made me sound… He'd just turned nine years old, but I'll swear to it, just by looking at him and listening to him talk for a couple of minutes, he might as well be turning sixteen.

These days, he was almost as tall as me, which admittedly wasn't saying much, but simultaneously, his face was maturing, his hair darkening, and even though I truly thought I would never see the day, he was rapidly becoming a god's honest clone of his father.

"You know Sam, I think that I might have some stuff that you could use too, I'll dig around for it. Maybe you can come over in the next few days and pick some stuff up…" Peyton threw in her two cents, balancing her infant daughter on her lap.

Peyton had found out that she was pregnant about a week before Brooke had, right after Brooke and Julian's wedding so that, by some strange coincidence, all three best friends, Brooke, Haley, and Peyton, had carried the weight of the majority of their pregnancy terms together, and by some even stranger coincidence, they'd all ended up having girls.

These days, Peyton, who was running Red Bedroom Records, a label which was well on its way to becoming one of the majors, spent her maternity leave ordering people around from home, mostly just enjoying her opportunity to keep balancing a three year old that could run circles around all of us and a newborn with the assistance of Lucas, who helped out when he wasn't taking his night courses at the local community college to jumpstart his efforts to become an editor.

"Yeah, okay," I nodded towards Peyton, taking my final bite of cake before pushing my half empty plate away from me in the universal symbol of completing my unconventional meal so that I could push my chair out from under the table and give myself some room to stand, "I'll be right back… I just have to go to the bathroom real quick."

My eyes glanced quickly over Brooke's as I pushed past the table and onto my feet, our eyes locking in her soft curiosity as I turned the corner and out of site completely…

But instead of taking a right into the bathroom, I changed course in the last minute, turning right into Brooke and Julian's bedroom, walking on the balls of my feet in an effort to be as quiet as humanly possible as I made a beeline straight towards the back door leading towards the balcony, opening it with a creek and a quick gust of wind that wiped the fresh smell of the harbor over my face so that my legs practically stepped themselves towards the outside world.

I hadn't meant to be rude or anything like that and leave the dinner table in such an abrupt and unexpected fashion, but I was living on an internal clock, and for the past two years now, it was all the same… this was just something that I had to do, and I had to do daily.

The stratus, or the cumulonimbus, or whatever the hell those cloud formations that I could never remember the names of from my eighth grade geophysical science class frayed at their ends in such a way that would allow them to come together in perfect formation if they would just move in the right direction…

But tonight the air was still, and the night sky was too busy fading from a deep red to that characteristic shade of dark blue that never seems to have a physical expression to describe its perfection to be involved with the clouds.

A steam ship passed by its chartered course through the thin passage of water that ran behind our house, and I closed my eyes against it, pretending as if its motions could lift me up into the wind, creating the allusion that I was floating on air, providing me with a feeling of infiniteness that I liked to allow wash over me every once in a while; a humble reminder of all of the things that I had to go through in order to achieve it…

"Hey,"

I was pulled back into reality prematurely by the sound of the back door opening and closing once again followed by the slight sinking of the concrete below my feet as an additional strain of body weight was placed against it.

"Are you okay?" Slowly, I allowed my eyes to slide open as I twisted my head around my shoulder, spotting Brooke instantly as she lingered nervously in the doorway; the portal between the two of us and the real world that I liked to keep closed in an effort to achieve the perfect dream state.

"Yeah," I nodded my head confidently, knowing that she would believe me if I expressed just how much I believed it myself, "Yeah, it's just a nice night tonight… I like coming outside…"

It was true, ever since I'd been cleared out of my state of severe immunosuppression and was allowed to stand outside for more than sixty seconds without literally catching my death, I found myself spending as much time as humanly possible just trying to see how far my eyes could screen over the landscape of the world before the horizon started to block out the details… and every day, I liked to imagine that I could actually see just a little bit further, until one day, I was certain I'd be able to make out the universe in its entirety.

I think that it was the vastness of it all that truly captured me; at the very least, its attraction was in how it managed to put me into perspective, remind me how small I really was, that I shouldn't be taking for granted all of the things that I would have missed out on had I not escaped that narrow portal of death that almost sucked me right inside of its swirling, unsympathetic black hole.

"It is nice out here…" Brooke agreed with me, stepping beside me and leaning forward so that her arms rested gently against the rails of the balcony, hanging as much of her upper body off of its side as she could in her bid for freedom. "I should have had Elliott's birthday party outside…"

"The party is fine… you did great mom." The words slipped from my mouth easily as was expected considering I've been addressing Brooke under the title of mom for over a year now, but still, every time I did it, I could still see that extra glow flush into her cheeks…

But she didn't say anything, hell, she didn't even take her eyes off of the water in front of her; instead, she produced her response in the form of a physical interaction, reaching out an arm and wrapping it around my shoulder, pulling me in close to her so that my body was flooded with a kind of warmth that I knew I would never be able to get anywhere else other than inside of her arms.

It was a place that I have found comfort in a million times before, and I was sure that it would be a place I'd turn to a million more times over again.

I'd become so accustomed to it in fact, that this time around, my head was practically burying itself into the imprint of her shoulder that I'd left behind in there years before from the amount of times that it's been used.

I tried to think back to the days when I didn't even have a shoulder like that to fall into when I needed it, when I didn't have somebody like Brooke to turn to when I needed to talk; a time that was getting harder and harder to remember as those days travelled into a distance that I barely even recognized as mine anymore.

I mean, it was something that I could never truly forget altogether… we've had our good times together, and more profoundly, we've had our bad… So yeah, I was sick, that much wasn't a secret, but Brooke; well she'd managed to find the one thing that could, that _did_ nurse me back to health much better than any doctor or medication ever could.

She had that fierce determination that perseverance, that unwavering love that lingered across the air even on those days where I couldn't even bring myself to look her in the eye for fear that the next words that would come out of my mouth would have to be me saying goodbye.

I wasn't a perfect kid, and I'm still not, not even close, and trust me, I don't pretend to be… I've made my mistakes… obviously, but for the most part, I'd finally managed to find an opportunity to dig myself out of them while still keeping my feet firmly planted on the ground.

Things have been settling down all around me; my life has been slowly going back to normal, my memories, my emotions relaxing so that all of the things that I'd lost in that year of my life was finally grounded into a complete standstill that was now only a lingering thought layered over the back of my mind…

I had been asleep for a while, but I was awake once again, and slowly but surely, I could feel myself growing back into that person that I used to be, and only now, I'm starting to realize just how much I've missed it… God I've missed it, and having it back again makes me never want to let go of it again… ever.

For a long time, I merely thought that I was one of those lost souls, one of those kids that was never quite meant to be found… It took meeting Brooke for me to realize that I was never lost, I was just stuck… and sure, it might have taken a trip to hell and back to realize that fact, but for now, and for as long as we had that, I knew for a fact that there would always be room for the both of us to be saved… together.

* * *

**So first and foremost, I just wanted to thank absolutely everybody who has ever read, or reviewed, or so much as opened this story to glance at it. Honestly, I don't think you guys understand how much it meant to see so many people reading this story, coming back for more, and sticking around for as long as it lasted. It really is an awesome thing to see, and all of your support, your kind words, your constructive criticism, and everything in between meant the world.**

**Last thing, I'm planning on completely editing this story over again, fine-tuning it and re-editing it, mostly technical things like that but nothing too dramatic. It might take me a little while, but if anybody wants this finalized copy, shoot me a pm of your e-mail address or whatever and I'll try to send it to you by the end of the summer.**

**Once again, thank you so much for everything, at the moment I'm not really planning on doing much of anything else writing wise but I really did enjoy this a lot (it was the first story I've ever put out online) so who knows what I'll do.**


	67. Quick Author's Note

Hey guys, long time no see, huh?

So the reason for this slightly random, impromptu author's note is because the other day, I got a message from Enchanted13 that she made a video for this story which I think is just crazy awesome.

Here's the youtube link to it: /watch?v=WvKM8v8rz_c

Give her a shout out and let you know what you think.

Also, I figured this would be a good time to replace some of the older chapters that I edited, literally six months ago and never got around to putting up. There's nothing too drastic, don't worry just fixed spelling/grammar/stupid mistakes for other sticklers for that stuff such as myself.

Thanks everyone, until next time.

Beth


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